[split] Death penalty for child molestors?

[Master of Ossus]

Excuse me if it takes a bit to answer all of your responses...

[snip]

These arent little details, Ossus.

What you're suggesting is a system where people can be convicted on a crime--which, yes, they may be innocent of--and then executed for it. This is the root problem with the Death Penalty: it's one way.

Again, under this law, several people who were later equitted of their alleged crimes, after being proven innocent years or decades later, would be dead now. Waht do you tell their families..."Oh sorry. But hey, kids are safe yeah?"

Frankly, I don't see it as nearly the problem that you do. Not only have we never executed the wrong person at LEAST since capital punishment was restored in the US, but forensic evidence has improved to such a degree that there is virtually no probability that someone would be wrongly convicted of a capital offense.

More so...aftre incidents like the Duke "Rape" Case, where these guys were almost convicted on a pure, outright lie i think it's obvious how a few shitty DAs and some angry "victims" may fuck up someone's life. There have been too many cases like that already to add something as barbaric as the death penalty too it.

Yes. The Duke rape case was one of the worst travesties of modern justice, where the DA acted completely inappropriately (and was later disbarred), and the entire community came out against the defendants... yet they were still acquitted because there was no physical evidence against them.

In other words, you have taken a worst-case scenario that did not result in a conviction and are using that as evidence against punishing people post-conviction, irrespective of the fact that my argument is that the risk of inappropriate conviction is negligible.

No it doesnt. My main problem with the whole thing is not merely that, but the ethical knee-jerking that leads to the execution in the first place. It's almost completely arbitrary and when added to the distinct possibility of false convinction--and thus, needless execution--it becomes plainly obvious that the whole idea is flawed at it's heart.

What "knee-jerking" that is "almost completely arbitrary?" I honestly don't know what you're talking about. Are you questioning why cold blooded serial killers are often punished more harshly than people who act in the spur of the moment after getting into bar fights?

At the core of the death penalty is a need for pure, senseless revenge...nothing more. Trying desperately to dress it up as being "humane", that just turns the world upside down. Death is inhumane.

Virtually no one believes that deterrence, restoration, and rehabilitation should be the ONLY purposes of punishment--there is a clear retributive function to punishment. As proof, consider what would happen if someone committed a crime but under such circumstances that it could be agreed that he had NO probability of him or anyone else doing it again. Would you still agree that he was totally undeserving of punishment. He's already been rehabilitated, and no one would be deterred since no one else would be in such position in the future. Shouldn't we nonetheless punish him? But that is precisely the "senseless revenge" situation that you cite.

Sending someone to die because you need to feel vengence is inhumane.

Why? If it makes everyone in society feel better, or in particular if it makes the victims feel better, why not do it? Making society feel better about the justice system and consoling victims is the opposite of "inhumane."

These retards are prepared to send people to die based solely on a need for revenge, i have nothing but contempt for them. They're not criminals they're just morally bankrupt though, so you have a point, thank GOD that wasnt sarcasm!

Sarcasm is a way of forming an argument, 18. It's not a substitute for one.

Because some crimes are not sufficiently reprehensible to warrant the death penalty, you clod. Violent child rape is much more analogous to murder, in terms of the moral demerits it warrants, than it is to grand theft auto.

Mayhap it is, mayhap it aint.[/quote]

You seriously see sexually assaulting a child as being more closely analogous to the theft of a golf cart than to murder? Aren't you accusing other people of being morally bankrupt?

Luckily i have several people here already saying that being imprisoned is so inhumane that death is preferable, so my argument (if death is better than prison, kill the prisoners) is perfectly valid.

So because other people are using a different argument than I'm using, that means that your argument is perfectly valid?

Bubble Boy already said it and so did Dutchess. Unless they want to change their tune and say thats not how "Isolation is worse than death" should be read?

I'm not obligated to defend their views, and just because someone else is using a different argument against you does not excuse you from answering my arguments.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I am, absolutely, 100%, against the death penalty in principle as well as practice. And by extension, I welcome this ruling.

1) The death penalty I think IS cruel and unusual punishment. Especially the way it is carried out today. It is inherently dehumanizing. We put people to sleep like an ailing pet. It is one thing to euthanize a person who wants it with an OD of morphine. It is another to strap a crying man down and use an ineffective sedative, one that often leaves them conscious but paralyzed... then have a drug cocktail injected into them that stops breathing and heart function while they are still conscious.

2) I am a non-retributivist Yes. Some people deserve to die. However that does not mean we should do it. I do not think that a justice system should be used to met out punshishment, but rather its primary function should be to reduce suffering. A lot of you guys are utilitarians. Those of you who are pro-DP and utilitarians are inconsistent, because all the death penalty does is increase suffering. The family of the perp suffers, the victim does not actually feel any better. Moreover, the death penalty does NOT serve as a deterrent. Links to Lots of Reviews

Under this evidence, what function does the death penalty serve? It lets us pat ourselves on the back and feel good about ourselves for being tough on crime. That is it. It serves no real function in policy.

3) The people we consider "sick and evil" are mentally ill. They need treatment, not execution. Take for example serial killers. Serial killers are sick, twisted individuals. However they are not moustache twirling villains. They kill for a reason, that reason being a psychological compulsion that is the result of...something... going wrong. We dont know what that something is. Same with pedophiles and child molesters. We should not be killing them. A more sound policy would be to treat them, or if that is impossible, use them as lab rats to see what is wrong and try to avoid/fix the problem in others. But instead of this, the visceral reaction "they just need killin'! " clouds our judgment. It should be done away with

In practice

The death penalty costs more to implement that life in prison. In order to mitigate this, we would have to cut down on appeals, which will increase the frequency of the second practical problem. False convictions. If I have to explain why false convictions are a problem someone needs to be kicked in the teeth. We already have too many of these in capital cases due to bad evidence and the fact that Juries are idiots. There are probably more of them than we will ever know about.

In this particular case, if we toss him into a psychiatric prison for sex offenders, he will never see, let alone harm a child again. The little girl can go on with her life, we can play pokey poke with his psyche to see what went wrong, if he was falsely convicted we can free him. I fail to see the problem with this arrangement. Other than the fact that we dont get to sate your collective lust for blood.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Frankly, I don't see it as nearly the problem that you do. Not only have we never executed the wrong person at LEAST since capital punishment was restored in the US, but forensic evidence has improved to such a degree that there is virtually no probability that someone would be wrongly convicted of a capital offense.

I disagree. There was a huge dust up a few years ago where a forensic analyst outright fabricated evidence on dozens of cases; if one of those cases had carried a death penalty--i'm not certain if any did or not after all this time--then someone could have, or actually may have, died. And thats just one we know about. Plus the reality is that people lie, even if the evidence is there other things can be fabricated...there was yet ANOTHER case many years ago involving a supposedly "massive" child molestation ring-cum-satanist cabal which turned out to be complete bullshit when all was said and done. Whatever evidence may or may not have been there, the "victims" either lied or were put up to it by their parents (sometimes both, i reckon) and lives were ruined. Thank God they werent TAKEN too.

Yes. The Duke rape case was one of the worst travesties of modern justice, where the DA acted completely inappropriately (and was later disbarred), and the entire community came out against the defendants... yet they were still acquitted because there was no physical evidence against them.

In other words, you have taken a worst-case scenario that did not result in a conviction and are using that as evidence against punishing people post-conviction, irrespective of the fact that my argument is that the risk of inappropriate conviction is negligible.

Ok then what about the dozens of people who were, and are, convicted of rapes and murders they did not commit only to be cleared years later. The system isnt nearly as concrete as you're implying it would need to be, under the system you're positing. Trust me i wish it were that complete but it is not.

What "knee-jerking" that is "almost completely arbitrary?" I honestly don't know what you're talking about. Are you questioning why cold blooded serial killers are often punished more harshly than people who act in the spur of the moment after getting into bar fights?

Yes. There is no difference, indeed the latter is, in some ways, worse as it implies the person has extreme lack of control to just off someone in a fight on a whim. If we kill people because they commit murder we should do it for all murder, since the net result is identical in every case: someone's dead. The cause is irrelevent, unless it's self-defense which is fucking rare. If we start picking and choosing then it becomes arbitrary, based on who killed who "harder" or "worser" than the other. Why? If you're dead i shot you, weather it was on the spur of the moment or because i get a huge throbbing erection from seeing people get shot, the point is you're still dead and i'm still a murderer. So if it were fair, i'd have what the serial killer is having.

Virtually no one believes that that deterrence, restoration, and rehabilitation should be the ONLY purposes of punishment--there is a clear retributive function to punishment.

Why should there be? See thats my point, it muddies the issue. People convict because they "dont want the killer to get off" not because they really feel he did it...i know, i've seen it happen. I've seen people be aquitted because of ZERO FUCKING EVIDENCE after being convicted because the DA got the jurry's blood boiling. One case here in Detroit, involved a guy who--despite having a beard and being completely different in appearance--was convicted of rape, even though the victim said the perp was clean shaven and couldnt make an ID. Know why he was convicted: cause he's a dirty nigger, and she was a white woman, and we all know how niggers lust after white women. When justice starts bleeding over into revenge, that mindset becomes perfectly valid because it becomes more and more arbitrary the more they intersect.

As proof, consider what would happen if someone committed a crime but under such circumstances that it could be agreed that he had NO probability of him or anyone else doing it again. Would you still agree that he was totally undeserving of punishment.

Did he kill someone...my answer kind of changes depending on that fact. If he didm then yes he should be punished, because he broke a cardinal law of our society and has to face the consequences. If we're talking about...stealing a car or something, well, again, he still has to face the consequneces for taking money basically out of someone's hands here but if there was no chance of a repeat, i'd suggest a lighter sentence than usual.

He's already been rehabilitated, and no one would be deterred since no one else would be in such position in the future. Shouldn't we nonetheless punish him? But that is precisely the "senseless revenge" situation that you cite.

No that's being logical. No one is allowed to just get away with crimes, because it encourages anarchy. People have to follow the rules of society or those rules are meaningless, i have no ill will and desire no revenge only to enforce the rules that prevent us from descending into anarchism.

Why? If it makes everyone in society feel better, or in particular if it makes the victims feel better, why not do it?

Then let them kill him. No i'm serious, if they feel they need this blood-soaked catharsis then fine, let them do it and the state's hands are clean. But they wont. Because they dont want to kill anyone they just want to watch someone die, anyone, as long as it makes them feel they have closure.

Making society feel better about the justice system and consoling victims is the opposite of "inhumane."

Quite the contrary. The Justice system is about maintaining law over anarchy, not making people feel better. Feelings are of no consequence, or else why not just grab someone off the street and convict them sans trial...tell no one, make them think you caught the perp, and you'll acheive the same effect of making people "feel better" for pennies on the dollar.

You seriously see sexually assaulting a child as being more closely analogous to the theft of a golf cart than to murder? Aren't you accusing other people of being morally bankrupt?

No, thats not what i mean, but the previous arguments kind of overlapped. I said something in response to them, and you tried to refute it, so you'll excuse me if i thought you agree with them. If not then forget that part, we're not in disagreement about the death>inprisonment thing i presume.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Not only have we never executed the wrong person at LEAST since capital punishment was restored in the US, but forensic evidence has improved to such a degree that there is virtually no probability that someone would be wrongly convicted of a capital offense.

You're joking right?

You think we actually Exonerate every innocent person? How naive can you be?

People CAN be convicted of capital murder with little to no actual forensics. DNA is usually only available in rape-murders, and then typically only if the murderer is an idiot. They have condoms now you know....

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I am, absolutely, 100%, against the death penalty in principle as well as practice. And by extension, I welcome this ruling.

1) The death penalty I think IS cruel and unusual punishment. Especially the way it is carried out today. It is inherently dehumanizing. We put people to sleep like an ailing pet. It is one thing to euthanize a person who wants it with an OD of morphine. It is another to strap a crying man down and use an ineffective sedative, one that often leaves them conscious but paralyzed... then have a drug cocktail injected into them that stops breathing and heart function while they are still conscious.

I agree with you completely, which is why I advocate a reversion to guillotine, the snapping of the neck in drop-hanging, and, most preferably, the good old firing squad.

2) I am a non-retributivist Yes. Some people deserve to die. However that does not mean we should do it. I do not think that a justice system should be used to met out punshishment, but rather its primary function should be to reduce suffering. A lot of you guys are utilitarians. Those of you who are pro-DP and utilitarians are inconsistent, because all the death penalty does is increase suffering. The family of the perp suffers, the victim does not actually feel any better. Moreover, the death penalty does NOT serve as a deterrent. Links to Lots of Reviews

Under this evidence, what function does the death penalty serve? It lets us pat ourselves on the back and feel good about ourselves for being tough on crime. That is it. It serves no real function in policy.

Yes it does. It eliminates a threat to the social order which cannot otherwise be morally controlled; it is the best possible option, since confinement is worse than the cessation of sentience. This has nothing to do with retribution and everything to do with serving as social order.

BTW, the problem with the death penalty and deterrent these days is that executions are private--if they were done in town squares and the public allowed to watch, I suspect the deterrent effect would be much higher. We'll need to institute a pilot programme to see if this is the case, of course, but there's no harm in trying. And the family is objectively harmed worse by their relative (the offender) being driven insane in a little concrete hole.

3) The people we consider "sick and evil" are mentally ill. They need treatment, not execution. Take for example serial killers. Serial killers are sick, twisted individuals. However they are not moustache twirling villains. They kill for a reason, that reason being a psychological compulsion that is the result of...something... going wrong. We dont know what that something is. Same with pedophiles and child molesters. We should not be killing them. A more sound policy would be to treat them, or if that is impossible, use them as lab rats to see what is wrong and try to avoid/fix the problem in others. But instead of this, the visceral reaction "they just need killin'! " clouds our judgment. It should be done away with

Experimentation on humans is grossly immoral under any standard. I am trying to be moral with the death penalty--trying to avoid human suffering, even that of the offender. You on the other hand have just callously proposed your own bankrupt unethical demand to be able to experiment on these people. They are sick, so PUT THEM OUT OF THEIR MISERY. We put sick animals to sleep--why shouldn't we put fundamentally sick humans to sleep? We are social creatures, we cannot function without a society--and if they cannot function IN society, then give them one nice thing in their lives, put them out of their misery.

In practice

The death penalty costs more to implement that life in prison.

Immaterial, as life in prison is immoral and inhumane, and the death penalty is infinitely preferable to it.

In order to mitigate this, we would have to cut down on appeals, which will increase the frequency of the second practical problem. False convictions. If I have to explain why false convictions are a problem someone needs to be kicked in the teeth. We already have too many of these in capital cases due to bad evidence and the fact that Juries are idiots. There are probably more of them than we will ever know about.

Better to execute an innocent person quickly than torture them through isolation from society for 50 years. You fucking know that humans are social animals, and yet you're trying to come off as being enlightened by favouring locking people up over putting them out of their misery? Come one.

In this particular case, if we toss him into a psychiatric prison for sex offenders, he will never see, let alone harm a child again. The little girl can go on with her life, we can play pokey poke with his psyche to see what went wrong, if he was falsely convicted we can free him. I fail to see the problem with this arrangement. Other than the fact that we dont get to sate your collective lust for blood.

There is no blood lust, you stupid fuck.

1. The guy spends his whole life in the confines of a psychiatric hospital, driven insane by his absence from normal society, influenced to destruction by abnormal and unhealthy living situations.

2. Human experimentation is the most grossly immoral act ever known to humankind, and the fact that you casually suggest it shows you to be ethically bankrupt in the most grotesque ways.

[Alyrium Denryle]

BTW, the problem with the death penalty and deterrent these days is that executions are private--if they were done in town squares and the public allowed to watch, I suspect the deterrent effect would be much higher. We'll need to institute a pilot programme to see if this is the case, of course, but there's no harm in trying. And the family is objectively harmed worse by their relative (the offender) being driven insane in a little concrete hole.

You realize of course that I also advocate a complete overhaul of our prison system yes? There is a reason I want the most heinous of murderers placed in a psychiatric ward. So they can be treated, and NOT tortured. Which I will get to in a moment.

Yes it does. It eliminates a threat to the social order which cannot otherwise be morally controlled; it is the best possible option, since confinement is worse than the cessation of sentience. This has nothing to do with retribution and everything to do with serving as social order.

Hardly. Pedophilia is not a crime that CAN be deterred because the offender is mentally ill. You can execute the individual, but that hardly eliminates the threat to the social order because there are hundreds of thousands more that never get caught.

Experimentation on humans is grossly immoral under any standard.

Nice strawman. I appreciate its construction. Though I will admit I was not as clear as I perhaps should have been, I had assumed incorrectly that you would be able to understand what I was saying... what with context and knowing me fairly well.

I dont mean Lab Rats in the sense that we poke and prod in their brains through vivisection. But in the sense that people who volunteer for brain scans, or who take intro psych classes at universities are lab rats. Non-invasive profiling, neuroscience etc.

Invasive stuff, things that would not get past an IRB is probably not required, and even if it was, it would be working with embryos never intended to be born, not people.

We put sick animals to sleep--why shouldn't we put fundamentally sick humans to sleep?

Because they might not actually be guilty? That is a start.

Immaterial, as life in prison is immoral and inhumane, and the death penalty is infinitely preferable to it.

While I accept your argument in the US prison system (because I think an 8th amendment argument can be made for our entire criminal justice system) I also advocate an overhaul to the entire edifice. So your argument is immaterial.

Better to execute an innocent person quickly than torture them through isolation from society for 50 years. You fucking know that humans are social animals, and yet you're trying to come off as being enlightened by favouring locking people up over putting them out of their misery? Come one.

Again. Overhaul. The isolation from all of humanity is not necessary, you just have to isolate them from potential victims. Much easier. Prisoners are actually rather capable of forming functioning communities in isolation if we you know... treat them like human beings (as opposed to what we do now...)

1. The guy spends his whole life in the confines of a psychiatric hospital, driven insane by his absence from normal society, influenced to destruction by abnormal and unhealthy living situations.

2. Human experimentation is the most grossly immoral act ever known to humankind, and the fact that you casually suggest it shows you to be ethically bankrupt in the most grotesque ways.

Your human experimentation bit is an understandable strawman, but a strawman. And again, I advocate an overhaul of the entire system, so point 1 is irrelevant.

[18-Till-I-Die]

You know i must say, Alyrium, i find myself likeing your train of thought on the matter.

My main concern with the justice system, is less about revenge or retribution and more about preventing anarchism and preventing further crimes, and i think what you're saying here would really work well to do both of those things. And to be frank, i wish i'd thought of that part about overhauling the prison system because in retrospect you have an excellent point.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You realize of course that I also advocate a complete overhaul of our prison system yes? There is a reason I want the most heinous of murderers placed in a psychiatric ward. So they can be treated, and NOT tortured. Which I will get to in a moment.

Most people commit crimes not due to disease (that really only applies to child rapists and serial killers) but rather due to failures of self-control in a willful fashion, or greed exceeding their social sense, inability to control rage, etc. In these cases the punishment of adults to establish ideal behaviour patterns is an acceptable and easily defined course of action. Note I favour total elimination of prisons.

Hardly. Pedophilia is not a crime that CAN be deterred because the offender is mentally ill. You can execute the individual, but that hardly eliminates the threat to the social order because there are hundreds of thousands more that never get caught.

We'll treat people who have the factors to it before they commit it, if we can, and execute those who do commit the crime. I see nothing wrong with this--they are mentally ill, so it is a mercy to kill them since they cannot function in society, and social function is an absolute precondition of human normalcy.

Nice strawman. I appreciate its construction. Though I will admit I was not as clear as I perhaps should have been, I had assumed incorrectly that you would be able to understand what I was saying... what with context and knowing me fairly well.

I dont mean Lab Rats in the sense that we poke and prod in their brains through vivisection. But in the sense that people who volunteer for brain scans, or who take intro psych classes at universities are lab rats. Non-invasive profiling, neuroscience etc.

Invasive stuff, things that would not get past an IRB is probably not required, and even if it was, it would be working with embryos never intended to be born, not people.

The confinement is still immoral.

Because they might not actually be guilty? That is a start.

No it isn't. Better dead than suffering decades of confinement for no reason.

While I accept your argument in the US prison system (because I think an 8th amendment argument can be made for our entire criminal justice system) I also advocate an overhaul to the entire edifice. So your argument is immaterial.

Hardly, unless your system (which you have not detailed at all) manages to both preserve social order AND successfully deal with these people without torturing them.

Again. Overhaul. The isolation from all of humanity is not necessary, you just have to isolate them from potential victims. Much easier. Prisoners are actually rather capable of forming functioning communities in isolation if we you know... treat them like human beings (as opposed to what we do now...)

Putting people with other people who have also committed crimes is a recipe for societies based on crime, i.e., gangs. Why would putting them in nicer situations change any of that when they're still allowed to control a social interaction consisting entirely of humans? And they're all each other's potential victims except in rare cases like pedophilia.

Your human experimentation bit is an understandable strawman, but a strawman.

No, it was a correct response to your points that did not give a damn about to clarify.

And again, I advocate an overhaul of the entire system, so point 1 is irrelevant.

It is quite relevant, as long as you continue refusing to provide details of your reforms for us to debate.

[Broomstick]

We'll treat people who have the factors to it before they commit it, if we can, and execute those who do commit the crime. I see nothing wrong with this--they are mentally ill, so it is a mercy to kill them since they cannot function in society, and social function is an absolute precondition of human normalcy.

It disturbs me how close that line of reasoning is to the justifications used in 1939 for executing the mentally ill and crippled in Germany.

The mercy is to treat these people where possible and, where that is not possible, do what we can to both protect society and give them as high a quality of life as possible.

And if life in prison is worse than death then would it not be an even greater deterrent to crime?

[Master of Ossus]

I disagree. There was a huge dust up a few years ago where a forensic analyst outright fabricated evidence on dozens of cases; if one of those cases had carried a death penalty--i'm not certain if any did or not after all this time--then someone could have, or actually may have, died. And thats just one we know about. Plus the reality is that people lie, even if the evidence is there other things can be fabricated...there was yet ANOTHER case many years ago involving a supposedly "massive" child molestation ring-cum-satanist cabal which turned out to be complete bullshit when all was said and done. Whatever evidence may or may not have been there, the "victims" either lied or were put up to it by their parents (sometimes both, i reckon) and lives were ruined. Thank God they werent TAKEN too.

It's funny how in every single one of these instances the justice system just HAPPENS to be lucky and no one was wrongly executed. It's almost as if the system is robust and it's really unrealistic for someone to work their way through the entire appeals process inherent in capital murder cases without actually being killed.

Ok then what about the dozens of people who were, and are, convicted of rapes and murders they did not commit only to be cleared years later. The system isnt nearly as concrete as you're implying it would need to be, under the system you're positing. Trust me i wish it were that complete but it is not.

It doesn't have to be perfect to avoid executing people, which is the point I keep making. In every case you and Aly have cited, the appeals process has properly acquitted the allegedly innocent people (except for the Duke case, in which they weren't even convicted).

Yes. There is no difference, indeed the latter is, in some ways, worse as it implies the person has extreme lack of control to just off someone in a fight on a whim.

You see no difference between executing someone who has repeatedly and deliberately killed people and executing someone who has accidentally killed someone who provoked him? No wonder you have such a dim view of the death penalty, since you constantly conflate far less heinous offenses with capital murder and conclude that executing them is morally the same.

If we kill people because they commit murder we should do it for all murder, since the net result is identical in every case: someone's dead. The cause is irrelevent, unless it's self-defense which is fucking rare. If we start picking and choosing then it becomes arbitrary, based on who killed who "harder" or "worser" than the other. Why? If you're dead i shot you, weather it was on the spur of the moment or because i get a huge throbbing erection from seeing people get shot, the point is you're still dead and i'm still a murderer. So if it were fair, i'd have what the serial killer is having.

There are several justifications for accounting for circumstances:
1. Morally, it is far different to have accidentally triggered a series of events that foreseeably kill someone than it is to deliberately and for no other purpose kill someone.
2. Someone who accidentally kills someone is far less likely to do it again than someone who has repeatedly and viciously killed someone.

I view it as, frankly, absurd to treat the two as morally equivalent, but even from a pragmatic standpoint there are clear reasons to punish the serial killer more harshly than someone whose actions have resulted in another person's death.

Why should there be? See thats my point, it muddies the issue. People convict because they "dont want the killer to get off" not because they really feel he did it...i know, i've seen it happen. I've seen people be aquitted because of ZERO FUCKING EVIDENCE after being convicted because the DA got the jurry's blood boiling. One case here in Detroit, involved a guy who--despite having a beard and being completely different in appearance--was convicted of rape, even though the victim said the perp was clean shaven and couldnt make an ID. Know why he was convicted: cause he's a dirty nigger, and she was a white woman, and we all know how niggers lust after white women. When justice starts bleeding over into revenge, that mindset becomes perfectly valid because it becomes more and more arbitrary the more they intersect.

You are equating retribution with revenge, even though the two are not the same thing. Revenge is personal, but retribution is the punishment that an uninvolved member of society would wish to see meted out as a result of someone's crimes. Part of having empathy towards people is reacting negatively towards crimes that are committed against the, and with that comes a natural response in favor of censuring the wrongdoer.

Moreover, there is a reason why the appeals process takes so bloody long in capital murder cases--it's because we want to eliminate factual but moreover legal errors that can result in convictions.

Did he kill someone...my answer kind of changes depending on that fact. If he didm then yes he should be punished, because he broke a cardinal law of our society and has to face the consequences. If we're talking about...stealing a car or something, well, again, he still has to face the consequneces for taking money basically out of someone's hands here but if there was no chance of a repeat, i'd suggest a lighter sentence than usual.

But you, nonetheless, have just admitted that punishment should serve some retributive function as well, despite your claims to disavow such a system. This is a near-uniform response from people about this moral situation because retribution for crimes is a morally just and reasonable response to criminal behavior.

He's already been rehabilitated, and no one would be deterred since no one else would be in such position in the future. Shouldn't we nonetheless punish him? But that is precisely the "senseless revenge" situation that you cite.

No that's being logical.

Indeed, it is. That is why retribution is a valid goal of criminal punishment.

No one is allowed to just get away with crimes, because it encourages anarchy. People have to follow the rules of society or those rules are meaningless, i have no ill will and desire no revenge only to enforce the rules that prevent us from descending into anarchism.

Indeed, but enforcing the rules properly and creating sufficient deterrence also involves executing convicted felons of particularly egregious crimes.

Then let them kill him. No i'm serious, if they feel they need this blood-soaked catharsis then fine, let them do it and the state's hands are clean. But they wont. Because they dont want to kill anyone they just want to watch someone die, anyone, as long as it makes them feel they have closure.

Uh... okay. So you disavow anarchy and vengeance, but now you want victims to go around killing criminals who committed crimes against them in a form of vigilante justice. Are you always this inconsistent?

Quite the contrary. The Justice system is about maintaining law over anarchy, not making people feel better. Feelings are of no consequence, or else why not just grab someone off the street and convict them sans trial...tell no one, make them think you caught the perp, and you'll acheive the same effect of making people "feel better" for pennies on the dollar.

Because there's something satisfying about having the STATE mete out punishments to people, and moreover because the state system has all sorts of safeguards designed to protect the rights of the accused. If someone were legitimately able to infallibly and safely convict criminals, then I suppose there would be little reason for them not to be able to punish criminals at their own expense, but that is entirely unrealistic. The whole point of the justice system is that it enacts a tremendous number of safeguards to protect the rights of the accused. I don't think it's perfect, but it's vastly superior to the sort of vigilante justice you would enact in its stead. This has to do with the whole "law over anarchy" theme you harp on.

No, thats not what i mean, but the previous arguments kind of overlapped. I said something in response to them, and you tried to refute it, so you'll excuse me if i thought you agree with them. If not then forget that part, we're not in disagreement about the death>inprisonment thing i presume.

Fair enough, although for the record I've also quibbled with at least one of Bubble Boy's statements in this thread, and I also view capital punishment as the ultimate form of censure by the state.

[Master of Ossus]

You're joking right?

You think we actually Exonerate every innocent person? How naive can you be?

People CAN be convicted of capital murder with little to no actual forensics. DNA is usually only available in rape-murders, and then typically only if the murderer is an idiot. They have condoms now you know....

Sorry, not many people can commit murder without leaving any forensic evidence of their presence. Moreover, I recall a number of times when various criminals' rights groups were ADAMANT that they had found the perfect test-case and they just knew that this particular executed guy was innocent and had been wrongly put to death, and in all of them they ended up being dead wrong. Why should I listen to them, anymore? In every one of those cases, the justice system was more accurate than their after-the-fact second-guessing.

Finally, I don't care if you would impose additional requirements of forensic evidence to link murderers inextricably with their actions before capital punishment is made available, which pretty much destroys the argument that we can't kill people 'cause there's always a chance that they're really good, honest people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The issue is whether we can kill people who are inarguably guilty of incredibly heinous crimes.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

No it isn't. Better dead than suffering decades of confinement for no reason.

As Broomstick asked last page, why not let them choose if they would rather be executed if they'd prefer that to life imprisonment than simply assume everyone would rather die than spend life in prison?

[18-Till-I-Die]

It's funny how in every single one of these instances the justice system just HAPPENS to be lucky and no one was wrongly executed.

No it's a miracle, also most of these cases were rape cases, which dont carry the death penalty. See where i'm going?

It's almost as if the system is robust and it's really unrealistic for someone to work their way through the entire appeals process inherent in capital murder cases without actually being killed.

Hardly, indeed the sheer number of wrongful convictions, especially in cases of minorities both in the past and the present, for obvious reasons implies that these cases exist. This...

A total of 69 people have been released from death row since 1973 after evidence of their innocence emerged. Twenty-one condemned inmates have been released since 1993, including seven from the state of Illinois alone. Many of these cases were discovered not because of the normal appeals process, but rather as a result of new scientific techniques, investigations by journalists, and the dedicated work of expert attorneys, not available to the typical death row inmate.

For example makes me see littel strength in your argument, since it implies a larger number of people (pre-DNA, pre-new science techniques) were probably executed for nothing at all. But i'm sure the victim's families felt great and that's what really matters right...

It doesn't have to be perfect to avoid executing people, which is the point I keep making. In every case you and Aly have cited, the appeals process has properly acquitted the allegedly innocent people (except for the Duke case, in which they weren't even convicted).

Yeah, only the appeals process has less to do with most of these cases than progressing technology and sheer luck. And frankly i just find it illogical to presume that we've never executed an innocent man, that WOULD imply the system is perfect and thats a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

You see no difference between executing someone who has repeatedly and deliberately killed people and executing someone who has accidentally killed someone who provoked him? No wonder you have such a dim view of the death penalty, since you constantly conflate far less heinous offenses with capital murder and conclude that executing them is morally the same.

No you asked me if someone committing a lesser kind of murder is as diserving of punishment as someone who is a serial killer. As i am not arguing in favor of the death penalty, i was not suggesting it and i think you know that. I was however suggesting that, yes, murder is murder weather by spur of the moment or by a serial killer.

There are several justifications for accounting for circumstances:
1. Morally, it is far different to have accidentally triggered a series of events that foreseeably kill someone than it is to deliberately and for no other purpose kill someone.
2. Someone who accidentally kills someone is far less likely to do it again than someone who has repeatedly and viciously killed someone.

I view it as, frankly, absurd to treat the two as morally equivalent, but even from a pragmatic standpoint there are clear reasons to punish the serial killer more harshly than someone whose actions have resulted in another person's death.

In terms of simple imprisonment, morality doesnt enter into the equation. We have laws, the reason these laws are enforced is to maintain order not to sit on a high horse and talk about morality. If i accidentally bash in your skull during a bar fight i just murdered you. I cannot be allowed to go free simply because i felt bad about it, because this may signal a pattern: kill someone for a really petty reason but by accident, and you get 25 years...kill someone cause you need to jizz off in the slit you put in their neck and you get a needle. There is no difference in the net result, only how the public feels about the killing and that feeling is irelevent.

You are equating retribution with revenge, even though the two are not the same thing. Revenge is personal, but retribution is the punishment that an uninvolved member of society would wish to see meted out as a result of someone's crimes. Part of having empathy towards people is reacting negatively towards crimes that are committed against the, and with that comes a natural response in favor of censuring the wrongdoer.

What you're describing is basically pick and choose justice where punishment...i'm sorry, "retribution" is "meted out" at random based on why someone died. What i'm suggesting is we take the death penalty off the table and have different prison sentences for different crimes based on severity, with murder carrying the most severe: life in prison. Parole will be decided upon, with parole being available for your hypothetical murderous bar-fly, and not available for say Ted Bundy.

Moreover, there is a reason why the appeals process takes so bloody long in capital murder cases--it's because we want to eliminate factual but moreover legal errors that can result in convictions.

And it barely works as it is, largely because of outside forces such as the Innocence Project who step in because the state could give less of a fuck.

But you, nonetheless, have just admitted that punishment should serve some retributive function as well, despite your claims to disavow such a system. This is a near-uniform response from people about this moral situation because retribution for crimes is a morally just and reasonable response to criminal behavior.

I did no such thing.

Punishment serves, in my mind, to prevent others from doing the same. People respond to pain, if they feel that doing something, say stealing a car, will cause them pain then they will not do it. This is how we maintain law and order, it has nothing to do--IMO--with revenge or retribution, but with making sure we dont end up in the Mad Max-ish, anarchist world some pricks would like us to. If these people dont respond properly that simply means they're mentally ill and need to be imprisoned where they cannot enter society again and do damage, not killed. Though they may serve the same purpose, imprisonment, if done properly, is more ethically sound and--as much as i hate to dumb it down to sheer cost--economically sound as well.

Indeed, it is. That is why retribution is a valid goal of criminal punishment.

No i mean, making the justice system fair and universal is logical, not revenge. I dont give a fuck if anyone feels "better" or if the public feels "safer", all i care about is if everyone understands the consequences of their actions and those who cant are imprisoned so we need not worry about them "acting out", as it were.

Indeed, but enforcing the rules properly and creating sufficient deterrence also involves executing convicted felons of particularly egregious crimes.

The hell it does. In fact that just gives people less reason to surender peacefully as now they have only death to look forward to. If they even think they may get parole, they'll probably think twice. And the people that wouldnt are too fucked up to care so we're not aiming it at them, we're talking to the normal folks who do things not because they're fucked up but because circumstance and stupidity and greed made them do something...well, stupid and greedy.

Then let them kill him. No i'm serious, if they feel they need this blood-soaked catharsis then fine, let them do it and the state's hands are clean. But they wont. Because they dont want to kill anyone they just want to watch someone die, anyone, as long as it makes them feel they have closure.

Uh... okay. So you disavow anarchy and vengeance, but now you want victims to go around killing criminals who committed crimes against them in a form of vigilante justice. Are you always this inconsistent?

You're argument is that it makes the family feel better. If that is the main purpose then the state has no business in it, but you and i both know that is not the main purpose that's just emotional bullshit pro-DP folks pull out to try and bolster their argument because at heart they know it's just about revenge and nothing more. Ethically, economically, logically there is no reason...all you have is "law is retribution" and "it makes them feel better", an ethically unsound observation and an appeal to emotion, respectively.

Know how i know...cause i used to be pro-DP, and i used all these same arguments. Now that i realize how stupid they are, it's kind of passe.

Because there's something satisfying about having the STATE mete out punishments to people...

There's something satisfying about a blowjob, what's your point? The STATE!!! was not created to make people feel satisfied it was created to maintain order and prevent anarchy and internecine warfare, all of which it can do with trival ease with nary a lethal injection in all of Christendom.

...and moreover because the state system has all sorts of safeguards designed to protect the rights of the accused. If someone were legitimately able to infallibly and safely convict criminals, then I suppose there would be little reason for them not to be able to punish criminals at their own expense, but that is entirely unrealistic.

It's just as unrealistic to expect the government to as well, as countless false convictions will show.

The whole point of the justice system is that it enacts a tremendous number of safeguards to protect the rights of the accused. I don't think it's perfect, but it's vastly superior to the sort of vigilante justice you would enact in its stead. This has to do with the whole "law over anarchy" theme you harp on.

I was trying to show you how idiotic the idea of "it makes them feel better" is, because it's basically asking the state to preform vigilante justice for them. I was comparing your statement to the idea of vigilantism, not honestly suggesting it. And you know what i'm pretty sure i made that clear when i said "But they wont. Because they dont want to kill anyone they just want to watch someone die, anyone, as long as it makes them feel they have closure" and "Why not just grab someone off the street and convict them sans trial...tell no one, make them think you caught the perp, and you'll acheive the same effect of making people "feel better" for pennies on the dollar".

[Wanderer]

Frankly, I don't see it as nearly the problem that you do. Not only have we never executed the wrong person at LEAST since capital punishment was restored in the US, but forensic evidence has improved to such a degree that there is virtually no probability that someone would be wrongly convicted of a capital offense.

Say it ain't so.

Gasp

There are others like those two as well. To say we have never wrongfully executed a man is utter bullshit.

[Alyrium Denryle]

but rather due to failures of self-control in a willful fashion, or greed exceeding their social sense, inability to control rage, etc. In these cases the punishment of adults to establish ideal behaviour patterns is an acceptable and easily defined course of action. Note I favour total elimination of prisons.

I know this. But the main issue here is about things like serial killers and child rape. So I addressed those specifically.

As for your proposition, it will not do a damn thing. If prison does not deter things like robbery, assault etc, then public caning probably wont. And the field of behavioral psych agrees with me. One-time punishment does not work for dogs, kids, or adult people. You need consistent positive reinforcement for good behavior. Alternatively, you can address the root causes of most of these crimes.

The vast majority of crimes are the result of poor socio-economic conditions. Gang membership and subsequent violence is a natural outgrowth of poverty. If you reduce poverty, you reduce those crimes. If you train offenders in a skill or heaven forbid give them an actual education, you will drastically reduce recidivism. More expensive. But a hell of a lot more effective. Now, there are some crimes, like killing one's wife for the insurance money, that do not fall under this. In situations like that, your argument might carry some weight. But you are still over-simplifying the issue, which is your primary problem whenever you open your mouth about politics.

We'll treat people who have the factors to it before they commit it, if we can, and execute those who do commit the crime. I see nothing wrong with this--they are mentally ill, so it is a mercy to kill them since they cannot function in society, and social function is an absolute precondition of human normalcy.

So... we should execute all the mentally ill then? What separates those that commit the crime from those that dont? Why not identify them and execute them pre-emptively? Because that is where your argument leads, to jack boots and totenlager.

The confinement is still immoral.

Less immoral than hanging....

No it isn't. Better dead than suffering decades of confinement for no reason.

I am pretty sure inmates would disagree with you there, and considering that we are talking about executing them, we should probably see what they might prefer. In fact, I think you could probably ask death row inmates what they would prefer and get a universal answer of "I would prefer to live, thanks"


Hardly, unless your system (which you have not detailed at all) manages to both preserve social order AND successfully deal with these people without torturing them.

Hardly, unless your system (which you have not detailed at all) manages to both preserve social order AND successfully deal with these people without torturing them.

There are a few ways you can do this. You can remove them from society as a whole. That maintains the precious order. You then separate them based on several factors, crime, motive, likelyhood to re-offend etc etc. You then tailor a program to these criteria. You will probably need a pilot program and some trial and error to see what works. But through this, you can give those criminals that need it education, a trade, and instill civic values that make recidivism low. For individuals where this is less likely to be useful (white collar crime for example) there are techniques similar to what the military uses to rebuild someone's personality that you can use (probably with less physical pain, you can probably use these techniques on the vilent criminals as well... and no, I am not suggesting weapons training)

Proactive justice systems, lower recidivism, but get under-funded and cut by politicians desperate to appear tough on crime. Combined with proactive social measures you can reduce crime overall until you are left with a systemic crime rate that will probably never go away.

You give people hope for the future and the ability to make good on those hopes and they are less likely to re-offend. You spend less money, make people better citizens, and you dont need to beat people with reeds.

Why would putting them in nicer situations change any of that when they're still allowed to control a social interaction consisting entirely of humans?

Remove the motivation and force them into situations where they have to work together. One of the best ways to make people stop killing eachother is to give them a common goal. It is how you can get people from disparate backgrounds to work together in a military unit, that, combined with certain somewhat invasive brain-washing techniques. But considering these techniques are used on volunteers I doubt that it can be considered torture.

There are other ways one could do this. My proposal might even be sub-optimal. But yours has NO chance of actually being effective.

No, it was a correct response to your points that did not give a damn about to clarify.

Bullshit. You know me well enough to know i would never advocate something so terrible. I had assumed we knew eachother well enough that you would know that. It appears I was wrong.

[CaptainZoidberg]

How can you guys say that life in prison is more inhumane than the death penalty? How often do you see a defense team fighting for their client to get the death penalty instead of life in prison?

I find that the 8th amendment by itself is sufficient cause for us to ban the death penalty . Strapping someone down and forcing them to consciously die for no reason is cruel punishment. Allowing someone to live out the rest of their life in a setting where they are controlled enough to prevent harm to society is not cruel or unusual.

Also I think it would be interesting to do a comparison of the costs of executing a prisoner and the costs of life imprisonment, if you take into consideration the extra legal costs.

[18-Till-I-Die]

How can you guys say that life in prison is more inhumane than the death penalty? How often do you see a defense team fighting for their client to get the death penalty instead of life in prison?

Well, as you well know, suicide is painless so logically execution is too...

(that's just sarcasm towards they're argument...i agree with you completely)

I find that the 8th amendment by itself is sufficient cause for us to ban the death penalty . Strapping someone down and forcing them to consciously die for no reason is cruel punishment. Allowing someone to live out the rest of their life in a setting where they are controlled enough to prevent harm to society is not cruel or unusual.

Again i agree completely, which is why i frankly find the whole "death=bad, prison=worse!" argument so mind boggling. It's like some kind of Bizarro world justice system.

Also I think it would be interesting to do a comparison of the costs of executing a prisoner and the costs of life imprisonment, if you take into consideration the extra legal costs.

I think Alyrium mentioned some earlier in the thread, but i know several have been done before and most seem to make executions out to be more expensive for several reasons i'm not well versed enough in the liturature to enumerate.

[General Zod]

I find that the 8th amendment by itself is sufficient cause for us to ban the death penalty . Strapping someone down and forcing them to consciously die for no reason is cruel punishment. Allowing someone to live out the rest of their life in a setting where they are controlled enough to prevent harm to society is not cruel or unusual.

Why do you continue to be so incredibly stupid? Since when is "1st degree murder", "mass murder", and "serial slaying" no reason?

[Alyrium Denryle]

I find that the 8th amendment by itself is sufficient cause for us to ban the death penalty . Strapping someone down and forcing them to consciously die for no reason is cruel punishment. Allowing someone to live out the rest of their life in a setting where they are controlled enough to prevent harm to society is not cruel or unusual.

Why do you continue to be so incredibly stupid? Since when is "1st degree murder", "mass murder", and "serial slaying" no reason?

I think he means "no reason" as in "not necessary"

[Darth Wong]

Frankly, I don't see it as nearly the problem that you do. Not only have we never executed the wrong person at LEAST since capital punishment was restored in the US, but forensic evidence has improved to such a degree that there is virtually no probability that someone would be wrongly convicted of a capital offense.

Say it ain't so.

Gasp

There are others like those two as well. To say we have never wrongfully executed a man is utter bullshit.

I'm frankly stunned that he would have the audacity to say such a thing in the first place. At the very least, he should have qualified his statement to say "to the best of my knowledge" or something.

As for the idea that forensic techniques have made wrongful convictions impossible, that's hard to believe. Especially when eyewitness testimony is still considered devastating evidence.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Frankly, I don't see it as nearly the problem that you do. Not only have we never executed the wrong person at LEAST since capital punishment was restored in the US, but forensic evidence has improved to such a degree that there is virtually no probability that someone would be wrongly convicted of a capital offense.

Say it ain't so.

Gasp

There are others like those two as well. To say we have never wrongfully executed a man is utter bullshit.

I'm frankly stunned that he would have the audacity to say such a thing in the first place. At the very least, he should have qualified his statement to say "to the best of my knowledge" or something.

As for the idea that forensic techniques have made wrongful convictions impossible, that's hard to believe. Especially when eyewitness testimony is still considered devastating evidence.

Hell, look at Texas, where they have a fast-track to execution with reduced appeals in cases where there is sufficient eye-witness testemony

(I am NOT leaving campus during my masters and Ph.D work save to go to field sites...)

[Master of Ossus]

No it's a miracle, also most of these cases were rape cases, which dont carry the death penalty. See where i'm going?

No. The difference between death penalty cases and normal cases is substantial. You cannot claim that the false conviction rate on non-capital crimes is somehow proof that false convictions for capital crimes are a ginormous problem that's resulted in innocent deaths--it hasn't.

Hardly, indeed the sheer number of wrongful convictions, especially in cases of minorities both in the past and the present, for obvious reasons implies that these cases exist. This...

A total of 69 people have been released from death row since 1973 after evidence of their innocence emerged. Twenty-one condemned inmates have been released since 1993, including seven from the state of Illinois alone. Many of these cases were discovered not because of the normal appeals process, but rather as a result of new scientific techniques, investigations by journalists, and the dedicated work of expert attorneys, not available to the typical death row inmate.

For example makes me see littel strength in your argument, since it implies a larger number of people (pre-DNA, pre-new science techniques) were probably executed for nothing at all. But i'm sure the victim's families felt great and that's what really matters right...

Alright, 18, how come all of the anti-death penalty lobby can't find a SINGLE CASE in which someone was wrongly executed? It's not for lack of trying, but even in their test cases, where they decided that the evidence was weakest, they haven't found a single one. Why is this, if the system is such a disaster waiting to happen? Again, this is very compelling evidence that the system of appeals is effective.

Yeah, only the appeals process has less to do with most of these cases than progressing technology and sheer luck. And frankly i just find it illogical to presume that we've never executed an innocent man, that WOULD imply the system is perfect and thats a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

Then find one. Oh, wait, you can't. Even with the test cases they keep trying, they haven't found a single guy who was innocent. This is pathetic.

No you asked me if someone committing a lesser kind of murder is as diserving of punishment as someone who is a serial killer. As i am not arguing in favor of the death penalty, i was not suggesting it and i think you know that. I was however suggesting that, yes, murder is murder weather by spur of the moment or by a serial killer.

Yet your claim was that all murderers should be treated equivalently--this claim is instantly invalidated if you recognize moral gradations of the condemnation that is appropriate between murderers--something that is captured by my analogy.

In terms of simple imprisonment, morality doesnt enter into the equation. We have laws, the reason these laws are enforced is to maintain order not to sit on a high horse and talk about morality.

In other words, the law is not answerable at all to morality. Including in sentencing? Again, aren't you the one who's trying to portray your opponents as "inhumane?"

If i accidentally bash in your skull during a bar fight i just murdered you. I cannot be allowed to go free simply because i felt bad about it, because this may signal a pattern: kill someone for a really petty reason but by accident, and you get 25 years...kill someone cause you need to jizz off in the slit you put in their neck and you get a needle. There is no difference in the net result, only how the public feels about the killing and that feeling is irelevent.

No, it's not. The laws are designed to enforce the values of society, among their other roles. Sentencing for virtually all crimes is variable because the law recognizes gradations in the degree of punishment that should be assigned, even within a similar class of crime. None of this clues you in to the fact that social views are an important component of establishing criminal punishment? Or would you simply do away with judge and jury discretion with regards to sentencing altogether?

What you're describing is basically pick and choose justice where punishment...i'm sorry, "retribution" is "meted out" at random based on why someone died.

Nonsense. Serial killers are executed more often than people who have only killed once, and people who kill in particularly brutal fashions and are obviously unrepententent are also killed more often. That's not "random."

What i'm suggesting is we take the death penalty off the table and have different prison sentences for different crimes based on severity, with murder carrying the most severe: life in prison. Parole will be decided upon, with parole being available for your hypothetical murderous bar-fly, and not available for say Ted Bundy.

In other words, you want death penalty off the table but you ALSO want to maintain subjective views of various crimes... which pretty much means you have absolutely NO basis for rejecting death penalty, other than the fact that you don't like it. Face it: under your system, by your own standards, the sentencing would allegedly be random as it would vary even within the same class of crime. Yet this claim is so obviously false even you reject it as a conclusion.

And it barely works as it is, largely because of outside forces such as the Innocence Project who step in because the state could give less of a fuck.

Ah, yes. The same "Innocence Project" that keeps trying all of these test cases and finding out that, no, in fact the justice system got the right guy after all.

I did no such thing.

Punishment serves, in my mind, to prevent others from doing the same. People respond to pain, if they feel that doing something, say stealing a car, will cause them pain then they will not do it. This is how we maintain law and order, it has nothing to do--IMO--with revenge or retribution, but with making sure we dont end up in the Mad Max-ish, anarchist world some pricks would like us to. If these people dont respond properly that simply means they're mentally ill and need to be imprisoned where they cannot enter society again and do damage, not killed. Though they may serve the same purpose, imprisonment, if done properly, is more ethically sound and--as much as i hate to dumb it down to sheer cost--economically sound as well.

Yet, as I have already pointed out, capital punishment serves a deterrent function above and beyond life sentences. Moreover, in the scenario I posited there was no deterrent function that could be served, since no one would ever find themselves in similar circumstances, again.

No i mean, making the justice system fair and universal is logical, not revenge. I dont give a fuck if anyone feels "better" or if the public feels "safer", all i care about is if everyone understands the consequences of their actions and those who cant are imprisoned so we need not worry about them "acting out", as it were.

You don't think that the law should serve to keep people feeling safe? What values, precisely, do you think we should look to in formulating laws? You have already rejected society's moral judgment, and now you reject the public's social well-being as a valid motive for formulating laws. Again, how is it that your opponents are being "inhumane?"

Indeed, but enforcing the rules properly and creating sufficient deterrence also involves executing convicted felons of particularly egregious crimes.

The hell it does.

It absolutely does. Do you deny that the death penalty is on the books in various US states?

In fact that just gives people less reason to surender peacefully as now they have only death to look forward to. If they even think they may get parole, they'll probably think twice.

And you don't think that the legislatures are capable of weighing these various harms against the benefits they perceive from death penalty?

And the people that wouldnt are too fucked up to care so we're not aiming it at them, we're talking to the normal folks who do things not because they're fucked up but because circumstance and stupidity and greed made them do something...well, stupid and greedy.

Once again: capital punishment serves a demonstrated deterrent effect against people who commit capital crimes--the very population we are trying to deter. You have no answer for this argument, other than to trot out some vague moral condemnation (while simultaneously rejecting EVERYONE ELSE'S VALUES, often to self-contradictory ends).

You're argument is that it makes the family feel better. If that is the main purpose then the state has no business in it, but you and i both know that is not the main purpose that's just emotional bullshit pro-DP folks pull out to try and bolster their argument because at heart they know it's just about revenge and nothing more. Ethically, economically, logically there is no reason...all you have is "law is retribution" and "it makes them feel better", an ethically unsound observation and an appeal to emotion, respectively.

You've got to be kidding me. Apart from the fact that one of the central purposes of the law is to make people feel good about the society in which they live, making people feel better is a socially responsible goal. Or do you not view "letting other people feel good" as being ethical?

Know how i know...cause i used to be pro-DP, and i used all these same arguments. Now that i realize how stupid they are, it's kind of passe.

So... because you're a complete idiot I should subscribe to your idiocy? This is a stunning appeal to your own stupidity.

There's something satisfying about a blowjob, what's your point? The STATE!!! was not created to make people feel satisfied it was created to maintain order and prevent anarchy and internecine warfare, all of which it can do with trival ease with nary a lethal injection in all of Christendom.

Yes, indeed. You are, in fact, arguing that the state has no legitimate purpose in helping people feel good? The absurdity of your position shows through at every turn.

It's just as unrealistic to expect the government to as well, as countless false convictions will show.

False convictions=/=false executions. We are dealing with the death penalty, and capital cases have very different procedural rules and processes than even normal murder cases.

I was trying to show you how idiotic the idea of "it makes them feel better" is, because it's basically asking the state to preform vigilante justice for them. I was comparing your statement to the idea of vigilantism, not honestly suggesting it. And you know what i'm pretty sure i made that clear when i said "But they wont. Because they dont want to kill anyone they just want to watch someone die, anyone, as long as it makes them feel they have closure" and "Why not just grab someone off the street and convict them sans trial...tell no one, make them think you caught the perp, and you'll acheive the same effect of making people "feel better" for pennies on the dollar".

Yes, and the prison system is basically a form of vigilante justice, too? You cannot equate punishments meted out by the state with the same punishment meted out by a normal member of society.

But, moreover, many victims HAVE tried for vigilante justice, and we have a long history in this country of victims and their families ACTUALLY KILLING PEOPLE when the law does not get involved. All of this you totally ignore. You also ignore that these revenge killings still, occasionally, take place both in our country and in others. This is clear evidence that you are wrong in your view of people, as well as being blatantly, shockingly wrong about the role of the government in society and society itself.

[18-Till-I-Die]

I find that the 8th amendment by itself is sufficient cause for us to ban the death penalty . Strapping someone down and forcing them to consciously die for no reason is cruel punishment. Allowing someone to live out the rest of their life in a setting where they are controlled enough to prevent harm to society is not cruel or unusual.

Why do you continue to be so incredibly stupid? Since when is "1st degree murder", "mass murder", and "serial slaying" no reason?

I think he means "no reason" as in "not necessary"

He obviously does. Or at least thats how i read it, almost offhandedly.

[Master of Ossus]

Frankly, I don't see it as nearly the problem that you do. Not only have we never executed the wrong person at LEAST since capital punishment was restored in the US, but forensic evidence has improved to such a degree that there is virtually no probability that someone would be wrongly convicted of a capital offense.

Say it ain't so.

Gasp

There are others like those two as well. To say we have never wrongfully executed a man is utter bullshit.

I'm frankly stunned that he would have the audacity to say such a thing in the first place. At the very least, he should have qualified his statement to say "to the best of my knowledge" or something.

As for the idea that forensic techniques have made wrongful convictions impossible, that's hard to believe. Especially when eyewitness testimony is still considered devastating evidence.

Well, fair enough, I'll concede that state of facts. Nonetheless, in a case where there is no doubt that the guy is guilty, I see no ethical reason why we cannot have them executed by the state.

[Alyrium Denryle]

No. The difference between death penalty cases and normal cases is substantial. You cannot claim that the false conviction rate on non-capital crimes is somehow proof that false convictions for capital crimes are a ginormous problem that's resulted in innocent deaths--it hasn't.

But it has fucktard. Take a look above someone provided cases for you. Also, can you seriously sit there and tell me that no one has fallen through the cracks of our justice system and been wrongfully executed ever? Are you going to sit there with a straight face and tell me that every innocent person gets exonerated prior to execution, despite the massive amount of money it takes to do so, and the limited resources that are devoted to the task? Do the foundations of your Wall of Ignorance run that deep?