The death penalty: does it make us no better than the people we execute?

An extension of this thread in MPSIMS.

A common argument among those who are against the death penalty (which Bricker brings up in the above-linked thread) is that killing a killer makes us no better than he. I think this is patently ridiculous. There is an entire process of trials, appeals, sentences by juries and judges, and reviews of all available evidence before anyone is ever executed. In theory anyway, we never execute anyone unless there is no reasonable doubt that he is innocent. Murderers, on the other hand, kill whomever they please. The decision to take their victim’s life is only theirs, not that of any jury or judge, and not the result of the argument of any attorney. And often, the victim is guilty of no crime that the state would find worthy of killing him for.

I refuse to make the claim here that it is morally right to execute murderers. That’s another thread. I only claim that executing a murderer and murdering are not on the same moral level, so that executing a killer does not make us no better than that killer.

I’m sure we could all agree that it is morally wrong to steal money when not in need, and that it is morally wrong to kill a child. I think we could also agree that killing a child is much more morally wrong than stealing money. This is an extreme case, and I don’t claim that the same level of moral difference exists between executing a murderer and murdering. I only use it as an example to show what I mean by a difference in moral wrongness.

Again, I’m not claiming here that it is morally right to execute a murderer. I’m just claiming that it is not the case that executing a murder puts us on his level. Even though the state executes, I think it is still on higher moral ground than the killers it kills.

I agree. If that act puts us on the same level, then there is no justification for the entire judicial system.

Well, it thinks it is, anyway. I’d just say that it is not the same kind of activity at all and that the comparison is unjustified without calling into question the entire process. Might as well say the state is a kidnapper when it forcibly removes a kidnapper and holds him against his will.

Silly.

Fining a robber makes us just the same as a robber! Yeah!..

You’ve got a good point, but your argument is unnecessarily drawn-out. The way I would put it is this: Executing a convicted murderer puts us on his or her moral level only to the degree that sending a convicted kidnapper to prison puts us on his or her moral level.

The question that should be central to the debate is the one you wisely excluded from this thread, the question of whether or not it is MORAL to execute convicted murderers. In order to avoid hijacking this thread I’m going to decline to express my opinion on that.

LC

I was at the Seven Corner’s (Home Depot) shooting standing outside like a fool when one of the shootings happened. You can do a search for it if you want but I am too lazy to look for it.

I think the original point of the death penalty was to act as a deterrant for criminals to not perform those types of crimes. It obviously is now outmoded and not working considering that those types of crimes haven’t stopped. I think the death penalty is more about an eye for an eye rather than justice. It really won’t stop. A better and more appropriate punishement would be to have the sniper (specifically) put into a very high security and minimal outside contact prison (solitary confiment). Let him commit suicide if he wants (you have to alter the laws and have suicide not found as negligence to the prison) and let him decide himself when he wants to die. 1000 sleeping pills should do. There really is no need to stoop to the murderer’s level. Let them do it themselves.

There is no justice in killing a murderer because the act can not resurrect the dead and the survivors still bear a loss.
I don’t think allowing suicide bears justice for the same reason: nothing is undone.

And since there seems to be no way to undo what has been done by the killer, the alternative is to ‘kill’ the killer in a metaphorical sense: strip the killer of all identity–hair, clothes, tattoos, speech (through surgury to the brain or larynx), etc… Then make use of the body to ease the lives of law-abiding citizens–hard/menial labor in a low-overhead/high-output camp for the rest of its life. If you like, you can impose the death penalty as well, to be commuted until such time as an IMMEDIATE RELATION of one of the victims steps forward to perform the execution personally by lethal injection with a filthy 4 gauge needle in the left eyeball…or wherever.

Cruelty is subjective.
Unusual is relative.

Lest the above be interpreted as petty and litle different than execution, allow me to point out that the reason we bother with killers in the first place is to remove them and their dangerous propensities from society. Punishment, as we all know, is NO deterrent.

Long-term incarceration is expensive and unneccessary, Execution is a waste of a good laboring body.

I always thought the death penalty’s point was:

• To eliminate the dangerous from society
• Retribution, vengeance (both of which I think are perfectly natural)
Then, maybe, deterrence

There may be no way to undo what he’s done, but it’s a damn good way to keep him from killing anyone else in or out of prison, don’t you think? Now, I don’t think we should be executing people left and right, but if a person is the type that is going to kill someone else (be it their cellmate, a guard, or a family of 4 after they escape) if they get the chance, it’s the most moral solution.

I’m as opposed to the DP as one can get…but I also agree with Loopus. An execution is a deeply considered and re-considered action, which depends on a very large consensus among many sectors of society. There are hundreds of checks and balances built in.

A murder is a lone act, taken with little or no consultation, and bearing little or no consideration for the views of any other sector of society.

Obviously an execution is not as immoral as a murder. The claim is rhetorical hyperbole, based on those elements that are comparable. (Emotional cold-heartedness, frightening inexorability, possibility of injustice, irreversibility of the action, etc.)

Trinopus

I think that murder is different from execution because execution is a response to murder. All of the consideration. All of the checks and balances are designed to be very very sure that we have a murderer (or other henious criminal). We are very careful because we only want to execute people in response to the nastiest crimes. If we could develop a way to be sure without all of the consideration and soul searching, the executions would still not be murder. I’m treading slightly on the “moral right to execute murderers” position that you want to avoid, but only to demonstrate that the massive trials and never ending appeals we go through before executing someone are in themselves a means to an end. Not a justification for executions.

I guess what I am saying, is that if we decided throgh legal means to make j walking a death penalty offence, even if we kept all of the appeals in place, would not make these executions better than murders. However, we don’t execute people for such trivial offenses. We try quite hard to choose offenses which we consider particularly nasty to apply the death penalty to.

[hijack]
Having said all that, I think there is a moral right to kill a killer. You give up your right to live by take the life of another without justification. However, I am against the death penalty. I think it is too great a responsibility to entrust to the government.
[/hijack]

What the hell are you talking about? The legal fees of the judges and lawyers cost way more than housing a prisoner for life.

IIRC (no cite) it costs over a million dollars to sentence someone to death (due to appeals and whatnot) whereas it only costs around 600,000 to house a prisoner for life.

We have many checks and balances… But do they always work?

I oppose the death penalty based on:

  1. The system is not perfect. If 1 innocent person is executed, that’s one too many. I don’t want to take the risk of this happening.

  2. I find it reprehensible. You don’t kill other human beings period. The urge to kill someone who has wronged you is natural however. If some psycho murdered someone in my family, I’d WANT to kill the bastard, but then society is supposed to step in and do what is just. And that is not to kill him but separate him from the rest of society.

Also, isn’t it MORE expensive to send someone to death row rather than icarcerate him/her for life?

I’m generally opposed to the death penalty, simply because I believe that

(a) leaving a convicted criminal to eke out the remainder of his life in prison is more punishing than a quick death;
(b) there’s a possibility the conviction was a mistake, and freeing an innocent prisoner is easier than resurrecting a dead one; and
© it’s a brutal practice that should be used as rarely as possible.

That said, I can see one instance where I’d support the death penalty, and that’s in a case where the penalty is so severe that there’s no point in not carrying it out. IMO, if someone’s crime is heinous enough to draw “three consecutive life sentences with no possibility for parole,” you might as well off the guy.

Well, first of all, screw morals. Execution is not about morality, and neither is the entire justice system. Morality has nothing to do with it.

Ultimately, the only justification for the existence of our “justice system” is to hold society together, to set a structure by which we all must live… or pay the price.

By the same token, we have to set a balance between the utopia that every politician seems to think he can legislate into existence… and the sometimes venal realities of human nature.

Why do we lock crooks up? Because, in theory, if they are deprived of liberty for a while, then released, they will wish to avoid this punishment in the future, and therefore mend their ways.

In practice, this idea is a joke. Most former crooks go right back to being crooks. Some types of crook are more known for backsliding than others, but any CJ major will tell you that jail… or even prison… ain’t much of a deterrent. At best, it keeps the offender out of trouble for a while, and away from society.

…and it satisfies, to some extent, the very human desire to see somebody PUNISHED. In short, a form of revenge. This is necessary to the process; it DOES serve a sort of deterrent, in that other, POTENTIAL offenders see what happens… and decide maybe to choose a different line of work…

…and, just as importantly, it reinforces in the minds of the VICTIMS – and potential victims – that the system DOES WORK. This, too, is necessary. If enough people don’t believe in the system, the system DOESN’T work, it breaks down.

…which brings us to the death penalty. Why is it there? It’s not a deterrent. Morally, it generates a quandary.

It’s there for two reasons:

  1. IRREDEEMABILITY, aka the “mad dog” theory. Theoretically, society is better off if some people do not exist. Some people will, if they live, commit heinous crimes.

Habitual shoplifter? Execution seems a bit extreme.

Child molester? Hm. May have to think about that.

Cold-blooded murderer who merrily caps off a buncha people in a tri-state area as part of a giant extortion scheme?

…no-brainer, folks.

  1. REVENGE. Yup, revenge. Dunno about you, but if I was walking out to the car with MY wife out at Home Depot, and I saw her face suddenly explode… and I had to gradually get used to the idea that some sonofabitch blew her head off, basically, for money and for fun…

…then, frankly, I would want to know the bastard would not breathe the air any longer than it took to establish his guilt and execute him.

Does this make me “no better than the killer?”

If you said “Yes,” well, congratulations, you moral paragon, you. You are a far better person than I am, and you are apparently just not subject to the baser side of human nature. Hurray for you.

But we are not all as great and good as you are, if you get my drift.

And the rules have to work for us ALL.

I would not be able to be the “executioner”, but am somehow vaguely not as uncomfortable with it done by an anonymous state employee. What that tells me is if I had to be personally involved, I would consider myself wrong, but probably not as bad as the murderer, as my motive would be legally directed.

I’m opposed to the death penalty, and I too don’t think that execution is as bad as murder. I think that execution for the sake of harming is wrong for the same reason that murder is wrong, but it’s not as wrong.

So revenge is in human nature. So what? You’d want revenge. So would I. But just because the victim’s family wants something doesn’t mean that’s what the state should do! There’s a reason that you don’t put the victim’s friends and family on the jury.

I’m even more opposed than rjung

I don’t believe that a life imprisoned is not worth living. As long as they have freedom of thought, prisoners have more to live for than hope that they’ll get out.

This, I believe, is the only valid criticism of the death penalty.

If a person proves that they have so little worth to society to keep them locked up, as Rjung put it, for “three consecutive life sentences etc. etc.”, then the only good they’d do would be to serve as a deterrent for anyone else that may want to commit a truly heinous crime.

Frankly, I consider deterrence to be the only valid support of the death penalty. “Justice” and “revenge” are so nebulous and subjective…

People the state kills:

People who have killed people that have not killed other people.

People murderers kill:

People who have not killed people.

You will find this rule is not always correct, but usually.

And that is the difference.

Eh, what else is morality intended to achieve then?

You still run into the objection…