Actually, 60 years of three hots and a cot is not as expensive as 20 years of lawyers.
Easy to fix. Life imprisonment is life. No appeals from it.
If there were alternatives that were 100% reliable, then I would not support executions. But since even high security prisons are fallible (look up the escape of the Briley brothers in Virginia) and since pardons by unethical executives occur (look up D J tRump jan 6 pardons) I would support execution in limited and very extreme cases.
Then you have innocent people trapped for life without appeals.
No.
Capital punishment existed before, during, and after the Constitution was written. It’s even mentioned in the 5th Amendment as is the exception and the process to deny life, liberty or property.
I’m the first to agree there are valid arguments against capital punishment, but being unconstitional is not one of them.
You consider the death penalty to be 100% reliable?
There’s a 0% recidivism rate amongst those who undergo it.
I used to believe this as well, but it turns out German authorities didn’t execute or seriously punish soldiers who refused to participate in war crimes or the Holocaust. Most soldiers who refused to participate faced minor disciplinary actions or were transferred elsewhere. The idea that soldiers had to follow orders lest they face execution themselves is a post-war myth likely driven from the defense many war criminals used.
From what I understand, reluctant soldiers were offered the chance to transfer to the Russian front, or mine clearing. Not a death sentence, but very dangerous.
Most Germans who directly participated in the Holocaust did so either because of ideology or peer pressure rather than fear of significant punishment for refusing. Being sent to the eastern front was standard for the Wehrmacht and not a punitive action (despite Colonel Klink being threatened with it so frequently).
I had the impression that he saw nothing wrong with what he was doing—-he was given an assignment and carried it out. Just like his executioner.
The difference is whether the German officer, or his executioner, violated existing laws when the conduct was done, even if both were just following orders. The executioner’s actions were legal under the law. The German officers actions were illegal under international law. Whether Hitler and his regime authorized or condoned that illegal activity doesn’t override its illegality under international law.****(see below)
The interesting part is the AG situation. Or say if the executioner knew that particular German officer was actually 100% innocent. What then? I’d say you don’t follow through. The whole point is to carry out justice and you’re personally no longer able to.
***So the German officers said you just made up this law and are applying it retroactively, it wasn’t illegal when we did it. The Hague prosecutors said no we didn’t.
The OP seems as much a question about what lawfulness actually is as a question about execution.
My thinking is that the law is not whatever society wants, but whatever society will put up with.
We tolerate taxation because most people, despite their grumbling, see the benefit and necessity of it. We tolerate (to some degree, at least) civil forfeiture because it happens to other people, and they’re probably up to no good, anyway. We tolerate executions because, in our collective thinking, the condemned are very bad people who definitely did the things they were convicted of.
But we’ve also noped out of abiding what was legal. Look at the Fugitive Slave Act (1850). “We’re not doing that,” Northerners said, and not only did they not comply, they actively resisted the slave-catchers. Sanctuary cities might be a more modern example.
So is execution justified? Depends on who’s doing the justifying. Certainly, any given comments section holds that execution, even summary execution by police, is the only proper response to a wide swath of activities. But most people, I hope and believe, are interested in actual justice being done, even if justice itself is a bit murky. So they tolerate the death penalty since an eye for an eye is something like justice.
Personally, I am against the death penalty for the general population. I’m a lot more ambivalent about it for government agents convicted of abuse of authority that results in death.
I can imagine circumstances where it would be justified to kill someone in cold blood but I struggle to think of one at the hands of the state in normal conditions. I don’t support the death penalty because desert based punishment doesn’t make sense, the state shouldn’t have that kind of power and it doesn’t do anything other than satisfy a primitive bloodlust.
This is a distinction that the Declaration of Independence doesn’t cover. It’s a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, full stop. And given that half the signers of both the DI and Constitution were sitting on plantations full of slaves who were never going to have that, this was purely a rhetorical convenience to sell national independence, not intended to be a binding or absolute basis of law.
The Declaration of Independence isn’t any source of governmental authority at all. It’s just… a declaration of independence, like the title says.
So what. The US Air Force, FBI, and Federal Reserve bank aren’t given any authority in the constitution, yet somehow they seem to have it.
Sure.
Well, “police sniper killing a criminal holding a hostage” comes to mind.
Thing is, executions are a special case because they only happen when the government already has somebody fully in their power. It’s not a situation where they have no options but to use lethal force; it’s situation where lethal force is entirely optional for them.
I meant in cold blood as not in immediate self defense or defense of others. Killing an incarcerated criminal or a criminal that’s laying on the ground in handcuffs would be in cold blood.
I don’t get how people arrive at the position that they can tolerate killing someone in “hot blood”, in the heat of the moment, extrajudicially. Whatever criminal penalty someone is sentenced to, whether it’s death or a month in lockup, should be the result of a deliberative process where the accused can access defense counsel and an appeals process.
When someone is justly incarcerated after exhausting years of appeals, we don’t bemoan the “cold-blooded” sentence. It’s the justice system working as intended, meaning that people inevitably get convicted and sentenced. Nobody needs to be thrilled that this is necessary, but there’s a reason we leave this task to the state rather than letting every armed individual run around administering their own version of justice.
If the state is to execute people, then it should always be in the coldest of blood. If you want to contend that the state should never kill anyone, that’s arguable, there are all sorts of moral arguments of varying degrees of persuasiveness, but blood temperature really should not be a consideration.