Actually, there’s good reason the believe that the intent of the “eye for eye” passage was intended to limit punishments-- “an eye for an eye and no more.” Asking for less was always an option, though. And financial compensation was an option. There is a rabbinical discussion about how to compensate a man with two good eyes who has on e damaged by a man with only one eye. Obviously, putting out the eye of the man with only one eye is not justice. And they agree that somehow monetary compensation must be decided.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg? Also, in Louisiana, it’s on the books that a person can be executed for child-rape even when the victim survives.
For me, one reason (not the only one) that I am against the death penalty is that it punishes the family of the criminal long after he is dead. It may not be fun to visit someone in prison, but killing the son, brother, perhaps father of other people who did nothing is terrible.
Does everybody in this hypothetical agree that the device works?
I oppose the DP in part because of the innocent man problem, but also because it’s incredibly expensive. If not everyone agreed about the device, then it’s likely that you’d still have people sitting around on death row for decades and endless appeals. Life imprisonment is actually less expensive.
If the device just electrocuted guilty people on the spot, I’d be a supporter. But if it only fixes the innocence problem, it’s still not good enough for me.
To the extent that I support the DP, it’s not not for deterrence or even some notion of justice. It’s just excising a malignant tumor from society. If we can’t do that both accurately and inexpensively compared to the alternatives, it’s not worth it.
Yes. I don’t oppose the DP because of the innocent man problem or anything like that, I oppose it for the same reason I’m against murder itself - if killing people is morally wrong, it doesn’t make it any better if the law says it’s OK.
I’m not so sure about that. Suppose that I’m the one that built the device, and that I know it to function based on rock-solid principles, but that I’m also a misunderstood genius and haven’t convinced everyone yet. I think that’s still within the bounds of the hypothetical. People have good reason to be skeptical of such a device and it may take some time to prove that it works absolutely.
ETA: I see that you figured out what I was trying to say! Yeah, basically I’m wondering if the hypothetical has progressed past the initial period where it hasn’t been fully tested (even though we already know it works outside of hypothetical-land).
I think the dependability of the process has to be assumed to be demonstrated to the satisfaction of all but the most skeptical. The OP says, “We can tell 100% if the person on trial is guilty.”
There might very well be standard high-school demonstrations of it: one kid in the class is set up to “steal” a book from the school library, and the Guilt-o-Tron 9000 picks out which kid. The ACLU would buy one, and put it to the most exhaustive tests imaginable. If there were any faults in it, they’d likely be discovered pretty darn early.
As long as the murderer can be contained in a manner that protects society from him/her we can not justify killing that person. The only reason to kill is self defense, and if the person can be rendered non-threatening there is not justification for that.
Now, if that person manages to escape I wouldn’t be upset if he/she was killed to protect others, but even there, it would be morally and ethically better to recapture that person if possible.
I would move from “oppose” to “neutral -but-lean-oppose” on the death penalty, were it only applied to 100% evil murderers. My main opposition presently is the practical one – the chance of killing an innocent person. If this chance went away, then I might lean towards “oppose” because I don’t believe executing a murderer is any more just than imprisoning a murderer for life. I don’t believe it provides any more deterrence than life imprisonment. But I’m not particularly bothered in a moral/ethical sense by executing evil murderers.
I am opposed to the death penalty regardless of the circumstances. It is barbaric and immoral, and quite frankly I do not trust some of the people involved in prosecuting death cases to get it right.
I am 100% against the death penalty. I do not trust prosecutors, police, judges, juries, or defense attorneys. Even if they get it absolutely right, the death penalty turns society, and by extension me, into a murderer.
I’ve been an opponent of the death penalty since the time I spent organizing for Amnesty International. There are just too many examples of the death penalty either being used on an innocent or being administered improperly for me to be comfortable with it.
As for the state being a killer? I can live with it. But I can’t live with an innocent person being put to death because we already know that mistakes happen. Even with a Beam Piper-esque veridicator (which is what you’re positing) there are things I could see that could go wrong.
But if there were some way we could be absolutely sure of guilt? I mean absolutely, Jesus-himself-confirming-it sort of sure? I’d be OK with it. I don’t even view it as retribution. I view it more as ‘society has decided you’re too dangerous to keep around. Sucks to be you.’ We do it to dangerous animals with little to no second thought. And they’re far more innocent than a human killer.
For those who oppose the DP on grounds of morality or avoidance of “coarsening” society, even with the magical scenario of knowing with 100% certainty the guilt of stone cold murderers, I’m interested to know if including the following additional magical hypothetical would make a difference: we knew absolutely that the DP has a 25% deterrence rate over all and any other type of punishment. (Remember, this is a magical hypothetical, you are not allowed to fight it…by penalty of being turned into a toad).
So, not only would 100% of the folks being put to death by the state be guilty of 1st degree murder, but their being put to death would absolutely result in a significant number of innocent people not being murdered in the future. And, presumably, most of the lives of potential murderers would be better as a result of being deterred from becoming real murderers (a vocation not typically considered positive to put on your resume).
I believe a case can be made that it would be immoral for society to reject the DP, given these two hypotheticals. What do you think?
I voted yes, because my main objection to the DP is not the possibility of executing innocent people but the damage that the DP does to a society. If we as a society agree on killing, in cold blood, a person we have already rendered harmless and defenceless, because we think he deserves it, we damage our own soul, and moreover that collective brutal mindset informs the mindset of people who’d also like to kill people they think have it coming.
There could be valid reasons for an individual to murder someone, but most of those have to do with the state failing to act, so the state has no similar excuse. I suppose if the state simply did not have the means to humanely keep a dangerous member of society separated from others, the death penalty could conceivably be the best of bad options.
This is close enough to where I’m at. I find the killing of a helpless captive distasteful. For the truly heinous & unrepentant, life in a cage without parole, and an open invitation for humane assisted suicide should they find the living arrangements unbearable.