Is the Death Penalty Indefensible?

Great Debates
41

The death penalty is absolutely indefensible. Here’s why:

First of all, like many questions it contains the seeds of its answer. Let’s examine the term “death penalty.” The term itself is a contradiction. “Penalty” generally connotes a corrective action: the puppy pees on my floor, the penalty is the newspaper across the butt to reinforce my instruction this this behavior is unacceptable. And the puppy learns.

If I disciplined the puppy with an axe across the neck instead of the newspaper across the butt, the puppy dies but does not learn. So “penalty” doesn’t really apply.

Okay, so let’s go on to examine the supposed justifications of the state killing a person. The often-cited reason is that it will serve as a deterrent to crimes similar to those for which the person was executed.

This doesn’t work either. There are three reasons that people not engaged in war or justified self-defense will kill:[ul]
[li]they are so angry that the anger effectively negates their hold on sanity, and so the deterrent effect is negated by the fact that their logic processor is offline, [/li][li]they have calculated that they won’t get caught and so the deterrent effect is negated by the belief that it won’t apply to them, and[/li][li]they are compelled by some pathological mental condition that overrides the self-preservation impulse - they can’t help themselves.[/li][/ul]So the claim that capitol punishment is a deterrent is demonstrated to be false. What does that leave us?

If we can agree that the deterrent effect provides no justification because it doesn’t exist, yet we as a society continue to execute people, the logical conclusion is that we do it because we like it.

Don’t look so shocked. There are a lot of people who like killin’ though they don’t get to indulge this desire except via the proxy of the State. They can’t kill or participate vicariously in the killin’ of anyone protected by the social contract but certain persons have demonstrated (and this demonstration is ratified by court of law) that they are outside the social contract.

In which case certain primatology applies. It’s been observed that great apes will kill others of their own species who are not of their own troop. And it remote areas it has been observed (Jared Diamond, I think - but don’t quote me. Maybe Stephen Gould) that in groups below a certain population number, right around 150, the reflex to discovering a stranger is to kill them and reason must be found not to - or the person dies.

So there is a feeling, a reflex, that it’s okay to kill people who have placed themselves outside the tribe. This feeling goes back a long way and in my view it is one of the things that we need to weed out of ourselves.

Please don’t think that my logical construction is a rationalization of some sort of cowardice. True, nothing has happened that I can cite as proof and that’s fine with me. But I’m trained, often armed (and quite a good shot). I believe that I could kill, if that killing would prevent something worse from happening, and go to dinner. I’d shoot to prevent a murder, a kidnapping or a rape. But the justification is only in the prevention - killing after the fact does no good. Killing that does no good is sadism.

This leads to the inescapable conclusion: for those of us in a representative form of government, we take a portion of responsibility for the actions of those officials we elect. Therefore we all bear some portion of responsibility for those executions, which are carried out for no more reason than because certain members of our society like it.

I, for one, do not want my share in the responsibility of my government for these revenge killings. I cannot escape the responsibility, so I must help to convince my government to stop useless killing.

42

The death penalty is about vengeance and punishment. Many argue for the families that have had members killed. They say they need closure. They ignore that a lot of people with family members killed argue to spare the murderer from the death penalty. They even have formed an organization to fight it.

43

Part of your argument surrounds the idea that innocent people may be convicted, therefore it should never be used. If you apply that logic than amusement park rides and every other potential danger in life should be eliminated because someone might die.

There is no argument that the nature of a death penalty trial should be such that it severely limits the probability of a wrongful conviction. A case such as Mumia Abu-Jamal where the person committing the crime never left the scene and there was zero doubt as to what occurred would qualify as a death penalty case barring other issues of law.

44

Yeah? Well many don’t. What’s your point?

The death penalty should exist. No one is claiming, certainly not me, that it should be applied in all cases for which the guilty party is ‘eligible’ to receive it. But there are some crimes which are so outrageous, so evil, so inhuman, that anything short of it demeans the memory of the victims. And let’s not get into that sanctimonius “let’s not stoop to their level” or “two wrongs don’t make a right” BS.

For those who lead sheltered lives, I urge you to at least scan the following cases so you can get a sense of the type of crime and perpetrator where anything short of the death penalty is unjust. (And my purpose is to ensure that justice is done, not to inflict the “worst” punishment on the perps. If causing them to suffer was my motivation, I’d call for them to receive life imprisonment with no chance of parole.)

Beyond Words in Houston
Mutants From Hell
The Carr Brothers
The Hillside Strangler

45

Actually, it’s more a case of you shouldn’t have left off the last part. It only reads the way you think it does if you ignore the context of the following paragraph in my post. I reproduce it here in case you missed it. Bolding mine.

And furthermore, the point I am making is to say that judicial execution looks a lot like premeditated murder–except for the crucial distinction that the defendant both is actually, and has been adjudged to be, guilty. The only thing that makes it morally right is the guilt of the defendant. Which I said in my post. And that is my point–if the system executes one innocent person, I don’t see how, from a moral perspective, we can distinguish what it has done (execute an innocent man) with the moral wrong used to justify the death penalty in the first place.

Yes. But again, you seem to have missed the point–my argument is that the fact that they did it is the only thing that justifies the death penalty. --that if the defendant is factually innocent, the death penalty looks a hell of a lot like intentional, premeditated killing–at least from a moral perspective.

Well, wrongful convictions are bad. I’m glad we agree on that. I just think you’re plain wrong to argue that a wrongful conviction and LWOP is “any less horrible” because the guy wasn’t executed. I’m not arguing either is good–but I am arguing execution makes it impossible to even partially correct the wrong–and that there is a fundamental moral difference between wrongfully imprisoning someone and wrongfully killing them.

46

I love how if we don’t agree with you it’s because we lead sheltered lives.

I know how much the world sucks, that’s why I don’t want to add to the misery.

47

Are you as dim as your post suggests? I said, and you quoted (!) “for those who lead sheltered lives . . . (here are examples of evil)”. How does that mean a) for those who “disagree” with me, b) extend to all the posters who constitute “we” in this thread, and, let alone c) “if (you) don’t agree with me it’s because (you) lead sheltered lives”? Moreover, my point was to illustrate the evil that exists in this world, the depravity of which, in my experience, is not appreciated by a good many folks.

48

I would imagine I am precisely as dim as my post suggests. We reveal much in our posts.

49

No wrongful convictions are better than execution?

I guess for me, it’s apparent that the prisoners themselves consider life better than death, since they fight to avoid execution.

50

The point is people presume to speak for the families of victims and say they need closure that is available only through execution.

51

I’m glad I didn’t/don’t have to speak for them. They often speak for themselves around the time of the execution of he/those who murdered their loved ones. Sometimes they seem quite resentful of the time it took, decades often, for the sentences to be carried out. Sometimes they comment on the murderer’s apparent lack of remorse or what they believe is feigned remorse. Often they mention ‘closure’ with phrasing to the effect, “now we can get on with our lives, or what’s left of them”. Bottom line is, at least some family members of victims do speak for themselves and make it clear that they support the death penalty and that it brings them closure.

In any case, “justice” as I used the term in my earlier post, need not have anything to do with the family getting closure. So I’m not certain I totally understand what you were getting at.

52

The State should not have to power to put its own citizens to death.

That is too much power.

53

The death penalty is indefensible not because innocent people might get executed, but because guilty people might get executed.

54

Christ, Willingham again? He was guilty. The prosecutor and jurors are still convinced he was guilty. His family members (the ones he didn’t set fire to, anyway) are still convinced he was guilty. Hell, his own lawyer is convinced he was guilty. The only people still claiming he’s innocent are a few anti-DP reporters in locations far from Corsicana, Craig Beyler, and the deluded individuals they can get to listen to them. Among the people who lived there, who saw the evidence first hand, who dealt with Willingham directly, there is no question about his guilt.

The anti-DP movement would do well to find another poster boy.

55

Yeah, people are still convinced he’s guilty. People have a lot at stake in not changing their minds.

56

Or, in the alternative, those in favor of the death penalty ought to not fight the possibility that the system got it wrong.

We’ve already discussed willingham on these boards (as you well know, having been there). Most people there seemed to see the sense of Beyler’s arguments–that, at the very least, the evidence presented at trial was fatally flawed. For those who are interested, here’s the link. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=530484&page=2

At the very least, it is certainly an overstatement to say those who find Beyler persuasive were “deluded.” For example, I’m convinced–am I deluded?

Beyler is a leading expert in the field, and his methods are well-accepted. Do you have any citations from trained fire investigators to support your argument? Do you have any citations, or arguments to question his methodology, or his expertise?

Further, when you argue we should be convinced by those who saw the “evidence,” you’re skipping over the crucial issue in that case–that the “evidence” included the conclusions of an “expert” fire investigator–if you had heard someone the court claimed to be an expert say it was arson, you’d probably be convinced.

We only found out later, of course, that the “expert” had no formal training as a fire investigator, and that his methods were shown by a genuine expert to be fatally flawed when empirically examined.

57

My argument is that there is no logical, economic, justifiable, or acceptable reason to have the death penalty. However, the reason we still have it is that it is the will of the people, which is capricious, emotional, illogical, and whimsical.

58

I think this is an ethical argument, rather than a logical one. An argument can be made in favor of the death penalty using a range of different philosophical standards, and this is a very common exercise in lower level college ethics classes.

Although I don’t really “get” your “reality is complicated” statement, I do agree with your conclusion. Death is the only penalty which we can mete out, but never reverse. I prefer to err on the side of caution and sentence the worst criminals to life in prison with no possibility of parole. If new exonerating evidence surfaces later, which it often does, at least the person can be released and they can salvage whatever is left of their life.

From a revenge aspect, I think life in prison is far worse than death. We’re all going to die, why allow the truly evil to escape a long miserable life behind bars. I prefer to know that they’re suffering every single day and night of their incarceration. Death is an end to their suffering.

The only exception I make is summary execution on the battlefield during war. An enemy caught out of uniform, deserters, sleeping on guard duty, etc… these situations have to come at the risk of suffering an extraordinarily grave consequence, given the extraordinary circumstances, and the fact that imprisoning the offender would actually offer them greater safety, and in that light, isn’t really a punishment. In war, execution, or at least the threat of it, can be necessary to maintaining discipline, which in turn can save many lives.

Don’t get me wrong. Someone does something terrible to someone I love, and I’d have no problem putting a bullet in their head. But that’s revenge, not societal justice.

There are far too many wrongly imprisoned people, and since the advent of DNA testing, it seems like you can’t turn on the news without hearing about another guy who’s just been released after spending 15 years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit. It’s mind numbing…

59

State-sanctioned killing is no more defensible than any other form of killing, including murder and war. In my opinion, that means not defensible at all - we lose something when we kill, even if it is for what we are convinced are the best reasons.

60

Oh, please. Even one of the prosecutors, who is now a judge, admitted that the arson evidence was “undeniably flawed” and bases his opinion that Willingham would still be convicted of the murder of his children, who apparently died in a fire that wasn’t even set, on the following “evidence”:

  1. Willingham was an abusive dick and didn’t want to be a father.
  2. Willingham was not sufficiently injured in the fire.
  3. Willingham did not sufficiently attempt to rescue his children.
  4. Willingham refused a polygraph, which would not have been admissible in court.
  5. Willingham was not just a dick to his wife, but a dick to animals, too, just other other sociopaths.