I would rather get death than life in prison.
No, I don’t think he should die. I used to believe in the death penalty. NOT because I wanted people to suffer. I just didn’t, (and still don’t), think that some people could be rehabilitated. If I were still for the death penalty, I would say the ‘Joker’ would be a prime example of someone who should be put to death. But I’m not in favor of the death penalty anymore, so I say life in prison.
At the risk of a hijack, I’ll say I find this response surprising – you don’t think the “Afghanistan massacre guy” has a legitimate claim to have been affected by PTSD or combat stress, but you do find exculpatory insanity in this suburban kid?
Would you advocate he be kept in genpop, instead? Mass murderers don’t do too well in that environment.
The death penalty is wrong, always and everywhere. I would not support it for him.
I could support keeping him confined for the rest of his days.
I don’t object to the death penalty in principle, but I am not prepared to sentence this screwball at this time.
That argument doesn’t work since the death penalty could not be any more black and white; you either support instances where it should be applied, in which case you support the death penalty, or you don’t, so you don’t. It’s preposterous to argue that you oppose the death penalty but think that exceptions should be made in cases like in Colorado. It’s something that you either abolish, or don’t. You can’t “half kill” someone.
I advocate we take him out the back and shoot him. You were advocating “a far worse punishment than death” so that you “could live with yourself more easily”.
P.S. I agree with Mr. Kobayashi - LHoD’s attempt to redefine the English language is just absurd.
Agreed. He should die in prison, in obscurity.
As should any gallant TV feature reporters who want him to ‘finally tell his story’.
Given that confining him forever to prevent him from murdering again is necessary, and keeping him safe from being murdered by other prisoners is more humane than allowing them to kill him, solitary confinement is necessary. The belief that solitary confinement is worse than death is 1) subjective in the first place, but more importantly it’s 2) intended to convince people who are pro-death-penalty that the death penalty is wholly unnecessary. Many people who are pro-death penalty are (mostly) in favor of it because of the revenge factor (some are stupid and also think it’s cheaper than lifelong incarceration, but that’s neither here nor there). Anyway, I think a lot of people who are pro-death-penalty don’t understand the vast amount of suffering that’s caused by solitary confinement, which is why I brought it up in the first place. And, while solitary is cruel, it’s necessary to confine this man if we are to avoid executing him. And I believe we are morally-bound to avoid execution, because it makes our society more barbaric and less human.
It boils down to this: every person society kills makes that society a little less human. Society should not be killing anybody. Do you know how many people have been wrongfully executed by our criminal justice system before? More than zero–*how *is that not fucking bonechilling to the rational mind? Can you guess how many people I was aware of who were wrongfully sentenced to death before I changed my mind about the death penalty? One. Alan Gell, who came on Penn and Teller’s *Bullshit *to tell his story, was sentenced to death due to prosecutorial misconduct. Can you guess how learning *that *made me feel? It was something like, **HOLY FUCKING SHITCUNTS, WHAT ARE WE DOING!? **Our criminal justice system wrongfully sentenced an innocent person to death!! God fucking damn! If ever there was enough evidence that we fucking suck at determining guilt or innocence, it’s this! Thankfully, his sentence was eventually overturned. Others were not as lucky (see below). Part of the problem is that pretty much everyone who gets sentenced to death is still a career criminal and pretty shitty person–Alan Gell was exonerated because he was in jail for stealing a car at the time the murder happened. That doesn’t mean he deserved to die, though! Motherfucker! Mother… fucker!
For someone to remain pro-death-penalty after learning that we’ve wrongfully sentenced people to death/executed people before, the Beadle’s mentality from Sweeney Todd seems to be responsible:
“Was he guilty?”
“Well, if not, he’d certainly done something to warrant a hanging.”
Yeah, most of the guys in jail (particularly on death row) are fucking asshole criminals… but if they haven’t committed a capital crime, they sure as hell don’t deserve to die. It would be better to let every single guilty person in jail walk free than to ever execute one innocent person. Given that we have executed innocent people before (see below), we need to fucking stop this death penalty shit cold. The simplest argument against execution is that we are humans, and humans are fallible. This is required reading for anyone who is pro-death-penalty: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty
No, it’s not nearly so black and white.
Person A supports the death penalty in cases where the law calls for its application.
Person B opposes the death penalty in most cases where the law calls for its application.
Person C opposes the death penalty in all cases where the law calls for its application but favors it in some other category of cases.
Person D opposes the death penalty in all cases.
Your claim appears to be that there is no difference between the position of person A and the positions of persons B and C. That’s clearly incorrect.
While there is a legal distinction to be made between persons A, B, and C, there isn’t a moral difference between them. They all permit the death penalty in more than zero situations.
I don’t know whether Mr. Kobayashi was speaking morally or legally though, and of course I don’t purport to speak for him.
Yet in Illinois the false conviction rate was about half before Gov. Ryan, soon to be a felony prisoner himself, commuted the sentences just before leaving office.
As for this particular fellow, he may not pass the M’Naughton test, or he may, but it seems he might have schizophrenia, which a brain scan would help determine. Not that it would affect my opinion that the death penalty is just wrong.
A guy can be the center of attention at a party on Thursday night, and executed at the behest of the mob by noon Friday. Doesn’t mean he was guilty of anything.
No moral difference between, say, the person who calls for the death penalty for theft, and the person who calls for the death penalty for genocide? Are you serious?
I don’t see any meaningful difference between persons A, B and C, in terms of support/oppose, other than the minutiae. What I mean by that is, persons holding opinions A, B, or C maintain that there are cases where the state should have the right to execute one of its citizens for a crime (whether such a crime is on the books, which I think is what you mean in case C, is irrelevant - it’s simply the question of the state’s right. As for B’s “most”, most isn’t all). That’s the first position. Person D maintains that the state should never have the right to execute one of its citizens; that’s the black and white. Those two positions, support and opposition respectively, are mutually exclusive.
In the case of supporting the ‘exceptional’ execution of the Colorado shooter, you’re saying that anyone who commits a mass shooting should be subject to the death penalty and therefore there is something a citizen can do that would lead to him being executed by his government; you support the death penalty being enacted in your state. Opposing it in other cases is irrelevant, by that logic you could say that you ‘oppose’ the death penalty except for murder, you’re identifying yourself with D but your opposition really means nothing, it’s more consistent and intellectually honest to treat the two positions as separate.
Stop right there. First, read the thread: the very first response to it is my clear opposition to his execution. So I’m not saying what you think.
Second, you’ve given a beautiful example of the “excluded middle” fallacy. Support for the death penalty is on a spectrum. Near the anti-death-penalty end of the spectrum is the person who would support an execution of a powerful and murderous ganglord in a state whose prison system was obviously inadequate to resist the ganglord’s escape, but who opposes all executions without exception in a state like the US. By excluding the middle, you’re putting that guy on the same moral footing with the guy who approves of the Taliban’s execution of a rape victim.
It’s hard to imagine a reason for excluding the middle that doesn’t come back to zealotry or self-righteousness; is there one?
Missed the edit window and didn’t see this post, I was speaking morally on the non-zero point.
While of course there is a huge difference between these two cases, there’s more of a difference between those who don’t support it at all and those two. There even the person who calls for the death penalty for genocide is saying that it’s right in a small percentage of cases, the theft advocate for a larger percentage, the non supporter for no cases whatsoever.
Threads like these remind me of the threads on torture, of which I’ve started a fair few - sort of nudging the opponents to admit that in extremis your position is right, that in certain circumstances what they oppose is correct. From there it’s easier to open the foothold, if you can make an exception and execute a man for killing 12 people, why not 11? Why not 1? Where’s the line drawn and why?
On the first point, I’m saying ‘you’ in the generic sense, not saying you as an individual support or oppose the execution of a particular person, but pointing out when you start granting ‘exceptions’ to opposition then your opposition is meaningless, you’re still granting the state that right which is the crucial difference between support/oppose. It’s a threshold that is not trivial.
Point 2 should hopefully have been addressed by my emphasis of their commonality. Of course they’re not morally equivalent, but they have more in common on the issue than someone who opposes it in zero percent of cases.
Bob opposes the death penalty.
Jerry would support it in the case of the Somali gang-lord, but not otherwise.
Janice is all about stoning rape victims.
Your claim is that Jerry and Janice have more in common, morally speaking, than Jerry and Bob.
Wow.
On that issue, which you missed.
Jerry supports the death penalty. Janice supports the death penalty. Bob opposes the death penalty. Jerry’s narrower focus does not negate the fact that he supports it.