It seems to me that you are clinging to the notion that the death penalty deters murders. Are you suggesting that the murderer in the case referenced in the OP did not understand the concept of responsibility/consequences, that he did not understand just how the death penalty works? Or would you agree its more likely his actions, like those of every other person in history who ever committed murder, were not preceded by an evaluation of the criminal sanctions to which he might later be subject?
What purpose do you say is served by killing the murderer after the event? There is no evidence that other potential murderers will thereby come to a greater understanding of “the concepts of responsibility and consequences” (ie be deterred from committing murder) and its much cheaper to house someone in prison for the term of their natural life than to execute them.
Well, if you wouldn’t mind demonstrating how legalized and controlled drug addiction would have effects any worse than alcohol addiction, I’m all ears. I will say that if you also believe alcohol should be illegal, don’t bother.
Oddly enough, I, as with Bricker, do not believe that either the death penalty or abortion is morally correct, though I approach the issue from the opposite direction. I do not believe life is sacred; I believe we only get one life, and it is just as wrong for society to take that life as it is for a member of that society to take that life.
I’ve heard numbers in the $20-22K/year to house a Federal prisoner. This scumbag is 37. Assuming good health and avoiding murder by a fellow prisoner, he could possibly live another 35-40 years, we’re talking $700,000 - $880,000 (without adjusting for inflation) to house this sleaze. Are you telling me that strapping him to a gurney and sticking a needle in his arm costs more?
Sorry, I’m not going to dig up a cite right now, but think about the cost of lawyers, and the cost of the courts, and so on. In many (if not all) cases, the total cost from beginning to end is far more for a death penalty case than for a case where someone is sentenced to life.
I don’t see how it couldn’t be a deterent logically speaking. If we just gave every murderer a sentence of one week’s community service, I would bet anything that murder rates would skyrocket. I would almost surely kill some people myself then. That means that an increased penalty of say 20 years to life in prison for murderers deters many would-be murderers. The death penalty is a possible punishment on top of that for more heinous crimes. There have to be a few people out there that aren’t afraid of long prison terms but get a little uneasy and think twice when they realize they could be up for the death penalty. I am not saying how many people that is, but there has to be at least some and that means that it is a deterent.
After some proper terminology in Google, I found some cites. However, nearly all of them add into the equation doing extensive research to make sure they were executing the right perosn beyond the shaow of a doubt.
This guy admits the killings (how he did it, where he did it, and where he buried the bodies). Seems pretty cut and dry.
I think the main reason the DP has not deterred serious crime is that most DR prisoners spend 10 years or more while their cases are being investigated. Yeah, if there any doubts, I wouldn’t have a problem with life sentences, but in cases where guilt is 100% proven, put them out of misery poste haste.
Georgian and Victorian Britain had no great period of appeals. Even considering that the Crown did frequently commute death sentences (far more than we do in this country today), somehow they never seemed to run into a shortage of people to hang.
I try not to get into actual arguments about this - deterrence, prevention of future murders, revenge, whatever - because for me it’s a simple moral issue. It’s wrong, that’s all. But I have to say deterrence is pretty much the weakest argument y’all got.
I’m not attacking you; I hope I didn’t give you that impression. Ever since my father served on a jury that voted the death penalty, I’ve known I can’t attack other people’s view of what is moral. Though I must admit it was damn difficult for me. (I didn’t speak to him for a year.) I would, of course, prefer it if you agreed with me, and I hope that someday you will, but that won’t happen if I call you names.
Somehow, in the course of writing that paragraph, a side note struck me. I’ve noticed in reading some articles about wardens and executioners how many of them are against the death penalty, yet perform it as their duty to society. I couldn’t do that; I’d have to quit my job.
When a person says s/he is in favor of the death penalty (either selectively or otherwise), some people naturally assume that person is a bit weak in the morals department (baby stomper, puppy crusher, devil worshipper, etc.).
It’s all part of that “exception to the rule”, uh, rule.
Nobody elected me anything, sweetheart, I was expressing my OPINION.
Right, strawman. :rolleyes: Look, freely legalized crack is a goddamn bad idea, no matter how you cut it. Decriminalizing every drug will exascerbate the health crisis already in place. What drives drug related crime is the disease of addiction, my friend, and the first place to start is treatment, the second place to start is to make the damn things so dangerous to buy and possess that no one WANTS to.
Moral right? Sure, that may be true, but they don’t have the LEGAL right, like it or not.
Pssh. We’re not harsh, pal. Saudi Arabia is harsh. Our prisoners have CABLE, their prisoners have NO HEADS.
I agree with that, temperance is needed in much of the current sentencing guidelines. Still these are NOT victimless crimes, no matter how much you see it that way, they’re just not.
A person can choose to commit acts so heinous - among which I would certainly include the deliberate, premeditated murder of any other person - and by so choosing, forfeits his own life.
Each person “owns” his own life. And he can give it up. If he chooses to commit murder, as defined under the law, and there is no question that he is the perpetrator, then he has given up his life, and it only remains needful to make it true. The government in this case is merely the method through which the person ceases to exist. The government does not murder, because the person is no longer alive in any meaningful fashion: he has forfeited his life. All that lacks is for his heart to stop beating.
Alternatively, there are other choices, which include NOT committing premeditated murder.
It may seem to you that I am clinging to the idea of deterrence, but that must be because you missed the first two times I explained that I don’t think the DP deters many people at all. It’s about responsibility. People are responsible for controlling themselves so that they don’t harm other members of society. In extreme cases (mass murder, premeditated torture, willfully killing kids, etc…) society has the responsibility to remove the offending member from it’s ranks. This is no different than a bunch of white blood cells attacking a cancer cell and removing it from the body before it can do more harm. Hell, I support the death penalty, but if I was given my druthers, the system I’d put in place would probably ensure that it was never used, or at least only used in extreme cases.
This can be done through imprisonment for the term of one’s natural life, which is cheaper than execution. So if its cheaper not to execute and the DP is not a deterrent (as you acknowledge), why do you support it?
Because life imprisonment rarely means life imprisonment, and even when it does, the media culture we live in frequently allows the perpetrators of hideous crimes to enjoy something of a cult following. The diseased element should be removed. If we lived in a culture where marters were common, I might have a different outlook. We don’t. Some things are unforgivable. God is reputed to be able to forgive anything. We humans are not expected to.
There are very good arguments for the death penalty, especially in cases like these where the murder is so heinous. It is really hard to argue sympathy for the murderer in these cases. But if you are anti-death penalty, I don’t think you should argue for the murderer; the murderer is in fact secondary to anti-death penalty arguments.
Like most things, this can be argued by cost-benefit.
The benefits of the death penalty have been enumerated here: deterrence, justice, revenge, cost, whatever. Some of them are clear and make loads of sense.
The costs have been touched on here: killing an innocent especially with the sorry state of some of the state judicial systems, the huge bias in race and societal status in death penalty sentencing, the moral arguments against eye-for-eye justice (coming from people like Jesus, I may add…)
Given that the death penalty is really just mostly for show (what percentage of incarcerated murderers out there are actually executed? 10%? 1%?), given that it has not been demonstrated to actually reduce crime, given that there are huge costs associated to the appeals and reviews given to each case, and given that there are big questions in the justice system and racial and social status bias, I think that any objective review of the evidence comes squarely down in the camp of rarely-if-ever. That’s where I stand. I don’t think this is a bleeding heart argument or even a political one. The costs outweigh the benefits, so we should get rid of it.
You and Mr. Blue Sky were pitted for your mob-mentality first and second reactions to the murder tragedy, with both your first instincts being revenge and death, and making the tragedy bigger than it already is.
The Death Penalty was pitted because there is no evidence that it does any good, and plenty of evidence that it does a lot of bad. I’ll list them in a GD thread, where no doubt they’ve all been listed before, but not here.
Pro-Life was pitted for their blind and sometimes violent insistence that all life is sacred at any part of its conception and not realising the importance of a woman’s right to choose, and what consequences this might have - it is not that much of a stretch to see how not allowing abortion as an option earlier on in the history of this tragedy may have contributed to the tragedy at hand. A nuanced discussion of this is, again, something for a GD thread.