In this visualization you’re having of me, am I naked? I really hope not.
Get lives, no offence; I just want to get to know you better: Have you ever been on a reality television show? Do you live in Georgia? Do you have a child whose name rhymes with “money woo woo”?
Alright, that’s all the comedy relief y’all get for tonight. I’m going to bed…after I apply my Preparation H.
You are not especially well-thought-through on this topic. However, had I realized this is probably as good as you’re likely to get at it, I’d have not bothered responding to your original post. And I don’t mean any of that as an insult.
You persist at looking at this the wrong way around. The question isn’t whether you should execute someone you know/believe to be innocent (the answer is no). The question is how high you should set the bar for belief in someone’s guilt. If it’s, say, 15 times as bad to execute an innocent person as it is to leave a guilty criminal alive, and if there’s a 5% chance that someone is innocent, then the potential benefit of execution (1 x 0.95 = 0.95) is greater than (15 x 0.05 = 0.75) so the cost-benefit analysis should favour executing them. That being said, if you think the death penalty is forbidden on moral grounds, then you shouldn’t execute them whatever the relative costs and benefits might be, and vice versa.
I think one of the main purposes of a legal system is punishment, i.e. to expiate the criminal’s guilt through some kind of imposed suffering. Preventing future harms to society is another purpose, but it’s not the only one. So I might still favour executing some criminals (specifically, criminals against the state) even if there was no further harm that they could do in prison, purely on the ground that it was just and they deserved it. Having said that, you’re also wrong: political criminals, more than many others, can in fact continue to do damage even when in prison. They can write books, they can promulgate ideas, they can serve as rallying points for their supporters and if the government in power changes they might be set free. For example, much of modern Islamic jihadism was invented by an Egyptian intellectual in the 1950s and 1960s, who wrote down his core ideas while he was in prison. He was eventually hanged, but not soon enough to prevent him writing down the ideas that eventually inspired Osama bin Laden, ISIS, and their legions of allies.
The Death Penalty: Justice and Saving More Innocents
Dudley Sharp, 8/2014
The death penalty has a foundation in justice and it spares more innocent lives.
The majority populations of all countries, likely, support the death penalty for some crimes (1).
Why? Justice.
Anti death penalty arguments are either false or the pro death penalty arguments are stronger.
No “Botched” Execution - Arizona (or Ohio)
Anti Victim: Anti Death Penalty Movement
The Death Penalty: Do Innocents Matter? A Review of All Innocence Issues
The Death Penalty: Fair and Just
New Testament Death Penalty Support Overwhelming
THE DEATH PENALTY: SAVING MORE INNOCENT LIVES
The Innocent Frauds: Standard Anti Death Penalty Strategy
and
THE DEATH PENALTY: SAVING MORE INNOCENT LIVES
OF COURSE THE DEATH PENALTY DETERS: A review of the debate
and
MURDERERS MUCH PREFER LIFE OVER EXECUTION
99.7% of murderers tell us “Give me life, not execution”
Saving Costs with The Death Penalty
MORAL FOUNDATIONS
Immanuel Kant: “If an offender has committed murder, he must die. In this case, no possible substitute can satisfy justice. For there is no parallel between death and even the most miserable life, so that there is no equality of crime and retribution unless the perpetrator is judicially put to death.”. “A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else’s life is simply immoral.”
Pope Pius XII; “When it is a question of the execution of a man condemned to death it is then reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned of the benefit of life, in expiation of his fault, when already, by his fault, he has dispossessed himself of the right to live.” 9/14/52
John Murray: “Nothing shows the moral bankruptcy of a people or of a generation more than disregard for the sanctity of human life.” “… it is this same atrophy of moral fiber that appears in the plea for the abolition of the death penalty.” “It is the sanctity of life that validates the death penalty for the crime of murder. It is the sense of this sanctity that constrains the demand for the infliction of this penalty. The deeper our regard for life the firmer will be our hold upon the penal sanction which the violation of that sanctity merit.” (Page 122 of Principles of Conduct).
Plato: “Longer life is no boon to the sinner himself in such a case, and that his decease will bring a double blessing to his neighbors; it will be a lesson to them to keep themselves from wrong, and will rid society of an evil man. These are the reasons for which a legislator is bound to ordain the chastisement of death for such desperate villainies, and for them alone”
William A. Petit, Jr.: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions,” according to philosopher John Rawls. It transcends national borders, races and cultures. The death penalty is the appropriate societal response to the brutal and willful act of capital felony murder. Every murder destroys a portion of society. Those murdered can never grow and contribute to humankind; the realization of their potential will never be achieved. I support the death penalty not as a deterrent or for revenge or closure, but because it is just and because it prevents murderers from ever harming again. By intentionally, unlawfully taking the life of another, a murderer breaks a sacrosanct law of society and forfeits his own right to live. (In a home invasion, Dr. Petit was, severely injured, his wife Jennifer and their 11 year old daughter Michaela were raped and murdered. Both daughters, Michaela and Hayley were burned, alive.)
John Locke: “A criminal who, having renounced reason… hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or tyger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security.” And upon this is grounded the great law of Nature, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” Second Treatise of Civil Government.
Saint (& Pope) Pius V: “The just use of (executions), far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this (Fifth) Commandment which prohibits murder.” “The Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent” (1566).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “In killing the criminal, we destroy not so much a citizen as an enemy. The trial and judgments are proofs that he has broken the Social Contract, and so is no longer a member of the State.” (The Social Contract)
3300 additional pro death penalty quotes http://prodpquotes.info/
Read
a) Guilty: The Collapse of Criminal Justice, by Judge Harold J. Rothwax, 1996
Maybe I’m not up on the present state of the US penal system, but does anyone ever get rehabilitated in a prison there? I’ve always thought it was just punishment and retribution, and the whole rehabilitation schtick was simply lip service.