Our lower crime rate suggests there might be something to our approach.
If the penalty for a crime that leaves a dead victim is the same as a crime that leaves a living victim (that can identify the perpetrator and testify against them in court), isn’t this,
a much more likely result in those crimes?
CMC fnord!
Obviously, put me down as opposed for crimes that don’t involve a death for the reasons above and opposed in general for the reasons above what’s above.
If the State killing someone was right, we wouldn’t need to look for ever increasingly bizarre methods to make it more palatable.
We’d be televising it.
Yes, I’ve known several.
Yes - “gang-raped by ~20 guys & throat slit” despicable enough for you?
Maybe. But not me.
Really? “Fortunately”? You don’t think a world where everyone believed killing people is always wrong would be a better one?
I thought Jesus said to “turn the other cheek?” and “judge not, lest ye be judged?”
So it seems that most of the people posting here are against the death penalty.
Do some of these staunch anti death penalty people extend their anti killing sensibilities to animals? I mean, are you vegetarians? Really curious. Because if you aren’t, doesn’t that make you a hypocrite? I mean, Jesus said thou shalt not kill. Period. At all. Anyone.
Um. Animals aren’t people. I’m not a Christian. Nor am I a pacifist. And plants are alive.
And Jesus also said “I came not to bring peace, but a sword”; like the rest of the Bible you can use him to justify anything.
Who gives a shit what Jesus said? I mean, I’ll toss his words back at people who *do *give a shit, but I really, really don’t.
Anyway, it wasn’t Jesus who said “Thou shalt not kill”, it was god who said “Thou shalt not murder”…and then went on to list all the animal sacrifices he’d like performed for him. So I think he’s OK with animal killing.
Yeah, this really isn’t that clever.
FTR, I happen to be vegetarian, but for vastly different reasons than I am anti-death penalty.
Not trying to be clever. Not a Christian. Just trying to make a point.
Ok, why be against the death penalty? What is the point of keeping alive someone who is a detriment to society? What are anti death penalty people trying to prove, or to save? That’s what I don’t understand… What is it that makes the death penalty “wrong” for you?
If its Christian values of not inflicting pain and death…then that should extend to other sentient beings also. Not just humans.
It is mostly my response to the argument that the death penalty is somehow lenient because, for many people, given a choice between life in prison without parole or the death penalty, they would choose the latter. At the same time, many of these individuals will argue that someone who, say, raped and murdered numerous children should get life imprisonment because it is the harsher punishment. However, I feel that that presents an inconsistency in that argument because if one argues against the Death Penalty as being done out of revenge, why would one then argue that one deserves an even harsher punishment than one that they have already defined as being vengeful?
That said, for those who think the opposite, that the Death Penalty is harsher, then I don’t think it’s inconsistent. I just take issue with the other position which is one I’ve seen argued on this board before and I think in this thread.
I understand how you get that interpretation, but that’s not how I meant it. I simply believe that justice is our attempt to re-establish balance, that the punishment should fit the crime. That’s not to say it should be the same in form, but that it needs to be roughly the same value. So, for instance, if one person is convicted of violence, they do not need violence done unto them, but some equitable amount of another punishment can also be used since we as a society generally consider violence to be barbaric but imprisonment not so much.
To that end, I view a crime to generally be when one person infringes on the rights of another. For instance, theft is infringing the property rights of another, murder is infringing the right to life of another, etc. As such, an appropriate and just punishment that re-establishes balance would be for society to then impose a sentence that infringes that same right or an equitable amount of another right. As such, since we tend to find imprisonment both less barbaric than other forms of punishment and also helping to prevent additional crimes on the public, we impose an equitable prison term based upon the severity of the crime.
It all comes down to that balance though. We, as a society, cannot under-punish or we create incentive that does not already exist to commit crime. As a bit of an extreme example to illustrate the point, imagine if armed robbery only had a one month prison sentence, or if assault was only a $50 fine. At the same time, while one might see over-punishment as a way to reduce crime, in so doing, we as a society become worse than the criminals by imposing a greater infringement on them than they did on another member of society. Again, as another extreme example, imagine if petty theft had a 30 year sentence.
For most crimes, it’s reasonable to come up with an equitable amount of an established punishment, like fines or imprisonment. Sure, some might argue that a bit about terms and what not and we’ll sometimes see cases where a lot of people think someone got off easy or got it way to rough, but I think those tend to be the minority.
Murder, however, is a bit different. The reason I say this is because I consider life to be far and away the most important right. If I’m dead, my right to property or privacy or freedom or whatever else is utterly meaningless. As such, I argue that the right to life is worth at least as much as every other right that we have because it is necessarily a prerequisite to exercising any of those rights. And here’s the key point, if it is worth more than all those other rights then, it becomes impossible to establish a punishment through an equitable amount of removal of any other set of rights. That is, no finite term of a prison sentence can ever re-establish that balance. As such, any punishment that would re-establish that balance must include removal of that right to life. Thus, any punishment for such a crime must include the death penalty or that balance is impossible to achieve.
I don’t see it as vengence, though, I see it as purely the logical conclusion of society hold justice as a virtue. Of course, if one defines justice differently than establishing that balance, then one would disagree, but frankly, I don’t know what else one might define justice as that really makes any sense. For instance, if one gives a life prison term instead to prevent them from killing someone else, the purpose there is minimizing rescindivism, not justice. If one gives a prison term in hopes that fear of the punishment will scare criminals into not commiting a crime, the purpose there is crime prevention. If one gives a punishment because one thinks that a person deserves to suffer, that’s vengence, not justice. If one puts someone in prison in hopes of giving them help or job training so they won’t need to do crime when they get out, that’s rehabilitation.
With criminals whose crimes have caused the greatest harm, those who would be considered the worst of the worst, execution of these individuals would be amoral. Just a natural and necessary result of their acts. Nothing to do with anger, vengeance or any of that.
Do people think that a society which enacts the death penalty will turn into savages, or is savage? I don’t think so at all.
I see execution of an unredeemably damaged individual as humane. Besides, after a person has destroyed numerous other people, it’s not about them anymore, anyway. It’s about the rest of us.
I believe in second chances, the eternal nature of the human spirit, the regenerative power of any human soul. I am a very soft, kind individual and a grandmother. Yet, I am in favor of the death penalty for certain crimes, and I think in the large scope of things, if it is wrong, it is not one of our biggest or more glaring wrongs as a society, a culture, a species. I truly just don’t understand why people are so passionately against the death penalty. Where does the passion AGAINST it originate, if not with Christian morality? This is what I’d like to understand.
Now I am not an authority on this. But I got this information from assigned readings in a psychology course at a (ahem) “Prestigious University.” So, that’s my disclaimer.
The Ashanti tribe in Africa are considered a “rape free” society. They revere the female, and have a reverent attitude toward the natural world which sustains them. Abuse to the female, violence, are virtually unknown. In the one known case of rape committed against a woman, the man that committed it was put to death.
In a society where love and respect are the operative values throughout, death as a penalty has meaning. Where is the meaning in warehousing the bodies of people who destroy life—in a society(that’s us–America) which is so tremendously out of whack spiritually in other ways of greater consequence?
I can only assume that an individual’s anti-death penalty stance must have some ***spiritual ***origin, b/c by my lights, it is not logical, rational.
Not quite. You also think if they attacked someone else they should be executed. You are making decisions from afar concerning life and death of people you think you know something about.
The death penalty is barbaric and atavistic. It is time to step out into the brave new world ruled by intellect , not by base animal instinct.
“… justice is our attempt to re-establish balance…”
“…I don’t see it as vengence, though, I see it as purely the logical conclusion of society hold justice as a virtue…”
Very good argument Blaster Master.
I repeatedly see it asserted that it is barbaric, and I can even agree that some forms of the death penalty are barbaric and atavistic, like hanging, but I fail to see how it is patently barbaric in all forms. I gave an argument above that I feel is very much based on logic and not at all based on animal instinct or revenge or any of that. Can you please expand on why you think it is barbaric and atavistic in that context?
Thank you.
Let’s start here. Why keep them alive?
Because there is still a chance this person is NOT the detriment to society. There’s a chance that this person is innocent and someone else is the detriment who is NOT facing the death penalty at the moment.
Here is list of 18 people exonerated by DNA evidence after being sentenced to death. One of them was exonerated after he died in prison. Two were the victims of one of the worst cases of police\prosecutorial misconduct I have seen. They knew these 2 didn’t do it and prosecuted them anyway.
How bad was it?
How would society have been served if any of these guys had been executed? How was society served that they were convicted at all?
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/The_Innocent_and_the_Death_Penalty.php
Remember, it wasn’t government lawyers and investigators that got these guys freed. They fought it all the way.
I’m against the death penalty, I’m a vegetarian, and I don’t care about Jesus. This is a very silly argument. It presumes that we value animal and human lives equally (which is a minority position even among vegetarians) and that we value justice equally with having food to sustain ourselves, which is a position held by just about nobody. For most people, these things have nothing to do with each other.
Because I think killing people is wrong. I also think (since I know some people are more swayed by practical concerns than the moral argument here) that executing people don’t serve the interests of justice, doesn’t deter crime, and that any system for implementing it is going to be horribly flawed.
Nobody’s against the death penalty because they want to make a point to you. Opposition to the death penalty is typically based on issues like not wanting to compound one unnecessary killing with another, concerns about justice and the justice system (you can let a wrongfully convicted person out of jail, although that’s bad enough, but you can’t help someone you’ve executed), and perhaps a view that all human lives have some value. Those aren’t minor issues and they’re not about impressing you.
I think executing someone is a savage act.