Death Penalty

[saltinespike]

Since this topic has not been active lately, and the fact that I was not able to be a part of it, I am bringing it back up.

The Death Penalty.

I think that it is quite justified and quite simple: you kill someone and we'll kill you back. We are justified because you (someone with the death penalty) were unjustified in what you did. Of course, this is not restricted to killing someone. It all depends on the situation.

But whenever you break the rules, you can always expect a punishment which leads back to "We are justified because you (someone with the death penalty) were unjustified in what you did."

What's your opinion?

[CoffeeSaint]

Quote by: saltinespike Since this topic has not been active lately, and the fact that I was not able to be a part of it, I am bringing it back up. The Death Penalty. I think that it is quite justified and quite simple: you kill someone and we'll kill you back. We are justified because you (someone with the death penalty) were unjustified in what you did. Of course, this is not restricted to killing someone. It all depends on the situation. But whenever you break the rules, you can always expect a punishment which leads back to "We are justified because you (someone with the death penalty) were unjustified in what you did." What's your opinion?

When empirical evidence shows that the conviction of a murderer is always correct, then the death penalty might be acceptable. It would still be pointless and petty and serve no good purpose, but it might be acceptable. As long as innocent people are mistakenly convicted, the death penalty is murder no less than any of the original crimes we kill them for. You put it exactly right: all we are doing is "killing you back," and sometimes we're killing them first, since they may not be guilty. Methinks that moral high ground is crumbling under you, there.

[DEEJ85]

Do two wrongs make a right?

What is the justification for killing someone who doesn't want to die?

because a person kills someone else does it mean that we can kill him without it being murder?

[Scribbler1]

Quote by: DEEJ85 What is the justification for killing someone who doesn't want to die?

The fact that the murderer didn't give the same choice to his victim comes to mind.

[DEEJ85]

So by doing the same thing to him, makes everything better? Its just vengeance and emotion.

should emotion be our sole reason for killing someone? perhaps we should be more discriminate in choosing who lives and dies. maybe we should use something more concrete such as reason or logic to determine someone else's fate.

its the same idea of hitting someone else because they hit you.

maybe we should make all punishments fit the crime.

[saltinespike]

What would you suggest?

[Scribbler1]

Quote by: DEEJ85 So by doing the same thing to him, makes everything better? Its just vengeance and emotion.

Not everything one does to another is revenge, for one thing. And it is SOCIETY which executes certain criminals, not individuals.
People have decided that some crimes are SO bad that the perpetrators are not to be allowed to get off with anything less than the same as what they gave their victims. And lethal injection is a LOT more humane than what some of these degenerate killers did to their victims. We are not talking littering or unpaid income taxes.
Premeditated, first degree murder is what people are executed for.

should emotion be our sole reason for killing someone?

Who said it's emotion? I could see that feeling if the victims friends and family all served on the murderer's jury, but that's not the case. The system takes great pains to make sure the jury has no emotional connection to the case and the judge is professionally bound to be as impartial as possible. So where is this emotion?

perhaps we should be more discriminate in choosing who lives and dies. maybe we should use something more concrete such as reason or logic to determine someone else's fate.

We are, and we do. We discriminate according to the severity of the crime, the setting and the circumstances. There are a LOT of murderers sitting in prison. Society does not kill them all.

its the same idea of hitting someone else because they hit you. maybe we should make all punishments fit the crime.

Hitting someone back who, without provocation hits you first DOESN'T fit the crime? Please explain the logic behind that.

[CoffeeSaint]

Maybe this is obnoxious, but ever since I started discussing capital punishment here, I've wondered about something:

Apart from the religious answer, what exactly is justice?

If there are not cosmic karma scales to be balanced, what is the point of making the punishment fit the crime? What do we accomplish? A deterrent, I get; but what do we get if we get justice?

[Scribbler1]

Without Googling a definition, my take on justice is it is simply payment in kind for a certain specific offense to another. It is seen as a kind of deterrent but I think it's more equalization of what is done to you relative to what you did to someone else.

If you brutality slaughter someone and his family, spending the rest of your life in prison isn't really justice. As much of a hell-hole a prison may be, the human animal has the ability to "get used to" even the worst conditions and as such his life is a LOT better than what he did to his victims.

[saltinespike]

Well, technically, the definition is:

justice:

1a: the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments
b: JUDGE
c: the administration of law; especially : the establishment or determination of rights according to the rules of law or equity

2a: the quality of being just, impartial, or fair
b(1): the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action
(2): conformity to this principle or ideal: RIGHTEOUSNESS
c: the quality of conforming to law

3: conformity to truth, fact, or reason: CORRECTNESS

Basically answers your question, though I don't think you meant to define it in a literal sense. Oh well.

[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 just flat out retarded. And all you that say that punishment should be dealt out, what exactly is the point of punishment? What does it do, especially if the punishment is death, in which case it's completely pointless. Isn't rotting in a jail cell for all of your life more punishing then being quickly and painlessly killed? 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.

[CoffeeSaint]

Quote by: Scribbler1 Without Googling a definition, my take on justice is it is simply payment in kind for a certain specific offense to another. It is seen as a kind of deterrent but I think it's more equalization of what is done to you relative to what you did to someone else. If you brutality slaughter someone and his family, spending the rest of your life in prison isn't really justice. As much of a hell-hole a prison may be, the human animal has the ability to "get used to" even the worst conditions and as such his life is a LOT better than what he did to his victims.

That's what I mean; how can any action "equalize" another action? The victims of the murder are dead; unless we accept a theistic view or karma or spiritual good and evil, what exactly are we equalizing? What difference does it make if the punishment is not as bad as what the criminal did to his victims? Why does it matter, if we don't adhere to the idea of heaven and hell?

[CoffeeSaint]

Quote by: saltinespike Well, technically, the definition is: justice: 1a: the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments b: JUDGE c: the administration of law; especially : the establishment or determination of rights according to the rules of law or equity

Sure, justice in terms of carrying out the dictates of the law; that one I agree with, and see as a good thing. But if the law dictates life imprisonment for murder, then that would be justice -- it doesn't have to be the death penalty to be this definition of justice.

Quote by: saltinespike 2a: the quality of being just, impartial, or fair b(1): the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action (2): conformity to this principle or ideal: RIGHTEOUSNESS c: the quality of conforming to law

Impartial and fair, again, fine, though I actually think that leads us away from the death penalty; hard to kill someone impartially. On some level, the idea of punishment has to be wrapped up in emotion, either anger, disgust, or, the next definition: righteousness. That's where I run into trouble with the idea of meting out justice: without a higher power, there is no objective measure of morally right and morally wrong -- therefore there is no righteousness. If it is absolutely wrong to kill someone, then it is wrong for the state to kill someone, which eliminates the death penalty from consideration; the only way we can countenance killing someone is if we have the moral high ground,k if our motives are absolutely right and their motives were absolutely wrong -- if we are righteous and they are not. But can we be righteous if we are defining who is righteous and who is not? In a morally relativistic world, can anybody be that superior to another, that we can create justice simply because we call it such?

Quote by: saltinespike 3: conformity to truth, fact, or reason: CORRECTNESS Basically answers your question, though I don't think you meant to define it in a literal sense. Oh well.

The last one doesn't apply.

This definition answered my question, but not my objection. I don't believe in god, and more importantly, our laws don't believe in god -- but without god, how can we be righteous? If we are not righteous, how can we create justice?

If there is no justice, what is the death penalty?

[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.

[Scribbler1]

Quote by: CoffeeSaint That's what I mean; how can any action "equalize" another action? The victims of the murder are dead; unless we accept a theistic view or karma or spiritual good and evil, what exactly are we equalizing? What difference does it make if the punishment is not as bad as what the criminal did to his victims? Why does it matter, if we don't adhere to the idea of heaven and hell?

As I said to gw120, it matters to the point that society removes the trash within it. The equalization I refer to is pretty simple. In some cases the crime removes the lives of victims in such a shocking way that the only way to achieve "justice" is to remove from the perpetrator what he himself has taken.
I'm not speaking from a theistic viewpoint or otherwise. My argument is strictly unemotional and pragmatic. The relative (and unquantifiable) worth of a human life or unknown potential or any other intangible concept doesn't enter into the point I'm making. There are a few crimes so bad that the only thing to do is to remove that person permanently. Some people are, for whatever reasons, just plain BAD, and society does not owe anything to those people when they commit certain kinds of outrageous crimes.

[Jack]

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.

I have no problem with the DP in circumstances like that.

society removes the trash within it

While I don't advocate for the death penalty, I do allow that there are times it's appropriate. Murder is a willful rejection of the rules that maintain a peaceful society. When a person murders another, they are showing an absolute disregard for human life. That makes them unfit for living in our society. Once we could exile them. That's no longer an option. So we exile them to a place from which no one has ever come back to harm one of us again. It's not a balancing of the scales, it's not revenge. It's removing from our midst those who show an absolute lack of respect for other human beings. There is nowhere to safely store such human waste. It has to be eliminated.

[Slevin57]

I have always been of the opinion that sitting and thinking about what you did, is far worse then being killed.

Now if they happen to be enjoying Prison by any means, now that needs to be fixed. Prison is not correction, it's punishment.

[saltinespike]

I also think that we saw a bit of truth in all of the 17th and 18th century death penalty stuff. It scared the crap out of people. "If I preach a religion other than the government, I get beheaded?" That WILL discourage people from doing that crime, though I can't back that because we have never fully abolished it, so I have nothing to base it off of.

I believe that contributes to why they do it.

[Scribbler1]

Quote by: Slevin57 I have always been of the opinion that sitting and thinking about what you did, is far worse then being killed.

Perhaps, but then the argument against the death penalty becomes moot. Anti DP advocates seem to like to focus on how cruel the DP is, so saying imprisonment is WORSE kind of nullifies that argument, wouldn't you say.
Besides, what good will it do for a prisoner who would have qualified for death to sit and stew about his crime. He's never getting out of prison anyway.

Now if they happen to be enjoying Prison by any means, now that needs to be fixed. Prison is not correction, it's punishment.

Sometimes it's neither. Look up Richard Speck and check out the last years of his life in prison.

[Slevin57]

I think it could go either way. It all depends on the person.

We comitt people to death to ensure a greater sense of justice for the victim's.

We decided at some point that some crimes were so grievous the only fitting punishment was death.

This is a bit of a reversal, as 200 years ago, people were executed for very petty crimes by our standards today. That's why I don't think it's about punishment. It's about that sense of justice.

Now usually you don't' get executed 30 days after you have been sentenced. You sit there for 5, 10, sometimes 15 years before your executed. If you really didn't comitt your crime, I think that's plenty of time to get yourself exonerated.

I'm not too familiar with the death penalty. How many cases, if any, was the person found not guilty after being killed?