I'm talking about jailing a 20 year old, then releasing him at 90. There is no getting those 70 years back. no amount of money you give him is going to be the equivalent to getting those 70 years back.

This always turns into a heated subject. I think I'm being reasonable, but even then some people have a problem with it. It just goes to show how different people can be.

Quote:I'm talking about jailing a 20 year old, then releasing him at 90. There is no getting those 70 years back. no amount of money you give him is going to be the equivalent to getting those 70 years back.

I know what you're talking about, and I don't understand how you don't see the difference between releasing an innocent man after 70 years and killing an innocent man after 70 years.

Boru

I don't. He spent his life in a cage. You're just going to let him out, hand him a wad of cash, and say go find somewhere to exist for the next few years until you die of natural causes. I guess it depends on what you think is scarier. dying earlier, or spending your life in a cage.

(August 30, 2015 at 6:20 pm)Chad32 Wrote:

(August 30, 2015 at 5:30 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: First off, is isn't in any way a loaded question.  You intimated earlier that as long as the number of wrongfully executed people continues to decrease, you're OK with it.

I readily grant that people killed by the State is more often in accord with the law than not.  But so what?  As long as ANY innocent people are executed, the system is horribly, horribly flawed, and MUST be thrown out.  The 'occasionally something bad happens' isn't like getting shortchanged at the grocer's or having your car recalled, it is the taking of a human life.

But it's actually very easy to 'not have anything less than perfection'.  Simply stop executing people.  If you don't execute anyone, you'll never execute an innocent person.  A lot of countries have done this, and it seems to work.

Boru

Addendum:  What Snake said.  If you lock someone up unjustly, you can make amends.  You can apologize, you can give them back their freedom, you can pay them large sums of money.  How do you make amends for killing someone you shouldn't have?

If you never jail anyone, you'll never jail an innocent person. But we must do something to people who break the law, and sometimes we get it wrong. If someone spends the rest of their life in jail, and we find out they were innocent, but they're too old to do anything with it anymore, how is that better than killing them? You can give them money, but you can't give them time.

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved."
~Benjamin Franklin

So, Chad, at least one of the people who helped create our judicial system seems to disagree with your attitude of "a few is ok."

We're talking about the potential death of people innocent of a crime, a punishment that is more expensive than incarceration and has no compelling argument that it deters the crimes it's used to punish (a point you've ignored once already).

I understand some people feel a need for revenge state sanctioned murder but I'll never understand that need.

(August 30, 2015 at 8:10 pm)SnakeOilWarrior Wrote:

(August 30, 2015 at 6:20 pm)Chad32 Wrote: If you never jail anyone, you'll never jail an innocent person. But we must do something to people who break the law, and sometimes we get it wrong. If someone spends the rest of their life in jail, and we find out they were innocent, but they're too old to do anything with it anymore, how is that better than killing them? You can give them money, but you can't give them time.

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved."
~Benjamin Franklin

So, Chad, at least one of the people who helped create our judicial system seems to disagree with your attitude of "a few is ok."

We're talking about the potential death of people innocent of a crime, a punishment that is more expensive than incarceration and has no compelling argument that it deters the crimes it's used to punish (a point you've ignored once already).

I understand some people feel a need for revenge state sanctioned murder but I'll never understand that need.

He would rather live in a city with 100 psychos running around free than know one innocent person died there. Why?

I have never argued that it deters crime. I don't care if it does or not, especially if they only did it extremely rarely. The idea is that it keeps this person from torturing children to death because they flirted with the opposite sex again.

If you consider it mere revenge, or state sanctioned murder, ok. I don't know what to tell you to change your mind. Personally I've read too many stories about people who were so off the wall about the messed up stuff that they did, that I would deem them worthy of death. A quick one, which would be much more merciful than the guilty deserves.

(August 30, 2015 at 8:18 pm)Chad32 Wrote: He would rather live in a city with 100 psychos running around free than know one innocent person died there. Why?

Because it would have been by the hands of those who are supposed to protect us and promote justice and peace.

(August 30, 2015 at 8:18 pm)Chad32 Wrote: He would rather live in a city with 100 psychos running around free than know one innocent person died there. Why?

This is why you fail.

My thoughts on the death penalty come down to three main points; 

• Killing people outside of a life and death situation (and you know what I'm on about) is wrong. 
  
• The system is imperfect, and even if I thought the death penalty was appropriate I wouldn't condone a process that would take the lives of innocent people. 
  
• In my opinion, as one who doesn't believe in the afterlife, I think it would be a greater miscarriage of justice to allow someone to escape their deeds via death. If you murdered, raped, and mutilated people you shouldn't be given the release of oblivion. That's far too easy. 
  

Maybe they don't deserve a quick, almost painless death. But we're better than them, and torturing them serves no constructive end. As tmpting as it would be to do unto them as they have done unto others.

I didn't mean torture, more like life long imprisonment and service to the community.