You’re going to have to rewrite that in English. Confused, self-contradictory gibberish doesn’t support any argument.
How do you suppose we determine that someone has been falsely accused without retrials?
Because they are not all criminals.
Go for it. You post it, I’ll read it. I do not see how “kill people we find guilty of crimes X and Y” makes any more sense than “imprison for life in case the person is not actually guilty of X and Y”. I figured by now you’d have come up with something.
Why? You want to make them “REALLY” dead. It isn’t as if you can revoke that punishment once it has been enacted. Life imprisonment you can at least attempt to have the wronged party seek redress though money, release, and so on.
Knowing that we are Wasting time and money requires the certainty we keep asking you for but which you obviously don’t have.
You do not know we are wasting money. You are willing to think the only thing that doesn’t make sense about our justice system is that it doesn’t want to impose a punishment it cannot at least try to undo in case it was wrong. I am willing to think that makes perfect sense.
Why are you sorry? 
Ok let me try again.
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If we punished convicted criminals swiftly it would possibly make those who are criminally minded think twice.
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If we instituted swift and severe punishment (IE death penalty being carried out immediately) and we were to find that we had put X amount to death that were actually innocent, would that not denote a flaw in the legal system? What I am saying (If I am not mistaken this is english) is that I do not think that the method of killing is flawed, but our method of coming to the conclusion of “Guilty”
I think that automatic appeals are a waste of time and money. I would rather see my tax dollars go towards fixing our legal system and making sure we “do it right the first time” as to avoid automatic appeals for the death penalty.
All this makes sense in my head, and I do not feel that I am confused or self contradictory. I just think that many of the processes within the legal system are redundant and a waste of time and money.
For instance: Serial Murderer is found in his home with 16 dead bodies buried under his house. He is arrested, says Yes I did it- then is tried- he says I am guilty and I want the death penalty (it has happened many times) Why do we bother with an appeal if indeed the death penalty is granted? Why not just find him guilty - (he admitted the crime, we have 16 bodies) sentence him to death (which he requested) and take him outside, one 9mm shot to the head and have a long lunch?
No, instead we would rather spend the money on months and years of appeals and incarceration to come to the same result. A dead criminal.
Now, does that make sense? Or have I confused you again everton?
I don’t think I saw anyone argue this. It was the punishment in question and the determination of the appropriateness of its application that were in question.
Yes. Why do you suppose there is some silly law somewhere that prevents us from “doing it right the first time” rather than a fundamental limitation of being able to determine guilt to such a degree of certainty that we may take an action that cannot be undone should the need arise?
Can you find two cases that match this criteria? Two shouldn’t be too much to ask for, should it?
See, that result is exactly where I don’t want things to come to.
I would just like to say that what I wrote earlier in this thread was strictly IMHO, I do not know enough about the prison system to suggest answers in a GD discussion. Thanks everton, corporal/capital punnishment was a silly misstake, not even a spell checker could fix that one.
Now this is in the Great Debates, shouldn’t the debate be well … Greater?
pwife, you said:
Are you saying that you’re OK with ‘a lot’ of innocent people being executed if they are convicted (falsely) of a capital crime? Are you also saying that executing innocent people is a good way to keep the public in check?
Even if the legal system was 100% efficient (I mean no innocent ever would be found guilty and no guilty person would ever be found not guilty), which is of course impossible, you’d still need an appeal court to make sure that the laws (I mean the laws which allow the verdict to be 100% sure) were actually respected during the trial.
We could still kill people though, right?! 
This is one of the unfortunate flaws with the death penalty. Regardless of how many appeals, new evidence what have you is thrown at various juries there remains the possibility an innocent person will be executed. There is ever the chance innocent people will be found guilty regardless of capital punishment legality or humanity.
Having said this, if there is any doubt whatsoever then the person should not have been convicted, correct?
For me it comes down to the fact that when found guilty, or plead guilty, why on Earth should they be kept on death row for decades before it finally happens? Is it not better on the financial front to punish quickly rather than spend X tens of thousands per year for 20 years then execute them? Is it also not cruel to prolong the inevitable?
Rather than let a punishment linger for years before taking action, what kind of deterrent is this to society at large? Is this not the reason for punishment - to prevent others (and repeats) from doing a similar action? What does this show to the criminally minded?
Amen.
Prisons are so overcrowded as it is. By keeping people on death row in there longer than necessary, it clogs the ciminal system unnecessarily. The deterrent of severe punishment would probably affect the number of crimes committed, thus lowering the number of people in prison…
Thus the punishment works as intended.
I don’t think the number of people that are serving life in prison is what is crowding our prisons. Is this really the case?
But then there’s still an opportunity to release and compensate them. We’re talking about far more than an “unfortunate flaw” here.
That’s a big “probably”. Do you have a cite to show whether it does?
And you still haven’t addressed the problem you raised yourself:
If we did away with all that troublesome waiting, appeal and cooling off, How would we refine the legal system?
Kill the (supposed) criminal straight away and it is easier to brush the whole thing under the carpet and not even question whether the system is working properly.
The way things currently stand, there is at least the opportunity to deal with grave injustices, part of this process is borne out of the ‘free person X’ campaigns.
What purpose, exactly, does the death penalty serve?
- Has it been proven to deter criminals? No. See:
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=12&did=167
2)Is it cost-effective? (meaning, does it cost less to carry out a death penalty conviction under existing legal guidelines than it costs for life imprisonment? No.See:
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=108&scid=7#financial%20facts
3)Does it help to rehabilitate the criminal? No. The reasons why should be obvious.
4)Is it punishment? Debatable. Some would say that life imprisonment is a worse punishment, others would say that the death penalty is. The virtue of punishment in the situation is in any respect debatable, as there is no attempt being made to rehabilitate the criminal.
5)Does it prevent the criminal from acting in a similar fashion again? Yes. Dead men don’t commit crimes. I’m not arguing that. However, considering the low number of escapes among prisoners (see: http://slate.msn.com/id/1007001/), it isn’t clear that the death penalty is necessary to prevent recidivism. If a prisoner is given a life sentence without possibility of parole, it is highly unlikely that he will escape, and even more unlikely that he will remain at large long enough to repeat his crimes.
There are no real reasons to maintain the death penalty in our society. It is not a proven deterrent to future criminals, it is more expensive than the alternative of life imprisonment without opportunity of parole, it has no rehabilitative purpose, and its punishment value (if punishment has value) is in question. Further, it is only slightly more likely to prevent a criminal from repeating his crimes than the alternative, life imprisonment with no opportunity for parole. Were that not enough, 107 people have been release from death row since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973. More have been executed despite significant doubts about their innocence. (see: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=412&scid=6). There is no logical reason for the death penalty.
Actually, grim, it was a go-ahead for capital punishment. Like most people who use this quote (on either side of the argument) you take “eye, for an eye” out of context and don’t give the whole quote.
From the King James Version: Exodus 21
23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life ,
24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
25 Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Since in the US anyway, capital punishment is not used in any but murder cases, and then (in California, I don’t know about other death penalty states) only with the presence of “special circumstances,” the death penalty is completely in keeping with the biblical dictum. The limitation in Exodus is only in matching the punishment to the crime.
That said, while I believe that persons who are guilty of murder (or forceable rape *or *torture or the sexual abuse of children or…) richly deserve to be deprived of their lives, I am nevertheless beginning to change my former stance for capital punishment. The recent use of DNA has caused people already on death row to be released and their convictions reversed, proving conclusively, at least to me, that it is way too easy to convict people of crimes they didn’t commit (except in Texas, of course…all Texas convicts are guilty. Right, George?).
In answer to the OP: If one is to be executed (assuming that the person is guilty), the punishment should hurt. Putting a vicious criminal to death as if he were a beloved pet with cancer isn’t enough. It’s called capital punishment, not “the death consequence.” If certainty were possible, I’d vote for the electric chair.
Geezer, I was just going to say that. Although I probably wouldn’t have said it as well. Whenever I read of a particularly heinous crime (those involving children, for example) I am so angry that I not only want the perpetrator to die, I want him to die slowly and painfully. OTOH, as you said, there have been people proven not guilty after already being incarcerated for years for something they didn’t do. In the case of an executed person, of course not only couldn’t we undo the conviction, we probably would not even find out about it.
Provided fellow prisoners don’t cause me any moral and physical harms, I would welcome life in prison, even without conviction for any crime; if there is provision for writing messages to internet forums and access of course to the World Wide Web.
Do you know of any prison anywhere in the world where they will receive me to serve fellow prisoners in the way of talking with detainees on whatever they want to talk about.
I might learn something from them I have always wanted to learn, and I might teach them a thing or two about life and the world.
I am really serious, I am offering myself for imprisonment anywhere I can live like a monk, as long as fellow prisoners don’t do me any moral and physical harm.
And I can write messages to internet boards and of course have complete access to the World Wide Web.
Susma Rio Sep
I forgot to mention that I wanted to start a thread on painless, quick, clean way to do suicide; but our good moderator Gaudere stopped it.
All you guys here who are suggesting ways and means to effect death penalty, please think up such ways and means as to satisfy the following criteria:
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Painless, because modern civilization is against cruel and inhumane punishments;
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Quick, to save time for both the convict and the state; time is money;
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Clean, to give dignity to the convict even in death and save on cleaning up afterwards;
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Simple, according to Occam’s razor: “Entia non sunt multiplicanda since necessitate”;
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Economical, to save on taxpayers’ money, so that more can be spent for the living than for the killing of the living, like Bush and his War Party are doing.
Susma Rio Sep
I was in county for a weekend once. Wasn’t all bad. Slept, played cards, watched TV, smelled all the drunks (yuck). Wouldn’t want to live there though.
Erislover, did you then have the practice of writing messages to Internet boards, and did you have access to books and of course the WWW?
No one bothered you with moral or physical injury?
What a life, and if you had stayed longer there was available visits from wife or girlfriends and privacy for intimate acts to boot.
What else can a guy ask for in life?
Not a care in the world?
Well, where are those well-kept clean and disciplined prison houses where they even have a resident philosopher, chaplain, and then art lessons, lessons in crafts, sports facilities, etc.
No wonder, the U.S. has the greatest number of prison inmates relative to its population, in absolute number even.
Let me in, someone, let me in.
And wholesome delicious cleanly served food, without overload of cholesterol and sugar.
They have got a nutrionist guarding diet all the time, don’t they?
And the company, you will never want for fellow human presence.
Let me in, let me in!
I would rather be a jail bird than lost in the wilderness of the freedom outrside.
Susma Rio Sep
Susma Rio Sep: If you really think prison is like Club Med, what’s stopping you getting yourself locked up?