In theory, I would have no problem with that (depending on the circumstances of the crime, etc, etc…). But justice being flawed, there are innocents who end up with a lethal injection (or shortened as we used to do). That’s the fundamental reason why I’m against death penalty. At least, someone jailed has a possibility to be exonerated and freed if there was a mistake (plus the death row for years must be a particularly awful experience).
Which means that for instance I don’t care if a death sentence is applied to say, Saddam Hussein, or would be to the recent Norwegian mass-murderer (providing he isn’t insane), since in those cases there are no conceivable doubt that they are guilty as hell.
However, a significant number of oponents to death penalty are absolutely opposed to it, even if somehow we could be totally certain that the accused did the crime. The basis being that killing is wrong, and hence that society shouldn’t fall as low as the criminals it intends to punish. Note that it seems that in this Norwegian case again, the people reacted more or less like that. Instead of calling for his blood, the consensus expressed seems to be “let’s punish him by being even more tolerant and open as a society” which, I must admit, is a very healthy and admirable position, that I wouldn’t see here in France, let alone in the USA.
With certain reforms, I could support the availability of the death penalty in cases of particularly heinous murders. The death penalty is irrevocable and I want to be as certain as scientifically possible of someone’s guilt before executing them. A good start would be removing the option entirely without DNA evidence.
To answer the OP: no crimes should merit death in today’s society. When a society, to protect itself, has no choice but to kill in order to prevent future murders, the death penalty is viable. But in the United States today, we can confine a prisoner securely and safely. When this is true, I contend it’s immoral to exact the death penalty.
To answer this post:
As has already been pointed out, DNA evidence has exonerated hundreds on wrongfully convicted persons. Is there any good reason to believe that, prior to the advent of DNA identification science, such persons were not simply put to death, lacking a way to show their innocence?
Nor is DNA a panacea – when it exists, it may help prevent a wrongful conviction. But what of the crime where there is no DNA? Why do we believe that we should have such utter confidence in the verdict that we can kill a human being?
And you’re right – those people never gave a damn about their own victims. But are you seriously contending we as a society should derive our moral guidance from murderers?
While I’d be fine with personally executing Clifford Olson, Robert Pickton and Paul Bernardo, I don’t see the value is the death penalty returning to Canada, since the Americans present such a useful and informative cautionary example, with people on various death rows for decades. That’ll happen when the death penalty is applied half-heartedly, and I have no doubt it would happen here, too, so what’s the point?
There is something we can do to reduce the number of innocents killed by the government, use Life without Parole instead of the Death Penalty.
You see, we can’t do much to stop individuals from committing murder, because there is no overarching force that controls their actions. The government has no such problem, when the law says no death penalty, the number of innocent people executed falls to zero, immediately.
I’m amongst people who don’t believe in the deterrance of death penalty. If a, say, 20 yo guy was weighing the risks before commiting a crime, he most certainly would be deterred by the idea of spending the rest of his life behind bars. In fact, even 20 years or maybe 10 would be enough for him not to commit it (let’s forget the probably non-existing rational criminal who thinks that a $ X millions gain is worth a 62.7% risk of being caught and sentenced to an average of 17.6 years). For instance, there are many murders commited for some ludicrously low amount of money, for which nobody thinking twice would take the risk to spend even 1 year in jail.
I’m convinced that people commit crimes not because the penalty, whatever it is, isn’t enough (again, there might be exceptions, say some kind of white collar crime rarely prosecuted or petty crimes barely punished), but because they don’t look at the consequences or just stupidly assume they’re too good to be caught. A death penalty, even along with lenghty public torture won’t affect this mindset.
If the “liberals” on the supreme court are going to ban life imprisonment without parole, don’t you think they’d also ban the death penalty? How in the world can you assume that we’d keep the death penalty without also having the life imprisonment option? And you still haven’t cited any case in which someone was released and killed that would have been given the death penalty, which was your original argument.
Who or how are we going to determine there is “no doubt”? You?
This was going to be my argument against the death penalty. When society was young and simple, our justice was young and simple-An eye for an eye. If we are going to claim that our society has progressed morally, then we must embrace a justice system that matches that moral progression, or our society is a sham.