# US ranked #5 - not trying hard enough **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 30, 2011, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526 "2011-03-30T16:46:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/41 "2011-03-30T20:16:13Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > So? Some of the most common arguments in support of the death penalty are based in emotion. ‘They’re bad people,’ ‘think of the families,’ etc. Capital punishment doesn’t do very well once you get down to facts since it doesn’t deter crime or bring people back to life. Because emotional arguments are manipulative, and they don’t address the merits of the position. And, if we’re getting down to facts, pretty much no sentence deters crime, and I don’t know of any that brings people back to life. > [@](#): > > Unfortunately that list speaks for itself. You can find a handful of democratic countries and a lot of countries Americans don’t want to be compared to - including a bunch where the people are trying to get rid of their governments. By the way, Japan, Taiwan and Bostwana (total population: around 152 million) combined to execute 6 people last year. Ohio killed 6 and Texas did 17. No list speaks for itself. Ok, Iran executed over 252 people. Why did they execute them? Did they do so because the people executed killed people, or did they do so because the executed guy had sex with another guy or because they said, “You know, I don’t want to be Muslim anymore.” I think that makes a difference. The reason that a country like China, or North Korea, or Iran is a bad country that Americans don’t want to be associated with isn’t because they execute people, but because they’re totalitarian dictatorships that don’t guarantee basic rights of due process, democracy, religious freedom, freedom of speech and so on. Lets look at it this way. Lets say France brings back the guillotine (I know they won’t, but go with me here). Do they all of a sudden become a totalitarian hellhole? ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/42 "2011-03-30T20:19:14Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > He making and absolute statement about an issue with a very high disagreement. I am not particularly in favor of the death penalty but statements like **kaylasdad99** ’s sound asinine. What a ridiculous thing to object to. He has the same opinion as you, apparently (if that’s what “not particularly in favor of” means, which really who the fuck can say), but without the craven pandering to the status quo, and that makes his statement asinine? Christ, I would hate to live in your world. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/43 "2011-03-30T20:21:14Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > And then pixies would fly out of a rainbow and do a happy dance. I don’t know, if you kill 223 people a day, I think that would really deter crime, though I know I don’t think it would in any way justify it. I mean lets be serious, we would be down to only the insane and the truly desperate committing crimes with that sort of execution rate and today’s crime solving methods. We would also be killing what? 60 innocents a day with our current record of convicting the wrong person for the crime, but within a few years, I think you would have to see a real drop in crime if a society was willing to be that horrible. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/44 "2011-03-30T20:22:36Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > What a ridiculous thing to object to. He has the same opinion as you, apparently (if that’s what “not particularly in favor of” means, which really who the fuck can say), but without the craven pandering to the status quo, and that makes his statement asinine? Christ, I would hate to live in your world. You think ‘not particularly in favor of’ = ‘capital punishment is WRONG, always and everywhere’? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/45 "2011-03-30T20:24:10Z")
No, I personally think that doesn’t mean anything at all. The question is whether you think it means something. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/46 "2011-03-30T20:28:22Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > No, I personally think that doesn’t mean anything at all. The question is whether you think it means something. Yes, I do not like the current system of capitol punishment that we use. But I would not be against a more streamlined version for 3 times convictions as long as we reformed other major areas of our system with it. So no, my position is actually far from the absolute position taken by others and stated by **kaylasdad99.** ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/47 "2011-03-30T20:31:05Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > I don’t know, if you kill 223 people a day, I think that would really deter crime, though I know I don’t think it would in any way justify it. I mean lets be serious, we would be down to only the insane and the truly desperate committing crimes with that sort of execution rate and today’s crime solving methods. We would also be killing what? 60 innocents a day with our current record of convicting the wrong person for the crime, but within a few years, I think you would have to see a real drop in crime if a society was willing to be that horrible. More likely you’d see an escalation in crime, namely an escalation from ordinary crime to terrorism/guerrilla warfare, given that it would mean that you’d be systematically killing people for being poor and dark skinned. You aren’t going to deter people from crime via punishment who don’t believe that the system punishes people for committing crime instead of for race or being poor. You will however panic them and convince them they might as well take some of the enemy with them. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/48 "2011-03-30T20:35:44Z")
[QUOTE=What Exit?] So no, my position is actually far from the absolute position taken by others and stated by **kaylasdad99**. [/QUOTE] Yeah, an opinion for which you called him a stupid person, which was a ridiculous position to take. “You’re not smart enough to support capital punishment!” By the way, the phrase you’re looking for isn’t “not particularly in favor of the death penalty.” It’s “in favor of the death penalty.” ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/49 "2011-03-30T20:42:04Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > No list speaks for itself. Ok, Iran executed over 252 people. Why did they execute them? Did they do so because the people executed killed people, or did they do so because the executed guy had sex with another guy or because they said, “You know, I don’t want to be Muslim anymore.” I think that makes a difference. It sounds like most of their executions are for murder, major drug offenses, other violent crimes, or sexual abuse of children. Religious crimes, treason, and sodomy are also punishable by death. > [@](#): > > The reason that a country like China, or North Korea, or Iran is a bad country that Americans don’t want to be associated with isn’t because they execute people, but because they’re totalitarian dictatorships that don’t guarantee basic rights of due process, democracy, religious freedom, freedom of speech and so on. Yes, that’s the idea. The argument was never ‘these countries are bad because they execute people.’ The point is that at this stage in history, most democracies have realized that the death penalty is wrong. Most of the countries that haven’t gotten to that point are countries that don’t give a shit about human rights. Thus > [@What\_Exit](#): > > I don’t know, if you kill 223 people a day, I think that would really deter crime, though I know I don’t think it would in any way justify it. That may be true. What it would really encourage is mass emigration. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/50 "2011-03-30T21:18:42Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Yes, that’s the idea. The argument was never ‘these countries are bad because they execute people.’ The point is that at this stage in history, most democracies have realized that the death penalty is wrong. Most of the countries that haven’t gotten to that point are countries that don’t give a shit about human rights. Thus See, that reflects a bias, though. When you say, “Most democracies have realized that the death penalty is wrong”, you’re working under the assumption that the death penalty IS wrong…that it’s something self evident. Since I don’t agree with that, the argument doesn’t convince me. You’re assuming what you’re trying to prove. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/51 "2011-03-30T22:06:51Z")
The death penalty’s not wrong, but it _can_ be more trouble that it’s worth. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/52 "2011-03-30T22:17:57Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > You are judge, jury and executioner. Except for the fact that the judicial process involves actual judges, juries, and executioners - all of which are separate entities. You’re on the right side (IMO), but your argument is fucking terrible. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/53 "2011-03-30T22:51:32Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > That’s why supporters seldom seem to care about the problem of innocents being executed, or **whether it acts as a deterrent or not**. > [@Marley23](#): > > Capital punishment doesn’t do very well once you get down to facts **since it doesn’t deter crime** or bring people back to life. [Bolding mine] I thought we were discussing Capital _Punishment_, not Capital _Deterrence_. You don’t execute someone in order to stop _other people_ from committing crimes, you execute someone as punishment for the _crimes that person has already committed_. The only person you are trying to deter is the person you are executing, and I’ll go out on a limb and say that Capital Punishment is 100% effective in that respect. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2011, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/54 "2011-03-30T23:02:56Z")
> [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > [Bolding mine] > > I thought we were discussing Capital _Punishment_, not Capital _Deterrence_. You don’t execute someone in order to stop _other people_ from committing crimes, you execute someone as punishment for the _crimes that person has already committed_. The only person you are trying to deter is the person you are executing, and I’ll go out on a limb and say that Capital Punishment is 100% effective in that respect. Nonsense. First, death penalty supporters all the time try to claim deterring others from commuting crime as a reason for it, including in this thread. Second, executing innocent people certainly doesn’t deter the actual guilty party. And third, it’s a false argument since they aren’t likely to be committing similar crimes anyway in the future whether or not you execute them; the Joker is fiction, in the real world escape from maximum security prison isn’t likely to happen once, much less more often. We don’t execute people for deterrence _or_ for punishment; if we did, we’d care more about executing innocent people. We execute people in order to get off on killing them. It’s a power/revenge fantasy, with emphasis on “fantasy”; we don’t care about actual guilt or whether the results are good, we just want to Feel Tough. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/55 "2011-03-31T00:20:38Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > I don’t know, if you kill 223 people a day, I think that would really deter crime, though I know I don’t think it would in any way justify it. I mean lets be serious, we would be down to only the insane and the truly desperate committing crimes with that sort of execution rate and today’s crime solving methods. We would also be killing what? 60 innocents a day with our current record of convicting the wrong person for the crime, but within a few years, I think you would have to see a real drop in crime if a society was willing to be that horrible. Well, it would probably make for a popular reality TV show at any rate. I really wonder about people sometimes, I really do. I think Milgram had the human race pegged. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/56 "2011-03-31T01:49:24Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > The point is that at this stage in history, most democracies have realized that the death penalty is wrong. Remember that the death penalty consistently polls majority support in Europe. It’s probably more accurate to say that most citizens in those countries believe that the death penalty is not wrong, but do not care about it enough to advocate for its reinstatement. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/57 "2011-03-31T01:59:07Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > Simple/sneaky theft? Naw. Robbery under genuine threat of deadly force? Sure. By “genuine,” I mean if you rob someone at gunpoint, and your gun doesn’t have any bullets in it, then the threat wasn’t genuine; OTOH, if your gun has bullets in it, then as far as I’m concerned, you were prepared to kill someone to accomplish your robbery/escape. Off with your head, whether you actually killed someone or not. That sounds like a good way to dramatically increase the number of robbery victims who become murder victims. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/58 "2011-03-31T03:08:43Z")
Drats, I was close. My guess woulda been torture. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/59 "2011-03-31T03:41:41Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Even with the knowledge that capital punishment is WRONG, always and everywhere? Except that it isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526/60 "2011-03-31T03:43:20Z")
> [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > I thought we were discussing Capital _Punishment_, not Capital _Deterrence_. You don’t execute someone in order to stop _other people_ from committing crimes Tell it to the people who say capital punishment deters crime. You don’t even have to look outside this thread. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-ranked-5-not-trying-hard-enough/576526.md?page=4)