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The only reason we don’t put them on the jury is to avoid any bias. Instead of individuals getting vengeance we rely on the state to do it for us. At least if you buy into the whole idea that vengeance has any place in the justice system.
Marc
Holy cow. I agree with SPOOFE twice in one day. (Of course, they were both no-brainers).
The legal system fucks up regularly. That’s well documented.
You should at least be in the position to be able to say: “Sorry dude, we locked you up when we shouldn’t have. You’re free to go”. It’s not possible to say “Sorry dude, we killed you when we shouldn’t have. You’re alive again”.
Killing a murderer doesn’t bring the victim back, and killing an innocent man in place of a murderer, just repeats the offense.
Executing a murderer and murdering are not on the same legal level.
Some may find execution even more morally reprehensible because they consider it murder that is sanctioned by law.
Going back a bit here, but justice has nothing to do with restoring the state of reality previous to the crime. Rather, it focuses on punishing those who erred to the degree they erred, or other appropriate punishment. While I disagree with the DP for moral and practical reasons, I don’t agree that it is unjust.
Morality is a personal matter. Morals do serve a purpose, and I personally believe you ought to have some, but I believe very strongly that the government has no business messing with them. Come on, what happens every time the government – ANY government – tries legislating the morality of its people?
The government’s business is LAW, not morality. Law and morality are two very different matters.
I never said that the victim’s friends and family should be on the jury. I firmly believe that even the worst scumbag to come down the pike deserves a fair trial, and should get one, and that just ain’t gonna happen with a jury that’s already convinced of the perp’s guilt.
And if the perp is found not guilty, then he goes free. Period. I infuriated quite a few people when I remarked this about OJ. “He got a fair trial. He was found not guilty. They have to let him go.”
By the same token, I believe that society, as a whole, SHOULD do away with certain individuals… for the reasons I stated above. When a person goes beyond a certain point, and is a danger to those around him… what’s the point in keeping him alive? Why should he NOT be executed?
I agree with Smiling Bandit that the death penalty has nothing to do with “restoring the murdered to life.” Well, duh. If a crook robs me and spends the money, who reimburses me if the cops catch him and put him in jail? NOBODY! IT DOESN’T HAPPEN! I JUST GET SCREWED! And this is one of the purposes JAIL serves! Maybe I’m out the contents of my wallet, and maybe I’ve got some lumps, but I have the satisfaction of knowing that the guy who robbed me is PAYING for it, in some way!
Perhaps I don’t think he’s suffering ENOUGH. Perhaps he’s not suffering the way I would choose to have him suffer… but I just need to deal with this. It’s the way I must accept if I wish to live in society.
There’s a reason “common law” exists, you know, and I think that “human nature” has something to do with it. And better “common law” than “mob justice.”
I have always had a bit of an issue with the whole “if one innocent dies” thing. Not because I want an innocent to die, but because I don’t want that saving of one innocent to perhaps let a bunch of guilties hurt more innocents. Besides, there is a chance that you will die whether on death row or now (being killed by innmates, being raped and getting AIDS, etc.), so we’d have to get rid of prison too.
If we always worry about those possible innocents, you may as well disband the whole judicial system. It’s a case of ommlett and a few broken eggs. In an ideal world, we could catch every killer and no innocents. But we are human, and mistakes will be made. If we build a system that NO innocents are possibly harmed, then MANY criminals will go free and continue to hurt further innocents.
Mind you, I am talking about all of this in the abstract. Law is not a moral entity, and in a country that was built with freedom, not morals in mind, that is how you have to approach things.
What if the deceased has no surviving immediate relations? To make it even better, what if the deceased has no surviving immediate relations because the murderer killed them?
So, then, in thinking about, I dunno, the OP, are we all in agreement that there is no merit to comparing the state for executing someone and a murderer, whether or not we feel the death penalty itself is justified?
Arguments A and B seem contradictory. A is, of course, a favorite argument of liberals who want to SOUND tough on crime while BEING soft.
But if you REALLY believe life in prison is a harsher sentence than the death penalty, why would you risk giving an innocent man a life sentence, which you claim is WORSE than death?
Humans are not perfect, and as such we do not expect perfection. Why should the DP be held to a perfect standard? Airplanes crash now and then, but we don’t quit flying. As far as the expense of the DP, this is a cultural thing. Technically speaking, a .22 calibre bullet to the back of the head is very economical.
tedster
And?
Who is asking for perfection? As an anti-DP person, I find that I am asking that the government not make a punishment that cannot be reversed, or reasonably accounted for, knowing that it isn’t perfect.
We account for imperfections, not throw our hands in the air and say, “Can’t be done! Just give up and let it all happen as it will!” For example, we redesign and fix airplanes.
Do you feel the comparison to the state as a murderer is valid? Are pilots murderers if their plane malfunctions? Is the company a murderer if its plane malfunctions, or only the workers?
We cannot know with certainty that someone committed a crime, so we do not then perform actions against them for which there is no possibility of redress. It is not a stunningly difficult notion. Guilty pleas do not raise the bar (what if we find out later it was coerced?) of “proof” in a DP-sense. Justice systems can make mistakes, and the courts have (AFAIK) consistently ruled that victims of those mistakes can, in some circumstances, receive redress. Clearly, a dead person can gain nothing from the government. Why institute such choices, then, knowing that “humans are not perfect”? :shrug: I say: don’t.
Shrug I’d rather err on the side of mercy than the side of vengeance. If that makes me “soft,” so be it. Golden Rule and all that.
Where did I say that I “risk” giving an innocent man a sentence? I don’t want any innocent folks to get prison sentences. But until the criminal justice system becomes impeccably flawless, we can’t avoid the harsh truth that innocent folks may go to prison.
(Of course, I also support huge rewards/compensation for folks who were falsly imprisoned, but that’s a different matter all together)
“And the rules have to work for us ALL.”
Unfortunately, they don’t:
At least in this case, the mistake was found before an innocent man was executed. Until a 100% infallible method of determining guilt or innocence can be found, the death penalty should be abolished.
I think there is a huge difference between the DP and murder.
But I do not believe the state should have the right to deliberately kill citizens, no matter what. You can lock 'em up for life, sentence ‘em to hard labor, but ya canna’ kill 'em.
For God’s sake, even Russia has a moratorium on executions right now.
After reading several true crime stories, and reading the horrible, horrible things killers do to thier victims, my views on the death penalty changed. Especially when I read that some of these killers had been incarcerated for killing before, released, and then raped, tortured, and killed another victim. Yes, the laws need changing. How some of these people got out of prison is beyond me. But execution is the only way you can assure that those killers will not ever get out.
This is often trotted out by people who are not in the position of having to make that decision for themselves. Yet in real life, almost all murderers fight tooth and nail to avoid the death penalty and get “only” life imprisonment as their punishment.
And as for the OP, the death penalty does not make us “no better” than the people we execute, because our motive is better, but that does not justify using the death penalty.
My opinion exactly. Image having someone you know being murdered by a person who was in prison for murder and escaped or paroled. I think that anyone who has committed more than one murder (i.e. Timothy McVeigh) or has murdered more than once (i.e. Ted Bundy) should be executed.
There’s a guy living down the street from me near a school bus stop. He raped and murdered four teenagers, including one that he buried alive. HOW WAS THIS MAN LET OUT OF PRISON? And when he moved in, there was a big fight about how his name and address should not be released cause he served his time and was paroled. Of course, he did move to a town where everybody knows everybody’s business in about 2 1/2 seconds. Fortunately.
Of course. No one wants to die. Hell, the Jews in the concentration camps struggled to survive, even though they were subject to the most horrendous conditions imaginable.
My husband works in corrections, and from what personal knowlege I have of what prison life is like, I agree wholeheartedly with the statement that life in prison is far worse than dying peacefully on a gurney. Once you’re dead, it’s over. Your punishment has ended. Living in a prison is punishment that lasts for decades.
And it is a punishment-- perhaps not as harsh and cruel as grieving families would like, but it’s certainly no picnic. The inmates in my husband’s prison are treated humanely, but it’s still a miserable place to be.
Indeed, killer-killing is no more contradictory than kidnapper-imprisoning so long as due process is followed.
This debate has not seriously arisen anywhere in the rest of the industrialised world for decades now, so I struggle to remember what the various positions are. However, my own tuppenyworth is that, if it can be shown that there is no significant deterrent effect, and if sentences are long enough that it is incredibly unlikely that one who would have been put to death will kill again, then the only factor left is revenge on the part of the victim or their family. This I feel is a poor reason to justify state-sanctioned killing, and is far outweighed by the reversible-error argument.
Well to quote from “Essay on Crime and Punishment” by Cesare Beccaria, which was used to reform legal systems throughout Europe, and here.
“Is it not absurd, that the laws, which detest and punish homicide, should, in order to prevent murder, pubicly commit murder themselves?”
I would suggest you read this essay, as it contains everything we hold dear about our own legal system, and it had a profound effect on our founders.