Death Penalty

[bennyboy]

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.

You can't be serious.  How is releasing a wrongly jailed 90 years old matter better than wrongly executing a 90 year old man?  It is better because you didn't kill him.  Fuxxake, what a stupid question.

Boru

Are we talking about moral absolutes, or about the greater good?

Consider the cost of sustaining someone who almost for sure committed serial killings:
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/newspaper-inv...h-row-cost

A million dollars per person.


Now look at convicted criminals, especially those convicted of aggravated assault, manslaughter, etc., and consider what that money could mean.  Let's say a truly staggering 20% of death-row inmates didn't commit their crime.  If you execute 10 men, you save 10 million dollars, at the cost of two "innocent" men (quotes because they almost always have long histories of violent or criminal activity anyway).  Now, consider that actually about 4% are eventually found innocent of the crimes for which they were executed, and we are looking at more like 25 million dollars for one wrong death.

Could you save more 1 civilian life by putting that 25 million dollars into better monitoring of paroled convicts, or rehabilitation programs, or better resources for police, or even just improved health care in lower-income areas? I don't know the answer, but I strongly suspect it's a yes.

So in terms of guaranteeing indiviuals the maximum chance of eventually getting justice, execution is wrong. But in terms of preventing the greatest possible number of innocent deaths, it seems to me that execution, EVEN WITH some mistakes, might still represent the numerical greater good.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Purposefully killing an innocent person is murder. Accidentally killing someone is manslaughter. We don't like Yahweh killing innocent people because the most common reason he kills people is "they're not worshiping me enough". Killing someone you don't know is innocent is bad, but it doesn't make you evil.

When you accommodate a system that you know -- that you know -- will occasionally have a false positive, saying "oh well, that's the price we pay" is wrong. It's not the price we pay. It's the price that sorry sonofabitch pays. But you know what? No man is an island. If a clod of the continent is washed off, Europe is lessened.

An abrogation of one man's rights is very clearly an abrogation of all our rights, because what may be done to one man legitimately in the name of justice, imperfect as it is, can be done to all of us.

If I was the one on death row, about to be killed for a crime I didn't commit, I'd be sad that I was killed unfairly, and worried about what the real killer is going to do. I wouldn't suddenly change my stance on the death penalty itsself.

Really? You'd still feel that the death penalty was apt? You wouldn't feel that it was wrongly applied in your case?

You'd be happy to sacrifice your life to an ideal system of justice that could not be attained, but still demanded sacrificial victims -- even yourself?

Wow. That is ideology run amok.

That quote from a bishop loses a bit of its meaning when the guy's ideas come from a book where killing people is the most common punishment for anyone who steps out of line.

I wasn't addressing CL's quote at all. I was asking you to put yourself in the chair and seeing how you might rationalize your own wrongful killing. You've done something of a job, not that I pretend to understand it.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Nobody has mentioned money yet.

Why should the state feel compelled to support a mass murderer for maybe 50 or 60 years, at a cost of many hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of dollars, when a blindfold and $10 worth of bullets could eliminate the problem in about 10 seconds?

The appellate process in America, de jure, means that the death penalty is more expensive than life in prison, given the average number of years on Death Row.

[Chad32]

If someone skinned women alive and force fed their meat to their children, I'd say the crime is worthy of death. If I was wrongfully convicted of that, I'd still say the crime is worthy of death. I just wish I hadn't been convicted of it.

[AFTT47]

"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.

Chad, there is no evidence that the death penalty deters anyone from anything. Few people who kill someone or commit any other horrible things give it a lot of thought.

You speak a lot of what a murderer "deserves." This is revenge-speak. It is a product of pure emotion and is something we must rise above. In no situation does hurting someone else enrich the rest of us. Taking satisfaction in the pain of another is depraved. It is natural but it's wrong. Trust intellect over emotion. We need to do this if we are to become better than what we are.

[Ravenshire]

You can't be serious.  How is releasing a wrongly jailed 90 years old matter better than wrongly executing a 90 year old man?  It is better because you didn't kill him.  Fuxxake, what a stupid question.

Boru

Are we talking about moral absolutes, or about the greater good?

Consider the cost of sustaining someone who almost for sure committed serial killings:
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/newspaper-inv...h-row-cost

A million dollars per person.


Now look at convicted criminals, especially those convicted of aggravated assault, manslaughter, etc., and consider what that money could mean.  Let's say a truly staggering 20% of death-row inmates didn't commit their crime.  If you execute 10 men, you save 10 million dollars, at the cost of two "innocent" men (quotes because they almost always have long histories of violent or criminal activity anywah).  Could you save 2 civilian lives by putting that 10 million dollars into better monitoring of paroled convicts, or rehabilitation programs, or better resources for police?

I don't know the answer, but I suspect it's a yes.

Benny, you're applying the money spent on capital punishment appeals to inmates that are not facing capital punishment. I believe it's been stated more than once in this thread alone that the appeals process is the reason capital punishment is so expensive. Your comparing apples to oranges.

[Thumpalumpacus]

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.

How is it better than killing them?

Perhaps because they're still alive to see proper justice served? Perhaps because even though they've had years stolen, they haven't had breath stolen? Perhaps because instead of being buried in a prison yard, they can bequeath to their heirs the wrongful-imprisonment award so that even if they cannot themselves get the full expression of life, they can do what all men strive to do, to provide for their families?

Pull your head out of the clouds.

[Thumpalumpacus]

If someone skinned women alive and force fed their meat to their children, I'd say the crime is worthy of death. If I was wrongfully convicted of that, I'd still say the crime is worthy of death. I just wish I hadn't been convicted of it.

And if worms had machine guns, birds wouldn't fuck with them.

[Chad32]

We really are on totally different wavelengths here.

This happens every time. I need to stop replying to death penalty topics, because there's always someone vehemently against my views.

[Ravenshire]

Pull your head out of the clouds.

Clouds?