I’m not advocating vigilantism in any form. I don’t even believe in the death penalty on the grounds it’s a big pain in the ass for everybody.
You, responding to another poster, said you saw no morality in killing someone. I said I think it’s your moral duty to be willing to do the executing if you are pro death penalty.
So yes, it is your moral duty to be willing to write a parking ticket, given the authority to do so, if you are bitching about somebody parked illegally.
Ok, if someone in your state is sentence for ANY crime, you must sign off on it. If they don’t receive 50% of the populations signatures, the person walks free.
I agree with Jack Batty here. I’m a strong proponent of the death penalty, but that doesn’t mean I want or need to be the person to pull the lever. I think this sentiment comes from the idea that death penalty proponents believe in it because they support it because it they’re all about revenge. FTR, this is not the reasoning that all death penalty propoents use to back up they’re support.
To me, a more apt analogy would be like saying all non-vegetarians should be willing to slaughter their own animals or they’re just pussies. But you know what, there are already people in our society who are well trained to do it safely, effectively, and as humanely as possible. These same people are already desensitized to doing it in much the same way that surgeons are desensitized to dealing with blood and any number of other things.
Besides, it’s a totally exaggerated circumstance that proves nothing. The only case in which I’d ever be faced with having to execute someone myself would be if I was one of the last people in the state who believed in it, and if that were the case, that would be I’d probably be in such a minority that the death penalty would be outlawed anyway.
As for the OP, I understand what you’re saying. However, I think you’re misunderstanding the sentiment. As I’ve most often heard it, it comes across to me more like more like “if someone is going to get the death penalty, it might as well be this evil guy.” But at the same time, I agree that there’s still a certain amount of hipocracy because someone who oppose it should either oppose it in all cases, including ones like those, or rethink their stance and state it more clearly.
Changing it to “I don’t believe in the death penalty, except in these cases…” can maybe help clarify the debate and help get the laws more in line with what the people actually want. In that way, it’s not much unlike abortion, where people represent themselves as for or against, but many against it add the rape and incest provisions, and many for it add provisions against late term abortions.
I will accept that a lot of people believe this, and that makes the death penalty unacceptable for them.
I will not accept that statement as anything approaching factual truth, though.
This appears to be one of those threads where what you wanted to talk about and what the participants are going to talk about are two different things.
My position can be summed up like this: If I am ever for it, I’m not against it. If I keep stumbling over exceptions, it’s a sign that my statement was wrong in the first place.
I personally think the line shouldn’t be “Are you willing to pull the trigger?” I think the line in the sand should be “Are you willing to be the innocent man put to death?” If you’re not willing to die for the barbaric practice, then I don’t understand how you could morally justify it and thus ask other innocent men to die to support it. I have the feeling that most people in this thread talking about pest control would not gladly and willingly submit to the chair or the needle, should they find themselves in the position of being wrongfully accused, tried, and convicted. And the argument “That will never happen to me” is not valid in this case, because it has happened. Many times.
So what about it? Who is willing to die for capital punishment?
And I agree with the OP. Every time I read that statement (here or anywhere) it makes my eye twitch. You can’t be both for and against the death penalty. You either agree with it in principle and philosophically, or you don’t.
Well, so far, “most people” is just me and even if I was rightly convicted, I don’t see myself willingly submitting to execution. So what?
The point is, as long as you support the death penalty as it currently stands, you are responsible for innocent people dying. If you’re fine with that, then you should be fine with being the innocent person who is killed. If you are not willing to sacrifice your life, why are you willing to force other people to sacrifice theirs?
I don’t think that’s a valid argument. I support incarceration, but I don’t think I should be the innocent man wrongly put in prison. I don’t tihnk here anyone is supporting the execution of innocent people. You’re right, that a person could be wrongfully accused, wrongfully convicted and wrongfully put to death, and that’s really unfortunate. But a person could be wrongfully accused, wrongfully convicted, and wrongfully put in prison. That’s happened even more than an innocent person being put to death. And, it’s more likely to happen. People accused of a capital crime have more recourse to appeals and there are more checks on the power of the state than there are on non-capital crimes.
Just look at the countries that allow the death penalty. The more advanced and civilized countries eliminate it. We are on par with middle eastern and 3rd world countries. That is who we are.
I agree. There will virtually always be a false-positive rate when it comes to convictions. In a perfect world where the false-positive rate would be zero, then I think a lot more people might favor the death penalty. For me, I realize that the system is not perfect, but at the same time I believe that sometimes a greater societal good means lives sometimes will be lost. I believe that, as it stands, the false positive rate is very low, and with ALL the new technologies and all the appeals that people get, it continues to get smaller and smaller. IMO, that rate is small enough that the value of justice for our entire society outweighs the few potential innocent lives lost.
OTOH, if the false-positive rate was obnoxiously high, then my stance would likely be different. For instance, if something like 10% of people executed (I don’t count convicted and later exonerated since they never got the death penalty) were later found to have been innocent, that trade-off may not exist. I’d still hold that, in a perfect world, or one with fewer invalid convictions, it is just, but not in that particular circumstance. However, AFAICT, the rates are MUCH lower than that AND they’re self-regulating because I also think juries are less likely to give someone the death penalty if they’re not absolutely sure he’s guilty.
I think this is not a whole lot different from looking at a lot of other things that effect society as a whole, and I think war is a good analogy. How many people would argue that WW2 was immoral? What if a lot more Americans died, like say 20 million instead of 400k? To be timely, compare that to the Iraq war. What if a lot fewer people died there? What if 40 people died instead of 4000?
But still, to answer the original question, I feel sufficiently confident that, were I charged with a murder of which I was innocent, I’m confident that I’d be exonerated and that my chance of being found guilty, failing all appeals, and ultimately being executed are low enough that I’m willing to have that small chance to know that justice is being done. And no, I wouldn’t simply resign myself to death if I were falsely convicted. I would fight tooth and nail to prove my innocence, but I would never claim that the death penalty was unjust.
There are a number of logical leaps in this, but suffice it to say that my attitude toward the death penalty is not as casual as you imply. Captain Amazing has already addressed the more obvious flaw - by this reasoning, any state action against an individual, be it even as trivial as a parking ticket, is unacceptable because I wouldn’t accept an unjust parking ticket. In fact, just the other day I plead “not guilty” to a ticket and even took and enclosed pictures of the sign that the fascist ticket guy obviously didn’t bother to read because it said Friday and the ticket was issued on a Thursday.
To the OP, I can think of two reasons off the top of my head to justify the statement “I’m against the death penalty, but in this case…”
You, like me, are have no moral problem with the death penalty, but are against it because it is a pain in the ass in practice. That is, it costs society more than the benefit it provides. While this might hold true in general, you may believe that a certain case is worth the cost. There is nothing wrong with this argument.
You are against the death penalty because innocent people are sometimes executed. But in a particular case, there is no doubt about the guilt of the person. He confessed, for example. Or his DNA is inexplicably all over the crime scene. Or there is undisputable video evidence. You get the idea.
I agree, it is silly to be morally opposed to executing criminals, except for one guy who ate a baby or whatever.
If you really think about it, you’ll eventually realize that the pro death penalty stance is based on unassailable logic.
The government has to kill people who kill people, in order to show the people that killing people is wrong.
Sheesh. it’s not like it’s rocket surgery, you know.
Well, I can say that myself. Here’s my point: in general, there’s a too high risk that an innocent man will be executed. Texas, for example, executes a lot of 1st time killers. Although there is no proof that any innocents have been executed there are quite a few cases in Texas where there’s quite a bit of doubt.
OTOH, Life Imprisonment carries the risk that the killer will kill again: He might kill a fellow prisoner, a guard, arrange for a killing while in prison, escape or get paroled. For some killers, especially those with no doubt about their guilt (where even they and their lawyer admit guilt) or when it is a repeat offender, then the risk of them killing again is great enough so that I can say “I don’t* usually *beleive in the death penalty, but in this case…”
I used to be opposed to the death penalty.
I came to realize, though, there are some people who are evil enough to actually need killing. It’s not about avenging the dead; it’s about making absolutely stone cold certain the offenders can never set foot in civilized society again. If my house had rats, I wouldn’t kill them because I was angry they ate my cheese. I’d kill them because they’re disease spreading vermin and the risk of sharing an environment with them is too great.
That said, I want to make sure the death penalty is reserved for the worst offenders and that the evidence to convict them is substantial. In many jurisdictions, I believe the standards have been overly lax.
In general I do not believe in the death penalty. There have been far too many people on death row who have been exonerated later, and I’m uncomfortable with the idea of the state taking the lives of anyone, even guilty murderers.
I keep thinking to myself that I would be OK with it in cases where there was extraordinary proof that the person did it, but so many of these possible options have flaws in them. Did they confess? Well, some confessions have been coerced from innocent people. Were there multiple eye-witnesses to the crime? Sometimes, eye-witnesses are wrong. Is there a large amount of very damning evidence that the person did this? Sometimes police have been known to plant evidence. It’s too hard to think of a way death penalty could be allowed that couldn’t conceivably lead to the execution of an innocent person.
I think that the only way it could work would be if the killer confesses and maintains their confession throughout the trial - if they say later that they weren’t telling the truth in the confession, even if there is other evidence, life in prison. Basically, death penalty only in cases where the victim does not contest the assertion of guilt, even after they are made aware that they will be put to death. Of course, this is essentially suicide, and I’d think we could avoid having the government kill people in instances like this by giving the guilty the option to kill themselves.
I’m sorry, what? Advanced and civilized by whose standards? By the standard that they don’t have the death penalty?
Japan has the death penalty. Israel has the death penalty. China has the death penalty. Egypt has the death penalty. Are these not advanced countries?
Turkey does not have the death penalty. Does that make it not part of the Middle East?
Where are you getting your standards from?
Thanks for over simplifying and misrepresenting the pro-death penalty argument. :rolleyes:
I don’t think this is a fair argument. People being exonerated after being convicted and sentenced to death could be a sign that the system is flawed and the risk of executing an innocent is too high. However, it could also be evidence that the appeals system is working as it should and that very few, if any, innocents are actually be executed. The problem is, no one really bothers to investigate and try to exonerate people who have already been executed, so there’s not really any way of knowing what the actual rate is. As such, I don’t think this reasoning leads any credence to either side of the argument.
Let’s return to my ideal world scenario briefly. Let’s say that, for whatever reason, you could be absolutely sure that someone was guilty, maybe you have it on high definition video from 5 different angles, and the cops showed up and arrested him in the act, and he confessed. Would you still object to his execution then? It sounds like you’d be okay with it.
If you’re okay with that, then there must be a line between how the circumstances are now and that ideal situation, where it crosses from definitely okay to questionable. If you think it’s just in a case of absolute certainty, then is there not some slight amount of certainty that is acceptable to maintain that quality of justice, even if it’s as small as one in a million?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m under no illusions that our justice system is as good as one in a million, even after the long appeals process, but I do think that certainty is still pretty damn high and that that trade off is worth it.
As for Texas, I do know their reputation, but I don’t know enough about each specific case. It is entirely possible that their uncertainty rate is too high; however, I think the correct approach to take in response to that isn’t to throw the baby out with the bath water, but to make steps to improve the certainty by maybe allowing more appeals or making them simpler to achieve or whatever.