# Why is there a death penalty? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 17, 2000, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970 "2000-12-17T02:28:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2000, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/61 "2000-12-21T07:25:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by CC \* > \*\*I had said that we shouldn’t kill someone if we can avoid doing it. \*\* Actually it didn’t seem at all to me like that was what you were saying. What you said was as follows. “We say, in effect, to a person convicted of murder, ‘As a society, we feel so offended by the act you committed, that we are going to commit the same act.’ If murder is so foul when committed by a citizen, why does it lose its status when committed by the society?” You called it murder both ways. It isn’t. > [@](#): > > \*\* > I know that killing in self defense is an “acceptable” killing. So in that case, I would argue that it is unavoidable. In fact, if there were another way to defend one’s self in the face of an attack, then I couldn’t condone the killing. \*\* Except that it is almost always avoidable. It is probable that I could retreat in the face of aggression instead of mounting a counter attack. But who wants me to hijack this thread? Not me. > [@](#): > > \*\* > However, in the case of deliberating over what should be done with a criminal, killing him is avoidable, and so something else should be done. \*\* Just because it can be avoided, so what? > [@](#): > > \*\* > Premeditated killing is wrong, and no individual nor any state should partake in it. \*\* Why is it wrong? I certainly don’t think premeditated killing is always morally wrong. Marc ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2000, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/62 "2000-12-21T18:55:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ptahlis \* > You and I obviously view WWII completely differently. In my mind, we went to war to stop the Nazis in the middle of a crime spree, not to punish them after it was over. Funny, I thought that was the point of putting criminals away (for good)…because we are intervening in their actions. Were we to do nothing, they’d keep doing it. Justification for life sentence, you say? Tell that to the guys who got mortar dropped on their heads. Stopping crime on a large scale (war) or a small scale (court system) should be, in principle, the same. Otherwise we’re hypocrites. Not my bag. Practicality, you say. We can’t stop thousands of people in another country by just arresting them! We can’t do it here, either. If anything, the extreme nature of war should tell us what our convictions actually _are_. IMO, we should quit deluding ourselves. We kill people who aren’t good for society. The end. Life sentences are the cold war of internal affairs (how poetic! 😉 ) I hate killings, I hate war, I hate violence. But I ain’t no pacifist. ---
**Author:** ![Ptahlis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a8b319/32.png) [@Ptahlis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ptahlis)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2000, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/63 "2000-12-21T19:55:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by aynrandlover \* > \*\*If anything, the extreme nature of war should tell us what our convictions actually _are_. IMO, we should quit deluding ourselves. We kill people who aren’t good for society. The end. > \*\* On the contrary, war shows us that we kill people who aren’t good for society when we _must_ in order to stop them. Nobody I know argues that cops can’t shoot down a nut with an Uzi shooting up a McDonalds. Since the guys in prison aren’t pointing Howitzers at us, I think that they no longer pose the same threat. If there is an analogy to war that could apply, I would think it would be one of civilian casualties. We know when we wage war that innocent civilians are killed, and one might say that we therefore might accept the innocents executed as a regrettable, but necessary, side-effect of capital punishment. I would, of course, counter that since capital punishment is itself unnecessary, that doesn’t wash. ---
**Author:** ![zwaldd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a9adbd/32.png) [@zwaldd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zwaldd)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2000, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/64 "2000-12-21T20:10:14Z")
the question isn’t ‘why is there a death penalty’ - it’s ‘why are there no other sanctioned violent penalties?’ in other words, how come no one is sentenced to a beating? or an amputation? why do we skip right from ‘three square meals, a bed, a toilet, frivolous lawsuits, and a rec center’ to ‘death’? does the eighth ammendment cover everything except death? i’m sure amputations could be administered as non-cruelly as lethal injection. i think the death penalty seems out of place in our current system because there’s no other sanctioned violence against prisoners. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2000, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/65 "2000-12-21T20:16:10Z")
That’s it: you, me, coin flip. **Right f** king now!!\*\* 😃 Well, I think we must be resigned in agreeing to disagree. I hate that…always seems like the discussion ends with one person stickout his/her tongue at the other. Hmm. I don’t know about the “posing no danger” thing. They obviously, if they are still the psychos we make them out to be (by warranting a life sentence, yeah?), then they pose a threat to the rehabilitative effect we want our prisons to have on other prisoners. Plus, the guards are always in danger. And excessive solitary is considered cruel and unusual AFAIK. ---
**Author:** ![Toiletduck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea5d25/32.png) [@Toiletduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toiletduck)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2000, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/66 "2000-12-21T23:30:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by zwaldd \* > \*\*the question isn’t ‘why is there a death penalty’ - it’s ‘why are there no other sanctioned violent penalties?’ > > in other words, how come no one is sentenced to a beating? or an amputation? why do we skip right from ‘three square meals, a bed, a toilet, frivolous lawsuits, and a rec center’ to ‘death’? does the eighth ammendment cover everything except death? i’m sure amputations could be administered as non-cruelly as lethal injection. i think the death penalty seems out of place in our current system because there’s no other sanctioned violence against prisoners. > \*\* I agree with you wholeheartedly. I always wondered why we can’t just chop the hands off people who are convicted of vehicular homicide while DUI. It just seems that people are locked into the outdated notion that “the punishment must fit the crime.” But this is not possible. A punishment cannot exactly commensurate a crime. Even if we say that this DUI-killer should be put out on the road, and subjected to the automotive machinations of another drunk driver, he would not experience what his victim, or the berieved experience. To this end, a punishment should instead be designed to be effective. - Toiletduck ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2000, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/67 "2000-12-22T03:20:03Z")
It seems that this thread is shifting toward the whole question of punishment. If so, let me in. I think there are several results of dealing with a criminal. One is retribution or revenge. One is deterrent. One is protection of society. One is penalizing. One is rehabilitating. And, it seems that when someone does something “wrong” we need to determine just which of these we wish to occur. I’m most bothered by the revenge aspect, although I surely feel the impulse. We do need to get that urge addressed, but we also want to see that the crime never occurs again. Incarceration is a penalty, it may or may not deter others, it keeps the offender away from us, and it may or may not rehabilitate. But I think we should attempt to let our justice system advance, rather than resort to baser instincts. Cutting off hands, and various other types of torturous acts are the same primitive acts that our ancestors committed. When we speak of punishment, we’re talking about vengance. Revenge and retribution and getting back at the offender are simply synonyms for punishment. We should not be about punishment. We should rise above that to something more noble ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2000, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/68 "2000-12-22T06:13:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by CC \* > \*\*When we speak of punishment, we’re talking about vengance. Revenge and retribution and getting back at the offender are simply synonyms for punishment. We should not be about punishment. We should rise above that to something more noble \*\* Depending on the case I’ll agree with you. There are some criminals out there who can be rehabilitated. However there are those who cannot be rehabilitated and I have no problem with locking them up and throwing away the key. In some cases I have no problem with tying a noose around their necks. I have no ethical problems with punishment. Someone should be penalized for doing something wrong. Marc ---
**Author:** ![Toiletduck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea5d25/32.png) [@Toiletduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toiletduck)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2000, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/69 "2000-12-24T02:17:43Z")
Might as well stir the pot before I flee the country for two weeks. 1. Who says criminals have a right to rehabilitation? 2. Why isn’t revenge considered a pure and acceptable motive? 3. Why isn’t it up to us to demand whatever recourse as pleases us when a crime is commited? If anything, an effete approach towards crime results in a lack of regard for the justice system. To answer my questions: 1: Since it is impossible to know a recidivist before one has the opportunity to repeat one’s crime, and since it is thus impossible to confirm that one is truly rehabilitated, the end of rehabilitation is flawed, like bailing out the Titanic with a bucket. However, to deny that a person can change and thus punish them according to that belief is to punish someone for crimes they have not yet committed. That’s why it’s tricky. And that’s why a truly effective penal justice system would not just punish. It would give the criminal something _new_ to truly believe in. Incarceration would serve to protect society at large while this process is being undergone. I will remain vague since I do not know enough about how to implement the kind of program that envision and I don’t want to get bogged down in technicalities of my proposed plan. Suffice it to say, if things went my way, our stupendous badass evil criminal would leave prison valuing himself as a stupendous badass for the forces of good, plying his skills as a construction worker or an accountant or some other kind of contributing member of society. 2: I would argue that revenge certainly is a valid impulse when punishing criminals. Certain crimes should earn irrevocable punishments. Sterilization, mutilation, or perhaps some properly channeled form of psychological horror a la Room 101. I see nothing wrong with this, if you then temper it with a program designed to produce a positively contributing member of society who regrets his past life and is truly desirous of the opportunity to counteract or undo the wrongs he has commited. 3: In line with my answer to question two, I believe any punishment is appropriate as long as we deem it appropriate. “Cruel and unusual” is obviously subjective and highly capricious if it currently remains not against Constitutional caselaw to terminate a life as punishment. Cruel and unusual would be to chop off a hand of a shoplifter. However, if someone drives drunk and kills someone in the act, a little mutilation will keep him from getting behind the wheel again, and will deter others from getting in his car and risking themselves. It may even deter the crime before it happens, especially if you’re dealing with crimes of negligence rather than those of passion or vanity. - Toiletduck ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2000, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/70 "2000-12-24T04:11:32Z")
Indeed, strong punishments enforced rigorously accomplish both deterence and retribution. But because that is, in this country, subject to a jury’s interpretation and thus very personal many find it a distasteful solution because we can all be duped. ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2000, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/71 "2000-12-24T15:29:54Z")
It’s hard to mount an intelligent argument of an emotional issue, and I won’t pretend I can do it. But my answer to your question “Why isn’t revenge considered a pure and acceptable motive?” is this: I’d agree with your terminology - it’s an understandable, and maybe even unavoidable IMPULSE. However, I can’t help but feeling that we should attempt to be more civilized. The basest of all impulses are overcome in a more civil society. In minor social instances, we let reason and civility override, for instance, our impulse to punch some idiot in the mouth. And somehow I want our society to be able to do the same thing. In the cases in which people do the most heinous and reprehensable things, I’d still prefer just keeping them away from the rest of us, forever if necessary, to killing them. Killing them just makes us feel good, and there’s something too primal in that for me to embrace. ---
**Author:** ![Toiletduck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea5d25/32.png) [@Toiletduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toiletduck)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2000, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/72 "2000-12-24T15:45:14Z")
I’m all packed but I’ve got two hours so I might as well respond to CC’s post… > [@](#): > > It’s hard to mount an intelligent argument of an emotional issue, and I won’t pretend I can do it. But my answer to your question “Why isn’t revenge considered a pure and acceptable motive?” is this: I’d agree with your terminology - it’s an understandable, and maybe even unavoidable IMPULSE. However, I can’t help but feeling that we should attempt to be more civilized. The basest of all impulses are overcome in a more civil society. In minor social instances, we let reason and civility override, for instance, our impulse to punch some idiot in the mouth. And somehow I want our society to be able to do the same thing. In the cases in which people do the most heinous and reprehensable things, I’d still prefer just keeping them away from the rest of us, forever if necessary, to killing them. Killing them just makes us feel good, and there’s something too primal in that for me to embrace. When we deliberately punish after convicting someone in a court of law, we are not acting on base impulse. It is in fact the criminal who acts on impulse when he breaks the law. Now obviously, not all crimes are impulsive, but a certain amount of someone’s civility must have eroded by the time they become a lawbreaker.\* Thus, when we punish, it is actually a calculated response. I believe that making convicted criminals wards of the state by incarcerating them for prolonged periods of time is as barbaric as you can get. It’s a drain on funds and facilities, it is not especially effective at deterring these people from repeating their crimes or others from committing their own special crimes, and in essence, when you free a person, their record prevents them from getting a job at a lifestyle they enjoy, such that perhaps another liquor store robbery might help shore things up. I believe that we can punish with incredible firmness and irrevocability and it is still merciful. After a truly life-changing painful experience, we can change a [wo]man. The prison environment is not the way to do this. We need to think of something more effective and less effete. We need to realize that the instinct to punish is natural. That a criminal inflicts a wound upon us all with his selfish act, and that we are not obligated to turn the other cheek for him. There is only one way, I think, to clearly define the cruel and unusual punishment clause in the Bill of Rights. Punishment is cruel and unusual if the criminal is not yet convicted. I personally believe that this clause was intended to prevent torture. I might be wrong, but it would seem that the language it is penned in is too subjective and capricious. It is also not very powerful, if the death penalty still continues. - - I should add that I do not support all laws as they are written, simply because they are laws. But in general, I have reverance for the law. - Toiletduck ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2000, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/73 "2000-12-24T15:48:11Z")
Though it _may_ be appropriate in this case, It still irks me that “civilized” is commonly understood to mean “denying what makes us human.” ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2000, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/74 "2000-12-24T19:42:16Z")
Deterrence be damned. Retribution be damned. The real worth of a properly applied death penalty is that it keeps vicious murderers from ever again threatening the lives of innocent people. While anti-death penalty advocates strain to come up with possible examples of an innocent person being executed, try this case on for size: In 1978, two convicted killers (including a man implicated in the serial killings of truck drivers at rest stops) broke out of an Arizona prison and were responsible for the murders of six people before being stopped. [http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/97/012397vs.htm](http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/97/012397vs.htm) And can we have forgotten the “Pardon me Ray” scandals in Tennessee, where imprisoned criminals including murderers were allowed to buy their way out of jail under a corrupt governorship? And do we believe that murderers can be safely locked up forever? [http://members.nbci.com/noprivate/privescapes.html](http://members.nbci.com/noprivate/privescapes.html) > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jshore \* > **So, we throw the question back at you once again, death penalty advocates, what is an acceptable ratio of guilty to innocent in the execution process?** No executions of innocent people are acceptable, and I can’t exclude the possibility that this may have or will occur under modern standards of justice and forensic science. But I’ll throw the question back at **you** - how many deaths of innocents at the hands of escaped or released murderers are acceptable to you? Pretend you’re responding to the family of Carol Lynn Hall, a Dallas woman who was beaten and stabbed to death and her body stuffed in a drainage pipe outside her home in November '99. The man convicted in her death was out on parole after murdering his former wife in 1986. Oh, and the Danes and their smug, homogenized little society be damned too. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2000, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/75 "2000-12-26T19:20:16Z")
A nice little postscript to a story that aired on America’s Most Wanted this past weekend, courtesy of the Dallas Morning News: The 7 prisoners who escaped from a maximum security prison in south Texas on 12/13 are now wanted in the killing of a police officer who responded to a holdup at an Irving, TX sporting goods store on Christmas eve. Two of the escapees were serving 50 years and life respectively for murder. The others were doing time for crimes including aggravated robbery, kidnapping and the near-fatal beating of an infant. The inmates took a “small arsenal” when they broke out of prison. A Department of Criminal Justice spokesman says they left a note saying basically “You haven’t heard the last of us”. It’s always lovely when killers get the last word. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2000, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/76 "2000-12-29T00:21:13Z")
**Jackmannii** , Okay…I suppose it is a fair question to wonder about the converse case of people getting out or escaping and killing again. Although, the first case could be handled by having all those who would have gotten the death penalty get life w/o parole. I don’t know how often the escape case occurs relative to innocent people being executed. Coincidently, The Nation has an issue devoted to the death penalty. I think the article [http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010108&s=shapiro](http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010108&s=shapiro) that talks about Governor George Ryan of Illinois is quite interesting. Haven’t yet had the chance to read the longer article there myself: [http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010108&s=sherrill](http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010108&s=sherrill) ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2001, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970/77 "2001-01-03T23:50:36Z")
The really interesting question is ‘Why is the USA so obsessed with capital punishment’. Taking an international perspective, it is difficult to find any other advanced industrial country which uses (abuses) the death penalty as much if at all. There is a national myopia about this. The USA stands allied with China, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc. and is separated from the great majority of Europe, Australasia, Canada. Why??? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-a-death-penalty/45970.md?page=3)