Death Penalty: Pt XXIV

The Atheist said:
I've always had the opinion that one is either for or against capital punishment, and that the number of victims or manner of killing, is irrelevant.

Yet, there are two separate cases at the moment where people seem to have drawn a line that some crimes are horrific enough to warrant the death penalty as an exception - the ISIS Poms and Japanese cult leader.

Those cases have been enough for people to say things like:



Lots of people are cold-blooded murderers, so where is the line drawn?

Note: if you're pro-capital punishment, your views are irrelevant, so feel free to leave them in your head. I'm interested in finding out where the line is that means people who don't support the death penalty will allow for its use.

Norway seems to have no problem with the worst mass-murderer this century not being put to death, and neither do I.

The difference is stark: if the ISIS Poms are executed, they will become martyrs to their cause, while Brievik alive but behind bars is a laughing-stock.
Click to expand...
It occurs to me that there an argument to the effect of, "some folks are just too dangerous to let out." It doesn't seem like we can reform serial killers for instance. That being said, there is an argument that the death penalty is more humane than life in prison. I don't think its without merit but I don't fully buy it either. Regardless, there is a situation where someone might be for the death penalty in come cases but not others. Mass murder as opposed to murdering a few people is a similar situation. Murder intended to terrorize in order to affect political change vs random killing is another situation were a person might make a "rational" choice to kill. So might be deterred by the death penalty.
 
The death rate remains ONE.

They are going to die anyway. Way not sooner than later for a very small number?
 
The Atheist said:
I've always had the opinion that one is either for or against capital punishment, and that the number of victims or manner of killing, is irrelevant.

Yet, there are two separate cases at the moment where people seem to have drawn a line that some crimes are horrific enough to warrant the death penalty as an exception - the ISIS Poms and Japanese cult leader.

Those cases have been enough for people to say things like:



Lots of people are cold-blooded murderers, so where is the line drawn?

Note: if you're pro-capital punishment, your views are irrelevant, so feel free to leave them in your head. I'm interested in finding out where the line is that means people who don't support the death penalty will allow for its use.

Norway seems to have no problem with the worst mass-murderer this century not being put to death, and neither do I.

The difference is stark: if the ISIS Poms are executed, they will become martyrs to their cause, while Brievik alive but behind bars is a laughing-stock.
Click to expand...



If the criminal is leader of a personality cult that has active followers and is captured and tried by a state that is weak enough to be threatened by them, then I think the death penalty is possibly the least bad option.

ISIS fighters in the US? No. Leader of the Lord's Resistance Army? Probably.
 
I am against capital punishment in all circumstances, no matter the criminal or the crime.

For me, the germane question is not whether the person "deserves to live" but whether we deserve to kill them. We don't, IMO.
 
A side note, according to Death Penalty Information Center it is more expensive to try death penalty cases and keep people on death row than it is to sentence them to life without parole. That's in the U.S., don't know about the OP situations.

In my state there was no "natural life" sentence; parole was always possible after 25 years, so if you wanted to make sure someone never got out it had to be the death penalty. There was one case where a guy in for grand theft auto ended up killing a guard an another inmate. I could totally see the death penalty for him because imprisoning him didn't stop him from killing other people - it was more a "mad dog" situation, he simply had to be put down because he was too dangerous. Otherwise I am against it.

Peripherally - GITMO has costs more than $6 billion. Annual cost per detainee, $10 million. This per Human Rights First. That's nuts.
 
I actually think the modern Catholic Church got it right on this one. The death penalty is justified when the person is a severe danger to others and could not effectively be incapacitated otherwise. And in modern society, that means it is probably never justified.

So historically, I think it could have been justified in the case of Napoleon, for example. He was defeated after leading France to wage aggressive war against other countries. If he had been executed instead of being exiled to Elba, many thousands of lives would have been saved in the future. France had a recent history of revolutions, Napoleon had a widespread following, and they could not guarantee they could keep him exiled or imprisoned.

But in recent times, such people could safely be imprisoned in other countries. So I don't think it's justified for even the Nuremburg defendants, as the victorious Allies certainly could have imprisoned them outside Germany and there was not a realistic possibility that Nazis would come to power in one of their countries. Not that Nazis ever reestablished power in Germany, of course, but that was at least a conceivable possibility right after World War II.

But if such a state is unwilling to relinquish the person to another, stable country for whatever reason, the death penalty may be the least bad solution. For example, Mexico showed that they could not effectively keep El Chapo imprisoned. If they were unwilling to extradite him to the United States, it could be justified for them to execute him.
 
Minoosh said:
A side note, according to Death Penalty Information Center it is more expensive to try death penalty cases and keep people on death row than it is to sentence them to life without parole. That's in the U.S., don't know about the OP situations.

In my state there was no "natural life" sentence; parole was always possible after 25 years, so if you wanted to make sure someone never got out it had to be the death penalty. There was one case where a guy in for grand theft auto ended up killing a guard an another inmate. I could totally see the death penalty for him because imprisoning him didn't stop him from killing other people - it was more a "mad dog" situation, he simply had to be put down because he was too dangerous. Otherwise I am against it.

Peripherally - GITMO has costs more than $6 billion. Annual cost per detainee, $10 million. This per Human Rights First. That's nuts.
Click to expand...

What's nuts about it?

Justice is not a question of money. It's probably much cheaper to shoot convicted felons at the close of their trial, and promptly cremate the body in a furnace attached to the courthouse. But it's probably not justice.

Expense isn't an argument against the death penalty, any more than it's an argument against any punishment that you believe is just.
 
theprestige said:
What's nuts about it?

Justice is not a question of money. It's probably much cheaper to shoot convicted felons at the close of their trial, and promptly cremate the body in a furnace attached to the courthouse. But it's probably not justice.

Expense isn't an argument against the death penalty, any more than it's an argument against any punishment that you believe is just.
Click to expand...

Of course expense is an issue in public policy. It's not the only issue, but it's an issue. Justice is public policy. How many times do people say, "I don't want to keep that guy alive at taxpayer expense"? Turns out it's cheaper than killing them. Or trying to kill them, more accurately.

With GITMO I am in awe of the scale of the thing. $10 million a year? Supermax stateside is $78,000. Someone is making a mint on that place. I'm sure the figure reflects fixed costs and the per-capita is inflated due to the fact that there are only 40 prisoners there, but there's another issue: The Supermax folks have actually been through a clearly defined judicial process, while Guantanamo just seems to be a POW camp/torture facility. Of 775 detained most have been released without charge. I have no idea if "justice" has been served at all.
 
My standard for who would be deserving of the death penalty is theoretically pretty low. Pretty much any premeditated murder would do it.

As a practical matter I am against the Death Penalty. Way too many people have been exonerated of capital murder charges for me to be comfortable with it. The selection of who will or will not be executed in a system with the death penalty would be decided by fallible humans.

The case that finally did it for me was Joseph Amrine, where, after everyone who had testified against him recanted and there was no longer any evidence against him, was still waiting on death row to be executed. The DA still pushed for an execution date, and argued in front of the Missouri Supreme Court that if a man had exhausted all of his legal appeals, then he should be executed even if we know for a fact that he is innocent...
 
Minoosh said:
Of course expense is an issue in public policy. It's not the only issue, but it's an issue. Justice is public policy. How many times do people say, "I don't want to keep that guy alive at taxpayer expense"? Turns out it's cheaper than killing them. Or trying to kill them, more accurately.

With GITMO I am in awe of the scale of the thing. $10 million a year? Supermax stateside is $78,000. Someone is making a mint on that place. I'm sure the figure reflects fixed costs and the per-capita is inflated due to the fact that there are only 40 prisoners there, but there's another issue: The Supermax folks have actually been through a clearly defined judicial process, while Guantanamo just seems to be a POW camp/torture facility. Of 775 detained most have been released without charge. I have no idea if "justice" has been served at all.
Click to expand...

You do know that Gitmo is more than a brig. The brig is only part of the Navy base.
I suspect the $10m/year is for the whole base.
 
When you read unbelievably cruel stories like that of the BTK Killer or Skylar Deleon, in the moment you think this individual should have been shot on the spot.

But the law is often blind or at least not able to process every circumstance and if we're gonna keep it that way, to be on the safe side, I oppose the death penalty.
 
If you are truly about extracting punishment for heinous crimes, killing someone cuts short that opportunity. Once they are dead, they are dead, and no more punishment can be administered. In effect, you have released them from all further punishment, forever.

So if you are genuinely in search of revenge, keep them alive... Even the most horrible horror-movie villain knows that.
 
casebro said:
You do know that Gitmo is more than a brig. The brig is only part of the Navy base.
I suspect the $10m/year is for the whole base.
Click to expand...
Take a look at the links; I am far from an expert. I think it is probably amortization of capital expenditure for the prison part alone but I really didn't dive that deep.

Triangulating with a different source (Wiki) I did the math a different way, and came up with an average cost of $7 million (total) per prisoner. At any rate a lot, without a really clear idea of how these releases were adjudicated. It's hard (for me anyway) to determine if justice was served.
 
Diablo said:
Once you allow judicial murder for one crime, it's a short step to allow it for another, and another, and so on, so don't allow it all.
Click to expand...

ahhell said:
It occurs to me that there an argument to the effect of, "some folks are just too dangerous to let out." It doesn't seem like we can reform serial killers for instance. That being said, there is an argument that the death penalty is more humane than life in prison. I don't think its without merit but I don't fully buy it either. Regardless, there is a situation where someone might be for the death penalty in come cases but not others. Mass murder as opposed to murdering a few people is a similar situation. Murder intended to terrorize in order to affect political change vs random killing is another situation were a person might make a "rational" choice to kill. So might be deterred by the death penalty.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

TragicMonkey said:
You asked for people who don't support the death penalty to explain why they support the death penalty...
Click to expand...

No. If you read it carefully, I'm asking for people who are not 100% against capital punishment to air how they arrive at a dividing line between using it and not.

theprestige said:
He wants us pro-capital-punishment folks to keep our mouths shut, as an actual debate about capital punishment would distract from the clever nuance of his message.
Click to expand...

Nope - I don't even have a message, and as far as pro-capital punishment people, what they think has no interest to me all, just as I have no interest in what antivaxers or flat earthers think.

QUOTE=Duncanthrax;12374310]I actually think the modern Catholic Church got it right on this one. The death penalty is justified when the person is a severe danger to others and could not effectively be incapacitated otherwise. And in modern society, that means it is probably never justified.[/QUOTE]

That position isn't supported by anything the bloke whose name they use for their religion ever allegedly said.

Unless you're Mike Pence, who is, of course, a man completely without sin.
 
There is no line, for me. Partly because tu quoque is not a valid argument, partly because death penalties must sometimes be inflicted in error and no recompense is possible, and partly because a lifetime of captivity with no hope of any meaning or joy seems a far more effective and serious punishment than a quick, clean ending.

Dave
 
Minoosh said:
Of course expense is an issue in public policy. It's not the only issue, but it's an issue. Justice is public policy. How many times do people say, "I don't want to keep that guy alive at taxpayer expense"? Turns out it's cheaper than killing them. Or trying to kill them, more accurately.

With GITMO I am in awe of the scale of the thing. $10 million a year? Supermax stateside is $78,000. Someone is making a mint on that place. I'm sure the figure reflects fixed costs and the per-capita is inflated due to the fact that there are only 40 prisoners there, but there's another issue: The Supermax folks have actually been through a clearly defined judicial process, while Guantanamo just seems to be a POW camp/torture facility. Of 775 detained most have been released without charge. I have no idea if "justice" has been served at all.
Click to expand...
I'm also in awe of those big numbers you cite. As I'm not the taxpayer who has to cough up the dough, I never looked into it, but now that you cite them I'm reminded of another issue.

When Obama was first elected, one of his promises was to close down Gitmo. It never happened, and in my recollection, when that point was brought up, the defence was that Congress wouldn't earmark money to do so. I'm now at a loss why that would be: surely, relocating Gitmo prisoners elsewhere or releasing them would have been cheaper than keeping them there at the cost of 7-10 millions per year?

(mods: if you think this Gitmo discussion is a derail, please split it off into a separate thread).
 
The Atheist said:
Note: if you're pro-capital punishment, your views are irrelevant, so feel free to leave them in your head. I'm interested in finding out where the line is that means people who don't support the death penalty will allow for its use.
Click to expand...

If you are pro-death penalty in some cases, then you are pro-death penalty.

I don't think anyone is pro-death penalty in all cases.
 
The Atheist said:
Note: if you're pro-capital punishment, your views are irrelevant, so feel free to leave them in your head. I'm interested in finding out where the line is that means people who don't support the death penalty will allow for its use.
Click to expand...

The Atheist said:
No. If you read it carefully, I'm asking for people who are not 100% against capital punishment to air how they arrive at a dividing line between using it and not.
Click to expand...
You're not making any sense. Either one is against the death penalty, or for it. If for it, there will be a range of crimes for which one believes it should apply, but it's unlikely that there's anyone who thinks it appropriate for every crime, so there's always going to be a dividing line. Someone who says they're normally against it, but would make exceptions is in fact in favour of the death penalty, albeit for a small number of cases.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom