Perhaps you didn’t actually read my post.
Yes, you may well have “discussed a fairly wide variety of considerations that are important to [you]” But all of them presuppose a desire to punish.
If you lost your desire to punish, then all of the other reasons would stop making sense to you.
Let’s try that. Name me one argument you have that doesn’t presuppose a desire to punish them.
Pardon me if this has been mentioned before, but… how do you know this? That strikes me as a rather difficult figure to substantiate.
If the best thing you can say about a system (or a person) is “well, they didn’t kill you,” you are talking major problems. “Well, yeah, I’ve broken your bones and bloodied your nose and starved you and beaten you and burned you. So what? It’s not like I killed you.” Gee, maybe my mother should have been nominated for Mother of the Year.
“Yeah, we kept you in prison for twenty years, made you lose your job, your wife, your children and the best years of your life. But at least we didn’t kill you.”
It is indeed difficult to substantiate. But it’s a reasonable estimate based upon various studies.
Just as an example, when the death penalty was suspended and several hundred death sentences were commuted. The vast majority of those did not kill again.b You can talk about McDuff, and say that executing all those several hundred people would have prevented that one person from killing again. It would also have executed four totally innocent people as well. If those executions had proceeded, you’d have saved about 1 life per 100 executions, approximately.
Things like that give you a reasonable estimate.
You can’t fix the system so as to be perfect, either with the DP or with LWOP only. Innocent people are going to be killed in either case. The most morally acceptable choice is the system under which the smallest number of innocents die - either one in a thousand wrongful executions, or a larger percentage of deaths committed by those not executed.
Essentially, yes. Because you cannot know if anyone is factually innocent if they have been convicted beyond a reasonable doubt, and the case has survived the years of appeals that those on death row get. But that’s the case for life without parole as well. If someone is sentenced to LWOP and dies in prison, and is later found to be innocent, that is also an irrevocable harm.
Regards,
Shodan
Peter, before you said there was no death penalty argument that was not driven by revenge, viz:
Now it appears you have changed your mind. You now say there is no death penalty argument that is not driven by the desire to punish the guilty party.
Please come back when you make up your mind, and I’ll be glad to respond to whichever position you finally decide on. However, from the variety of opinions expressed just on this one thread, it seems to me that neither claim is true.
The reality seems to be that people both oppose and support the death penalty for a variety of reasons. I gave the example before of my friend who is a learned judge. His reasons for opposing the death penalty were very personal. Others support (or oppose) the DP for religious reasons, or for ethical reasons, or for other personal reasons, or for social reasons.
You are trying to reduce this complexity to “You’re all just opposed to the DP (or in favor of the DP) because of X”
But whether “X” is deemed to be revenge, or justice, or an unwillingness to take life under any circumstances, or a desire for punishment, your statement is an unwarranted simplification of a very complex question. People on both sides of the question base their opinions on a host of inter-related considerations, in complex ways that are not reducible to your “all of my opponents just believe in revenge” type of oversimplifications.
w.
OK, I’m going to tell you that I DO NOT CARE if innocent parties are killed. Everybody dies some time.
I would gladly DIE myself if falsely accused. Strap me down and put that needle in. They push the plunger, I black out, and that’s it. I’d certainly rather die than be put in prison, even for just a year. Better than being sick in a hospital and dying. Better than most kinds of death on our highways.
The reason for this is simple. For capital punishment to have any deterrent effect, it must be carried out swiftly. If it can be appealed more or less indefinitely, then it becomes just another version of a ‘life’ sentence with private accommodations.
The only terror of a ‘Death Penalty’ is that there are no appeals. If some wretch is sentenced to die, then that sentence should be carried out on the same day. Let the jury on hand for the trial be the witnesses. Let the people who made the decision see it carried out.
If an innocent man dies, at least he doesn’t have to wait long for it to happen. He doesn’t have to spend years, even decades, possibly his whole life suffering in a prison.
I believe that capital punishment should be applied to ALL perpetrators of violent crime. Screw this ‘Three Strikes’ B.S. That’s two strikes too many. Two (but probably MANY) EXTRA victims of the same monster who never should have been freed to cause them to suffer by his hands.
We don’t keep baby-mauling-pit-bulls around for very long before putting them down. We shouldn’t keep the same kinds of humans around either. It is infinitely disrespectful to the victims and their families, and it is infinitely disrespectful to make decent people pay to keep them around.
If an innocent dies who was wrongly accused, I chalk it up to the person who committed the crime, and add the death to his tally for not coming forth.
I would be HAPPY if instead of having the hugest prison population per-capita in the world if we simply switched over to killing more of them off and got THAT statistic instead. It costs $40,000 a year each to keep them alive for the rest of their lives. It costs a much smaller one-time fee to put them down. Times over two million, that’s over $80,000,000,000 a year of our economy flushed down the toilet to keep such excremental humans alive.
While we’re at it, we should extend the death penalty to include gang members and illegal aliens who commit violent crimes. If you come here illegally to work or to flee justice in your own country, keep your damned nose clean and this won’t apply to you.
Yes, I’m an angry, ranting so-and-so, and at least you know I have no actual power to make such changes to our society. What I deeply believe in is that if someone does certain kinds of wrongs, there should be no second (or third, or in some cases hundredth) chance.
Just put the animal down. People hate to see animals kept alive in a cage until they die. Why treat humans worse?
There’s a DP case being tried in Idaho right now. Here’s the link.
Perhaps some opponent of the DP could take this on as a test case for their beliefs, and explain to me why this man should continue to live.
I hear people saying that the state demeans itself by stooping as low as the criminals when we execute a murderer. However, in this case, that’s clearly not possible …
So, remind me again … what are the reasons that I should spend my money to feed, clothe and shelter this miserable excuse for sentient protoplasm in idleness for the rest of his life?
w.
Agreed - there are plenty of problems to solve already. But killing innocent people adds to those problems. I’m saying “at least we didn’t kill you”, because it’s a step in the right direction from, “Oh yeah, and we killed you, too.”
Pot-ay-to, pot-ah-to.
“Revenge” and “desire for punishment” same thing. Just a different emotional impact. I intended to use “punishment” throughout, because it’s not so inflammatory, but slipped and said “revenge” once. That was a mistake. There is no contradiction there.
But I’ll say again. Every pro-DP argument presupposes that they should be killed for “revenge” or “punishment” or “justice” or whatever word you want to use for it. Take away that, they all fall flat.
Name me one argument for the DP that does not depend upon an existing desire to see them dead.
Go ahead. Please respond. Please cut out the silly word games and respond to the actual point.
Oh, you’re interested in saving money. Righto, then. Life imprisonment costs less than the death penalty. You will spend less money on him if he’s allowed to live.
Isn’t this only true because of the appeals process? Which has less to do with the death penalty in general than the US system, which uses appeals as a band-aid solution instead of fixing the problem of finding the wrong people guilty in the first place.
I’d suggest that the death penalty should only be used when the defendant is really guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt, even if that limited its use to those criminals who are caught by police at the scene of their crime, or who are stupid enough to rape or murder while in prison. That would reduce the need for appeals, wouldn’t it?
The appeals system exists because there will always be a chance that the wrong person will be convicted. Humans are fallible, which can foul up an otherwise rock solid case (and that’s not including malicious actions).
I don’t understand why so many people are trying to make this point. In the eyes of our justice system, there shouldn’t be degrees of guilt; you’re either found guilty of a crime, or not. Otherwise, we end up with a system like, “Yeah, I know he was found guilty… but is he really, really, really guilty?”
If a murderer is still there when the police arrive, and he’s still carrying bits of the murder victim when he’s arrested fleeing the scene, are you really saying that you think he might be innocent?
Isn’t that already a fact in the system? The question, as far as the justice system is concerned, isn’t whether he’s guilty, it’s how strong the evidence is that he’s guilty. Why would it be so terrible for the system to distinguish between cases where there’s a possibility that they got it wrong, and that it might be necessary to mitigate the sentence handed down, and cases where the evidence is so overwhelming that there isn’t?
I’m saying any number of things could make such a scene not as clear cut as you imply. For one, corrupt police officers do exist, and how do you know with 100% certainty that the police are being completely truthful?
I truly do not see the difference. If the evidence is not strong enough to prove him guilty, then he is not guilty. If the evidence is strong enough to prove him guilty, then he is guilty.
Because it undermines the whole point of “beyond a reasonable doubt”. If there’s a possibility that they got it wrong, then the person wasn’t truly found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Even in such circumstances that you describe, it is still possible that the killing was self defence, or accident.
see Patrick Croy for an example : http://www.patrickcrusade.org/wrongful.htm
There have been a few other similar cases.
If that’s the train of thought, then why does it matter that the criminal just murdered someone? I mean, they were just going to die sometime, anyway. :dubious:
Suit yourself. I would much rather be put in prison.
Personally, I think the appeals part of our system is the best thing going for it, right now.
You really don’t see any problem with this? That’s pretty scary.
Yes, I would much rather just die right now, than spend any amount of time talking with my family, and working to overturn my wrongful conviction. :rolleyes:
You do realize that just because you might like tacos, that doesn’t mean everybody likes tacos (or more appropriately, that everybody should like tacos), right?
That’s because baby-mauling-pit-bulls are pit bulls; not humans. When come back, bring back cite of a pit bull working as an accountant.
Quoting myself from just a little bit earlier in the thread:
About the only major theory of punishment that doesn’t comport with capital punishment is “rehabilitation”, but it doesn’t really apply in capital cases. In handing down a sentence of death, the jury is indicating its belief that there is no chance of any kind of meaningful rehabilitation of the defendant. If there’s no chance of rehabilitation, we don’t need to consider it in assessing punishment.
And each of those arguments depends upon an existing desire to see them dead. They ONLY make sense to someone who wants to punish the offender by death.
Proof:
Statistically speaking, you are more likely to be murdered by a paroled car thief than by a paroled or escaped murderer. This is a well-established fact. See the acrobat file here and look at table 10.
Arrested for homicide, most serious previous offence car theft = 2.4%
Arrested for homicide, most serious previous offence homicide = 1.2%
Which shows that car thieves are twice as dangerous as murderers.
So, should we execute car thieves to prevent them from murdering in the future? Let’s look at your arguments.
And the same thing applies to car thieves too. Merely incarcerating a car thief does not have the same specific deterrence as executing him would. If you execute a car thief you deter him specifically from committing murder in the future.
Again, car thieves are sometimes released, or escape, and then go on to commit murder. Putting them in prison for a couple of years does not prevent this. Executing them would be a much better protection for society.
America used to have the death penalty for horse thieves. The majority of society approved of this. I bet that if you had the death penalty for car theft, you would get a lot of support for it too. Ask anyone who ever had their car stolen.
So, do your pro-death arguments apply to car thieves? If not, why not?
I bet I know your answer already, but I’ll leave you to supply it.
No it doesn’t. As the document explicitly states: “Homicide includes murder, voluntary manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter, negligent manslaughter, nonnegligent
manslaughter, unspecified manslaughter, and unspecified homicide.”