[Scribbler1]

Quote by: gw120 "Okay, you killed someone, so to show you that you were wrong, we're going to kill you!" said the pro-capital punishment activist.

It's pretty foolish to think the death penalty is designed to teach anyone a lesson or prove a point to a murderer. I wasn't thinking that. Why were you?

It's just flat out retarded. And all you that say that punishment should be dealt out, what exactly is the point of punishment?

Are you saying any form of punishment is supposed to teach something? That's incarceration, which is for lesser crimes. It's called the death PENALTY for a reason. It isn't designed to teach the murderer anything.

What does it do, especially if the punishment is death, in which case it's completely pointless.

It has a point. It's to remove someone from society who has shown he can't exist within it. Some people are just plain irredeemably rotten. It's designed to get rid of society's garbage so society doesn't have to keep looking after it and trying to make sure it doesn't get back IN society to commit further crimes.

Isn't rotting in a jail cell for all of your life more punishing then being quickly and painlessly killed?

If prison is so much worse than the current method of execution, I would say you advocate a less humane form of punishment than I do. I guess that makes me the nice guy in this discussion, eh?

Also what happens if you're wrong. You kill a guy for killing a guy and the next guy you find out the guy didn't kill a guy after all. What are you gonna tell the family of the guy who got killed (the executed guy)? "Sorry, we thought he did it." Atleast if he's in jail you can let him out.

That is a separate issue and a separate argument. There have been many times an innocent man has been found guilty of murder and sometimes he is executed. That is something that needs to be addressed and it is on the system to reform itself, and society to make sure that is done. That argument doesn't say anything against the DP, other than it is sometimes incorrectly applied and we need to make certain the people in question deserve it.
I have never said otherwise, and this argument has appeared on the forum almost as long as this forum has been in existence. I have always advocated the DP when, and ONLY when, guilt is absolutely proven. The case of Colin Ferguson comes to mind. He killed six innocent people in front of a railroad car full of eyewitnesses. That should have been enough to invoke the DP.