Here is an interesting article on the possible biological basis for morality and ethics. From the article:
We are programmed by genetics, perhaps, to believe in some intangible called “justice.” We simply don’t all agree what it looks like.
Stops the appeals process.
Absolutely positively guarantees that they will never under any circumstances kill again. They won’t kill a prison guard or inmate, escape and kill again, be paroled and kill again, or have their verdict overtured and kill again.
Keeps them from preying on those on the outside who believe in their innocence.
Keeps them from preying on the prison population.
Robert Ressler, who coined the phrase “serial killer” and John Douglas both worked with the FBI BAU. They have interviewd some of the world’s most dangerous serial killers. Do they believe in the death penalty? Yes. Read their books for the expert opinion.
Ressler once had a run-in with Edmund Kempler, a serial killer who threatened “to twist your head off and leave it on the table as a surprise for the screw.” Ressler released that he had been taken in by Kempler’s mild manner ways, managed to talk him down, and immediately make it an FBI rule that serial killers are always interviewed by two agents at a time.
If you believe people like that cannot be “reformed” and that they are “just fucking crazy”, then you must also believe that they didn’t choose to be that way. If they are just broken, and therefore deserve to die, how is the death penalty, in your view, different from the idea of eugenics: discarding individuals who are not “whole”, like people who are born with genetic defects that cause them to be a greater burden on society than healthy people?
Adults suffer as much as children. Why does it make a difference who the killer killed in such a terrible way? When you say “so heinous” you are drawing a line. Someone else might draw a line in a different place.
They are not crazy in the legal sense; i.e. they didn’t know what they did was wrong. Serial killers know killing is wrong, but they just do not give a fuck. They have no conscience, and we do not have a way to give them one.
I used the example of Lattie McGee as the most horrible type of killer. Yes, we do have to have limits on who will be executed. I believe if we know they killer is gulty and we know there was no justification for the killing, there is something wrong with them and the death penalty should be an option. In the case of a serial killer, it should be an extremely strong option.
Maybe the law should be: Kill once, life with parole; kill twice, life without parole; kill three times, death penalty.
I view it as the societal equivalent of killing in self-defense. There are certain people who are too dangerous to be allowed to continue as part of society. I realize that life in prison removes them just as permanently from society as a whole but it does not eliminate their possible impact on those they encounter while in prison. From an ethical/philosophical perspective I have no problem with the death penalty. The problems I see are in practical application. You can have governments which decide that certain politial ideas put people in the too dangerous category. In this country society has racial baggage which influences which offenders are placed in the too dangerous category. And there is the fact that despite our best efforts we do sometimes convict innocent people.
Yeah, that’s a real valid accomplishment right there, especially since a statistically significant number of death-row inmates are later exonerated for their crimes
- if you’re so convinced that heinous “bad” people need to die, why do you care if they’re killed by their inmaes, fellow heinous and bad people? 2. sure, a prison guard might not die. more on this in a second. 3. i guess the part where I said “without chance of parole” flew over your head? 4. have their verdict overturned because they were victims of an imperfect justice system; you don’t want a system where improperly dispensed justice can be at least somewhat reversed? having their verdict overturned for a legally improper and unjust reason is a fiction - probably the fiction that prompted you to actually think it was a good idea to “stop the appeals process”
Sigh. Martyrdom, anyone? And it’s not like this is an accomplishment of any merit
Again, if this is a population of people who deserve to die in your eyes, what do you care if they’re offed by their fellow members of the “deserve to die” club. And yes, it is possible to segregate the “life without parole” people from the other inmates.
Much in line with what Rusalka just posted before, serial killers that are obviously insane may be perhaps be better suited to medical treatment (within a life-without-parole sentence) instead of just “doing away with them” because they have a psycosis that makes polite society feel a bit nauseous.
Basically the only semi-valid point here is that it protects the guards. I’m not so sure that you’re in any more grave danger being a prison guard in the gang ward at the local penitentiary than you are in the captain insano ward. Basically, prison guarding is a very dangerous job to begin with, and I’m not so sure the 200 or so people that otherwise would qualify for the death penalty who are now in lockup for life (without possibility of parole, i feel i have to keep adding), who are known to be captain insanos (meaning that you are extra specially on your guard around them) would enhance the danger of the job in any meaningful way.
So would decriminalizing drug possession, except it would free up alot of prison space so the guards wouldn’t be overtaxed, the prisons wouldn’t be overflowing, and we could properly incarcerate the real nutsos.
What’s to stop life-without-parole killers for appealing for parole? The court system would be tied up for years with life-without-parole people trying to get parole.
BTW, most serial killers do not have a conscience and we have yet to find a way to rehabilitate a person enough to solve this problem.
If you could build a prison that would be escape proof and let serial killers and mas murderers rot there for the rest of their lives, with no contact with each other or the rest of the world, with nothing to do and nothing to eat but the absolute minimum necessary to keep them alive–in short, with nothing whasoever to give them any pleasure for the rest of their lives–I would agree to abolish the death penalty.
You clearly don’t get how criminal sentencing works. If your sentence is “life without parole”, I hate to break it to you but you’re dying in prison. Edit: I would also assert that you’d have less appeals process. There is a reason why many attorneys volunteer their time and/or spend their entire career appealing the cases of death-row inmates - they have moral and philosophical problems with the concept of a state killing, and are content to spend their entire professional careers protecting what they feel is the right of the prisoner to be justly treated. I am confident you would find a lot less moral and philosophical objection (with a concomitant lack of pro bono lawyering) for people who are sentenced to life without parole.
You talk as if prison is a fun thing to be in because you have a latreen and a television in your cell. How cute.
But, yeah, letting people exist in solitary confinement for the rest of their life and doing nothing but sit in a cell and eat food is a good indication of how vindictive and revenge-oriented your position supporting the death penalty is.
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I don’t understand the “either because of their acts” part. Why is death the only justified action? Can you explain this? This seems to be an emotional statement, but I cannot see how the term “justified” is appropriate.
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“it is the only thing that will keep them from killing again” - this has already been answered by someone else:
By the way, if asked I will need to search for cite, but it seems that nobody ever escaped from the strongest security prisons.
What are you talking about. Sean Connery did it, twice, in that movie The Rock. I mean if some posters are going to spew fiction regarding the ease of escape from a supramax prison we may as well put all of our cards on the table.
Justified is self-defense, a crime of passion or other reasonable reason for doing so. Unjustified is the bitch deserved to die, I wanted to rape and kill someone, or because it’s fun to watch people die. It’s a decision for the courts and shrinks to make.
If I had my way, not only would people who commit unjustifiable murders be handed the death penalty, but they would be killed in exactly the same way they did the deed.
I would have chained McVeigh onto a chair and kept him there for a while waiting before setting a bomb off. Bundy would have been raped, stangled and suffocated in a mud pile like his last 12 year old victim.
If the 9/11 hijackers had parachuted from the planes and been rescued, I supposed you would have given them life in prison, with free food, clothing, TV, gym, Internet and visitation with loved ones.
So just come clean and admit your justification for the death penalty is to make the criminal suffer, to provide as I stated earlier “Old Testament retribution, vengeance, and bloodlust.”
Question, obviously feel free to not respond: have you, or someone close to you, been the victim of a serious crime and are wishing that now incarcerated be killed? It seems like you’ve got a few more horses in this race than the purely abstract-minded ones like myself.
The reason for the escape, it seems, is an underfunded and overburdened prison guard system. It’s the result of the war on drugs and not a proper conceptual framework in which to debate the morality or purpose of the death penalty.
Better question would be “has anyone escaped from death row?” (like real escape, not having their execution commuted)
So, vengeance is admitted as justification now?
This is precisely why I oppose the death penalty. There is nothing more heinous than the state executing an innocent man in my name. Judging by the number of wrongful death row convictions that have been overturned in the last thirty years, I have concluded that we cannot adequately insure that innocent people have not and will not be executed. I would rather pay for a lifetime of three hots and a cot for all murderers, no matter how heinous their crimes, than risk executing a single innocent person.
The reason I like the death penalty is righteous revenge. It lets me get out my bloodlust. It lets me know that the universe is balanced in that the sense that an eye for an eye is carried out. It makes me feel good knowing that Saddam Hussein is dead. I like knowing that Tim McVeigh is gone. They’ll never laugh or smile about anything ever again.
Please provide an argument that this is an invalid reason to off people via the state. Also, please provide an argument for why “innocents get executed too” is justification for scrapping the program instead of just overhauling the process. Lastly, point to one family of a victim that regrets that the perp has been executed.
ETA: And Rumor_Watkins, please explain a little more clearly how the Old Testament has anything to do with this. I’d actually argue that your ‘sanctity of life’ stance is biblical more than my thirst for vengeance.
The purpose of the death penalty is to provide a sense of justice for the victim’s family. Furthermore, fewer convicted criminals are executed in the US than commonly believed.