Or it could just be an argument for doing a better job of guarding prisons. The article says one of the prisoners “was serving 15 years for attempted second-degree murder and other charges.” So he wasn’t doing life in prison and he wouldn’t have been eligible for the death penalty anyway.
Thank God nobody ever escapes from death row!
Isn’t it an “arguement” that anyone convicted of any kind of crime should be given a bullet in the back of the head. It sure would save needless complications.
Very interesting. Annie-Xmas, are you saying that people that attempt second degree murder should get the death penalty? How far would you extend this punishment?
Where was I when they redefined “argument”?
I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that when I was on the debate team we automatically won if we posted a link to a recreational outrage story without bothering to even discuss the context.
It should probably extend at least as far as people advocating state murder on entirely spurious grounds. 
Convicted? You bleeding-heart sissy! Anyone accused of any kind of crime should be given a bullet to the back of the head.
Doesn’t anyone perceive a fundamental moral difference between criminals killing people, and the state–as our agent–killing people?
Suppose that, with a death penalty, we execute a whole bunch of guilty and a couple of innocents. Or, without a death penalty, somebody who would otherwise have been executed escapes and kills a couple of innocents. Isn’t the first situation much worse?
Criminal murderers killing people is a terrible thing, but it’s going to happen from time to time no matter how we try to address it. Our practical failure, as a society, to perfectly control would-be murderers is not a fundamental moral failure. We try to do our best, and if a murder happens anyway, well, evil remains in the world, as expected. But if we murder the innocent, we have joined the, uh, Dark Side.
I perceive a fundamental moral difference between the two. I also perceive a fundamental moral difference between treason and rape. It doesn’t mean I’m down with one of them.
Maybe this is an argument against privately run, medium security prisons housing dangerous inmates.
So, um, what exactly is this other argument for the death penalty? And while we’re on the subject, what was the first argument? And why exactly did you put death penalty in quotes in the title? And why have you disappeared from the thread?
Yes. The state killing a person is far worse than a criminal doing the same. The criminal is a human, and humans are sometimes licentious. We accept that and punish them accordingly because we seek to maintain a society. The state is not human. It is more than a collection of humans - it is an ideal. We hold the state to a higher standard, and part of that higher standard is the ability to not commit the barbaric act of murder.
Turns out, it was an argument against opening Annie-Xmas’ GD threads.
Yes - state executions are nearly always of people guilty of murder. The people mentioned in the OP - not so much.
Depends on the relative numbers. If we execute, say, two innocents in the first scenario, and three innocents die in the second, then the first is unquestionably better than the second.
I don’t see how this works.
When the innocent are killed, that’s a terrible thing, no doubt about it. Why should we simply accept that innocents are going to be murdered by those who should have been executed but not accept that some innocent might be executed from time to time?
Certainly the folks these escapees allegedly killed are no less innocent than the theoretical innocent guy who was executed. If the one elicits a shrug, why not the other?
1.2% of murderers commit another homicide within three years of their release (cite). Add to that those who escape, as in the OP, those who kill while in prison, like Tookie Williams, the Birdman of Alcatraz, and those who are released and go on to kill, like Charles Kemp, Ed Wein, Henry Lee Lucas, and others.
Those mentioned above account for a dozen or more murders. Can you please list twelve people innocently executed in the US since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976?
Regards,
Shodan
Thought experiment - what if you or someone you care about was wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Would your opinion change then? Or would you be cheering on the execution?
The difference in the scenarios is that the state carrying out executions is in agent acting on our behalf. Therefore if an innocent person is executed by someone acting for us, then we are culpable in that killing. We are not culpable in the killing of someone by a murderer. Also, the death penalty certainly will not stop innocents from being killed, no matter how many people are put to death.
Most people are uncomfortable with the idea of the government killing an innocent person in our names. I know I am. Maybe your opinion would change if it was you wrongly staring down the gas chamber. I don’t know.
Exactly. The death penalty is about self indulgence; at best, it’s about killing people in order to indulge the desire for vengeance at the cost of killing the occasional innocent so you can get off on feeling “tough on crime”. It doesn’t solve any problems or make anything better; it’s entertainment.
For the same reason I don’t accept that I should murder any innocents. It’s wrong.
Moreover, escape from death row is vanishingly rare in the modern era, and even more rare is the death of an innocent at the hands of a death row escapee.
There are comparatively many more exonerations from death row than there are deaths attributable to death row escapees.