If you are OK with the death penalty, should the scope be expanded?

Great Debates
1

First let me state that I am against the death penalty on administrative grounds, that is, administering it and having the whole system in place and what not, is a huge pain in the ass, and not really worth the cost or trouble.

That being said, I have no moral problem getting rid of criminals. In fact, if we lived in a magical world with a costless death penalty available, I would like to see its scope expanded.

In the wake of the case in St. Louis of the crazy guy who kidnapped those two boys, a Missouri lawmaker is proposing to make “aggravated child kidnapping” eligible for the death penalty. According to CNN, the aggravated part needs to include rape. OK fine, but what’s with the “aggravated” condition? In my book, anybody who kidnaps a child (who is not their own) doesn’t really need to be hanging around whether there is a rape or not. Kidnapping a child (who is not your own) is often worse than murder in my book. I mean, some people who have been murdered probably needed killing, where as no child is really in need of a kidnapping.

I would include these crimes on my list of those eligible for the death penalty:

  1. Murder 1, obviously, or attempted murder 1.
  2. Sex of any kind with a child 12 or under by an adult.
  3. Kidnapping anyone who is not your own kid. I mean real kidnapping, with violence and threats and what not.
  4. Violent rape. (dark alley not the he said she said kind)
  5. Armed robbery or attempted armed robbery in almost every case.

Of course, if you are morally against the death penalty, you certainly wouldn’t want to see it expanded. For those who are not morally in opposition, would you approve of a broader scope for the death penalty? If not, why?

2

An argument against this is that if someone commited, say, violent rape, then the criminal would be more likely to kill the victem, since it means the rapist would be more likely to get away, and there’s not a greater punishment for the murder than there would be for the rape.

As someone who doesn’t particularly believe the deterrent factor of the death penalty, I’m not sure I buy the argument, but someone for the death penatly likely does believe it has a deterring effect.

3

The more people who can get the death penalty, the more innocent people who will be killed. If we lived in a magical world where no one innocent was ever found guilty, I wouldn’t have a problem with the death penalty, or with it being expanded. But that’s not and never will be the case. Better to let guilty people live than kill innocent ones.

4

I agree with Strinka and T in that if there were a magical world in which we knew for sure innocence or guilt and the DP didn’t have consequences other than the death of a criminal, I’d be all for expanding it: as a matter of fact if anyone knows anything about me on this message board it should be that fact.

I’d disagree with #2, though: it shouldn’t be legal but it isn’t a bad enough crime to warrant the DP. I’d add, however, racketeering and white collar crime (ETA: above a certain monetary level, say, $50,000. Violent robbery and racketeering is a different story since there is a possibility of violence.)

5

While I, personally, am opposed to the Death Penalty in all instances, I am nevertheless intrigued by Simon Templar’s advocacy of the death penalty as a Cure for blackmailers, which he meted out himself, extra judicially. He pointed out on one occasion that there are only three responses to a blackmailer, and only a fool pays. I can sort of see his point. If I supported the DP at all (which I don’t) I might agree with him.

6

I disagree with regarding armed robbery as a capital crime- do agree with theoretically with the rest. But I also believe in tightening up the standards of
evidence used in DP cases. No more instances someone getting the DP solely because his partner in crime turned on him to the DA.

7

I am with this opinion. I took a class called “Death Penalty and its Issues” in college. From that I decided the whole administrative process and how it is applied (unevenly in many cases) is just too screwed up to have it as a reasonable punishment.

That said I do not object to it on moral grounds. I do not know about expanding its scope but certainly there are some folks who I feel have abdicated all rights to be a part of the human race and removing them is appropriate.

8

I am against the death penalty on moral grounds, but I still have to say that I can’t understand how expanding it to cover crimes other than murder makes any sense at all.

It’s not even certain whether the death penalty actually deters crime, but you would support executing someone who hasn’t killed anyone?

9

I’m against the death penalty, but I won’t go into this because of the title of the thread.
All I’ll say is that I think it’s important to separate how angry certain crimes make us feel with what’s the best way for society to respond.
But in response to the OP, a lot of the crimes you’ve listed might not be too practical to punish this severely.
e.g. Many rape cases are difficult to prove either way and the jury has to decide whether either no crime has been committed or a very serious one has been by this person. I don’t like the idea of putting an automatic death penalty on this knife-edge.
And as for the distinction between a violent rape and he says she says, there is obviously a considerable grey area between these two kinds of rape, I won’t even bother to list any examples because it’s self-evident.

10

Could we not change it’s coverage? Why kill murderers, when we could execute Spammers (cost hundreds of thousands of man-hours) and corrupt CEO’s who loot company pension funds (steal their future, lose yours)?

11

I definitely believe in the death penalty for any crime that shows depraved indifference to other people’s lives. This includes serial killers, mass murderers, spree killers, and I think serial rapists and child molesters. If you cannot guarantee that someone will not continue commiting horrible crimes if they are paroled or escape from prison, why bother keeping them alive. People who know killing and/or rape is illegal but don’t think it is wrong when they do it are the lowest form of life and I don’t think they deserve to be alive.

12

The thing is, I don’t believe that the death penalty is really a deterrent. So I only really advocate it in the case of people that have conclusively shown to be severely detrimental to society; that we don’t need to have amongst us. So in my book it’s got to be repeated, violent crimes, with indication that reform is not feasible. And of course there’s got to be proof that the person did it. I don’t much like circumstantial evidence.

So I don’t want it expanded. But I also think the idea that everyone can be rehabilitated is naive at best.

13

I’m anti-death penalty, but I’ll play. I will not consider the effects of deterrence to others for this exercise, mainly because I know of no particular evidence for the deterrent effects of death penalties.

I can at least understand, even if don’t happen to agree with, the principle of an “eye for and eye”, but the second part seems to imply “a life for an eye”.

IMO, the only way this makes a lick of sense is if one assumes that a) minors who have had sex with an adult , in every case, haved suffered a fate equal to or worse than death, or b) all adults who have sex with minors will always do it again if they have the chance. If a), then we might as well kill all the victims as well, since by definition their lives have been irredeemably destroyed.

I’ll be happy to hear logical arguments in favor of either of these notions, but I won’t respond to arguments from emotion.

I’m not sure, but I presume this is based in part on the notion of retribution for emotional torment inflicted on victim and parents. If this is the case, you need to add an item 6 to the list. See below.

Er, what if she said it was violent, and she said it was not, and there are no obvious injuries?

Once again, the only way this seems to make sense is if one assumes the robber will inevitably rob again, and eventually kill, if given the chance. Otherwise have the persons robbed really been impacted so severely that killing the robber is the only way to make their losses whole again?

Lastly:

Logically, if one buys the reasoning implied in meting out the death penalty for crimes not resulting in death, there is a glaring absense of an item 6:

  1. persons who have tortured innocent persons, as generally defined by existing norms, whether carried out by a state apparatus or not.

Actually, I think the OP goes way overboard, and none of the crimes above necessarily deserves a death sentence. I likewise don’t think that items 2-5 even automatically deserve life sentences, at least not for first offenders. Lastly, if the real justifcation for these draconian measures is simply to reduce the costs of warehousing prisoners, I say this is the price we pay, and I’ll willingly pay my share.

14

I don’t object to the death penalty on moral grounds. I believe that there are certain people who are so irredeemably antisocial, so, well, evil, that they should be permanently removed from society. I do though object on a practical basis.

As always, the devil is in the details. Do we in truth know, beyond any doubt, that this is such a person? Regrettably, we frequently do not.

Someone upthread mentioned The Innocence Project, but no one has picked up on the thought. To date TIP has exonerated 208 convicted people, 15 of whom had been sentenced to death. This is a shameless total failure rate of our criminal justice system. Oh yes, there are a total of umpteen zillion trials (I’m not even going to search for actual numbers) and 208/15 out of that many may be a tiny percentage. Regardless, I cannot reconcile myself to the idea that even a single individual wrongly put to death is an acceptable tradeoff for our society.

And of course the numbers exonerated by TIP are clearly the tip of an iceberg. TIP is small, and can only examine a small number of potential cases. Exonerations are only possible in cases where DNA is useful in determining guilt, and available for analysis. This greatly reduces the total number of trials in which it can be applied. Further, even DNA evidence must fight an uphill battle against the institutionalized and codified hurdles to overturning a conviction. In each of the 208 cases, DNA evidence has been required to uphold my above standard-- the exoneration must prove beyond any doubt that this person is innocent. This is a far different standard than the “reasonable doubt” required to convict them in the first place. We must necessarily conclude that there are numbers of other innocents in the system, individuals convicted of capital crimes where DNA was not evidentiary, or where it is not available. And it thus seems difficult to argue that we have not already executed innocent people, and that we are not preparing to execute others.

To me, that price is unacceptable.

15

After editing window expired: I recognize that the OP said that the listed crimes should be eligible for the death penalty, not that it be automatically applied.

16

I am an strong supporter of the death penalty. However, to avoid hijacking the thread, I will simply state that I support it based on a few concepts so that my responses make sense: 1) Law exists to establish and protect rights, and punishments for violating those rights should be equitable compared to the violation (ie, “eye for an eye”) 2) The right to life is guaranteed to all individuals 3) The right to life is the most important personal right.

In essence, I think there are cases where the death penalty isn’t so much an option as it is a moral obligation. Thus, I don’t really “get” the whole objection based on administrative grounds.

Anyway, even though I’m actually a supporter, I disagree with most of your list:

I do agree that murder 1 should receive the death penalty. In fact, I believe it is the only equitable punishment. Attempted murder, however, does not make sense, because, while the intent was there, the actual violation of the right was not. Plus, you get into the hazy area of “Did he intend to kill him or just beat him senseless?”. OTOH, I do think this could be expanded, because I don’t think the differentiation between capital murder, murder 1, and murder 2 make any sense from a sentencing perspective. That is, in each case, the right was violated identically, why should the identity of the victim or how much forethought they put into it have any bearing on the penalty? I’m unsure if this should include things that are similar to murder, such as conspiracy to commit murder, manslaughter, etc. But that may be up for debate.

I do not agree with the rest of your list. While in many of those cases I think those people are repulsive individuals and I wouldn’t mind if they died, I do not think death is an equitable trade for the crimes committed.

HOWEVER, one part of the equation that I think IS difficult to work out is when trying to balance the rights of the many against the rights of the few. For instance, pedophilia (as disgusting as it is) on a single child, does not carry the same weight of one’s individual right to life. But, if an individual has done this to multiple children, it will reach a point where the sum of the somewhat lesser rights violated is greater than the value of an individual’s right to life. Thus, I would add several other things to your list:

  1. Many acts against a state, which could easily have an effect on notably lesser rights (or even important rights) of a large number of people. This could include things like treason, terrorism, espionage, etc.

  2. This could potentially include certain illegal ecominic actions. That is, I imagine that destroying the retirement, savings, and/or education funds of thousands of familes could easily sum to more than an individual’s right to life.

  3. This would definitely include many serial acts like rape, assault, etc. Obviously, the threshold is very difficult to set, so it would have to depend on the severity of the crime as judged by the jury.

17

I support the death penalty, but I would restrict its use to large-scale or repeat violent offenders. To me, the point of the death penalty is not deterrence to other would-be criminals, but to remove a highly dangerous person from the environment. So it’s not something I’d mete out to someone just because their offenses upset me. I couldn’t support the death penalty for a child molester, for example, because I don’t believe the danger a child molester poses justifies a death sentence. Life in prison, certainly, but not death.

Of the OP’s list, I would have the biggest problem with #2. I already have problems with age of consent laws; I could not agree with a blanket sex-of-any-kind eligibility.

18

People don’t have problems with adults having sex with children under the age of 12? :eek:

Any adult who attempts to solicit a child under the age of 12 should be jailed. Any adult having any sexual contact with a child under the age of 12 should be jailed once, then executed for a second offense.Whenever I heard about a child molester on parole getting arrested again, my heart just breaks.

19

I completely agree. Let’s say a person is convicted of one incident in a trial. Note I did not say one charge since shooting someone in the street could get you found guilty of murder 1, conspiracy to commit murder, illegal discharge of a firearm, and littering. There is always the argument of maybe the person is innocent.

Now three death penalty eligible convictions in three separate trials? I can give you one or even two “he wuz framed” and he still would deserve the final cut.

20

Thanks for the responses; some good points have certainly been brought up. I agree that the chance of an innocent person being found guilty and executed is very troubling, but I don’t think an innocent person being sent to prison for life (without much chance of being cleared) is one degree better.

I guess my point is, if society has decided that it is good policy to execute “evil” people, then why stop at half measures. I mean, a kidnapper doesn’t need to actually rape a kid to prove he’s no good. If the cops catch the guy before he goes through with what ever he planned to do, it doesn’t make the offender any better in my book.

For example, three guys walk into a bank with shotguns. The robbery goes well, and nobody is shot. But, we are a hair’s breadth away with having a blood bath on our hands if something goes wrong. The difference between a cooperative bank teller and a defiant teller shouldn’t determine the “value” to society of the perps.