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Capital punishment

Stellafane said:
I believe some people deserve to die, but putting someone to death is too big a decision for society to make. Thus on the whole, I am against the death penalty.

On the other hand, if a father catches someone in the act of raping his daughter, I have little problem if the father administers the death penalty on the spot.
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And then what should be done with the violent offender murderer father? Would you have a problem if the rapist's brother decided that he should die too? and so on and so on.
 
Rasmus said:
So?

You might.

I might.
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I don't know about you, but here we can't take action against somebody unless they actually commit a crime.

Someone who has already killed might not do it again.

Now what?
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But he might. And since he has already proved that he is willing to, better be safe than sorry. Why do you want to give murderers and rapists a chance to murder and rape again?
 
dtugg said:
Doesn't prove anything.

In fact, I don't think that life without parole is applied nearly enough in the US. If I were in charge I would make it the mandatory minimum for first degree murder and forcible rape among others.
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So you're willing to hedge your bets that you and no one you know will ever have sex with someone who then regrets it and decides to accuse you/them of rape?

There is also the problem of mistaken identity. In college I went to a speech about how unreliable eye witness testimony is (even when the witness is not deliberately lying, they were just mistaken) and about all these various wrongly acused rapists. Frankly, a lot of times it was a case of a scared white woman who couldn't tell big black men apart. They had speakers there, a woman and a man. The man had spent over a decade in prison after she had mistakenly identified him as her rapist. Years later, after the advent of DNA analysis, the Innocense Project was able to use DNA evidence to establish that the woman had ACTUALLY been raped by a known serial rapist, not the man she accused. It was really sad, because the woman talked about how she has a hard time living with herself knowing that her mistake made this man lose over a decade of his life....that's why she now goes around the country with him talking about the dangers of being too reliant on eye witness testimony.

Imagine how hard it would have been for her to live with herself if he'd been executed.

I agree with others, I simply don't trust the state and society to decide who to execute. I've lived in really really racist areas of the deep south before, where pretty much if a black guy is acused of a crime, then the fact that he did it is a foregone conclusion.

When I lived in a poor black neighborhood, at one point I woke in the middle of the night to find a man in my home. I screamed, my male room mate emerged from his bedroom, and the intruder fled. I called the police, telling them there was a man in my home, not telling them he fled. They showed up SEVEN HOURS later (the joys of depending on police to protect you while living in a black neighborhood). When the cops showed up, they first off fell all over themselves apologizing for their lateness when they saw me and my roommates were white students...then they LITERALLY grabbed the FIRST black guy who they saw on the street and brought him up to me and kept asking "Is this the guy? Are you sure? Are you sure it isn't him?" They held that poor man for like ten minutes trying to get me to say that he did it. The only thing he was guilty of was being the first black man spotted by the cops in an area where the crime had occurred.
 
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dtugg said:
Maybe it doesn't lead to less murders than in countries that are soft on criminals. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't lead to less criminals than if we were soft on criminals.

Once a person has proved they are willing to murder or rape, I see no reason to ever give him an opportunity to do it again. Why do you?
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The first part of your argument seems to be 'you can't prove that it doesn't' which I admit to. However, do you not think its worth looking into and considering? Do you feel the US is an uncontrollable special case that needs to kill a portion of its population each year just to keep the peace?

To be honest I care less about what happens to that individual than i do about the broader society. If we could have less murders and rapes by giving murderers Ferraris and rapists holidays in the Bahamas then I might be willing to go for that.

I might feel a bit put upon that a rapist was getting a reward for doing a bad thing but my reward would be that I would be less likely to get raped or murdered.

'Give these scum what they deserve' might be an understandable emotional response but if that just leads to more murders and rapes then what good is it doing?

The 'War on Crime' seems to be going the same way as the 'War on Drugs' and the 'War on Terrorism'
 
dtugg said:
People locked up forever (or dead people) can't go around killing or raping people.
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Unless they're kept in solitary confinement the whole time, people in prison can still go around killing and/or raping people.

Last of the Fraggles said:
In a country with the death penalty and 'life means life' sentences a proportion of murderers and rapists at any one time will be either dead or in jail forever. And yet it doesn't result in fewer murders or rapes. Which must mean that either murderers and rapists in these countries are more highly active (more murders/rapes per murderer/rapist) or there are more murderers/rapists in these countries.

So you either have worse criminals or more criminals than countries without the death penalty/long sentences. Now is that just correlation or is there some link between harsh penalties/executions and higher levels of violent crime?
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It's the guns. The mere presence of guns is enough to turn ordinary people into homicidal maniacs. When we execute one murder that just frees up the gun to corrupt another innocent person and seduce them into a life of crime.
 
Schrodinger's Cat said:
So you're willing to hedge your bets that you and no one you know will ever have sex with someone who then regrets it and decides to accuse you/them of rape?

There is also the problem of mistaken identity. In college I went to a speech about how unreliable eye witness testimony is (even when the witness is not deliberately lying, they were just mistaken) and about all these various wrongly acused rapists. Frankly, a lot of times it was a case of a scared white woman who couldn't tell big black men apart. They had speakers there, a woman and a man. The man had spent over a decade in prison after she had mistakenly identified him as her rapist. Years later, after the advent of DNA analysis, the Innocense Project was able to use DNA evidence to establish that the woman had ACTUALLY been raped by a known serial rapist, not the man she accused. It was really sad, because the woman talked about how she has a hard time living with herself knowing that her mistake made this man lose over a decade of his life....that's why she now goes around the country with him talking about the dangers of being too reliant on eye witness testimony.
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That's simply an argument against using only the eyewitness testimony of the victim to convict a rapist. And one that I would agree with.
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
The first part of your argument seems to be 'you can't prove that it doesn't' which I admit to. However, do you not think its worth looking into and considering? Do you feel the US is an uncontrollable special case that needs to kill a portion of its population each year just to keep the peace?

To be honest I care less about what happens to that individual than i do about the broader society. If we could have less murders and rapes by giving murderers Ferraris and rapists holidays in the Bahamas then I might be willing to go for that.

'Give these scum what they deserve' might be an understandable emotional response but if that just leads to more murders and rapes then what good is it doing?

The 'War on Crime' seems to be going the same way as the 'War on Drugs' and the 'War on Terrorism'
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I don't see how locking scumbags up forever/killing them could possibly lead to more murders as opposed to rewarding them.
 
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dtugg said:
That's simply an argument against using only the eyewitness testimony of the victim to convict a rapist. And one that I would agree with.
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But what about the general problem that people do not always judge based on evidence but on their personal feelings regarding the acused person.

I.E. my example of the black guy in my neighborhood who the police picked up for breaking into my home...for being a black guy in a neighborhood where a crime was committed 7 hours earlier.

You can't assume that because YOU care about evidence when it comes to arresting, prosecuting, and determining guilt, then others do as well.

There is still a significant number of people in the country for whom, unfortunately if you are acused, and you are black, then you are guilty.

Also, even WITH evidence...evidence isn't always "evidence." Did you know that an arson investigator only needs 40 hours of training to be certified? There have been cases where someone was sentenced based on "expert testimony" by arson investigators...only to have a REAL arson investigator (an actual scientist who has been formally trained, say by the FBI) look at the case and say that the small town arson investigator had been completely mistaken. The New Yorker did an article about this in which a man WAS executed based on arson evidence...which later was reevaluated, and the more experienced and respected arson investigator said the case was completely mishandled, and that there was no actual evidence of criminal arson, and that he believed an innocent man had been executed.
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
And then what should be done with the violent offender murderer father? Would you have a problem if the rapist's brother decided that he should die too? and so on and so on.
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Of course I'd have a problem with the rapist's brother killing the father, since the killing wouldn't be at all justified. I was using the example of a father catching his daughter's rapist in the act as an instance where I believe a deadly response is justified. Frankly, I'm rather surprised that anyone would consider the father in this instance a "violent offender murderer."

Perhaps you don't think the rape of a daughter is sufficient cause to use deadly force (which I admit I do, perhaps because I do in fact have a daughter and can only imagine what I'd do if I caught someone trying to harm her). So how about this: The father catches someone in the act of lobotomizing his daughter. It isn't self-defense per se, because the offender isn't killing the girl, and the father's life is not threatened. Do you think the father would be justified in killing the perpetrator then? If not, what would an appropriate response be: "Oh please stop doing that, it isn't nice"? Or maybe the father should just beat the guy senseless -- but in doing so, what happens if he dies, does the father get charged with manslaughter?

My point is, some people do things so heinous that I have zero qualms about their lives ceasing to exist. I don't think society should be the ones to do that, but in certain cases, if the offended party takes things into their own hands, I am very sympathetic.
 
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Schrodinger's Cat said:
But what about the general problem that people do not always judge based on evidence but on their personal feelings regarding the acused person.

I.E. my example of the black guy in my neighborhood who the police picked up for breaking into my home...for being a black guy in a neighborhood where a crime was committed 7 hours earlier.

You can't assume that because YOU care about evidence when it comes to arresting, prosecuting, and determining guilt, then others do as well.

There is still a significant number of people in the country for whom, unfortunately if you are acused, and you are black, then you are guilty.

Also, even WITH evidence...evidence isn't always "evidence." Did you know that an arson investigator only needs 40 hours of training to be certified? There have been cases where someone was sentenced based on "expert testimony" by arson investigators...only to have a REAL arson investigator (an actual scientist who has been formally trained, say by the FBI) look at the case and say that the small town arson investigator had been completely mistaken. The New Yorker did an article about this in which a man WAS executed based on arson evidence...which later was reevaluated, and the more experienced and respected arson investigator said the case was completely mishandled, and that there was no actual evidence of criminal arson, and that he believed an innocent man had been executed.
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Your only argument is against using faulty evidence to convict people.
 
If I catch some piece of crap in the act of raping my (as of yet non-existent) daughter, he is going to die.
 
dtugg said:
I don't see how locking scumbags up forever/killing them could possibly lead to more murders as opposed to rewarding them.
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OK the rewarding bit was a silly point (just trying to illustrate my concept) but the stats seem to show that locking scumbags up forever doesn't lead to less scumbaggery, if anything it leads to more scumbaggery.

Not sure if this comparison is going to help or not, but harsh parenting doesn't necessarily lead to well-disciplined kids. If you beat your kids and lock them in the cupboard under the stairs chances are they might end up a bit mental.

It seems that societies where the people are subject to violent or extreme punishments by the state might just end up in a similar situation.

If you take it far enough then you probably do eradicate crime as everyone with any criminal tendency is locked up or dead, but then so are half the country and the other half are living in terror of being scooped up by the police and executed for farting.
 
dtugg said:
Not against pieces of crap who already proved they are willing to kill/rape people.
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And here we get to the core: You decide who is a human being and who is a piece of crap.

why is murder a good enough reason?
why is rape a good enough reason?

Rape, seriously?
A crime where the victim survives, possibly even without permanent injury?

And even murder isn't as clear cut: I am not up to date, but the British had abolished capital punishment for murder long before they did so for High Treason and Piracy. they didn't seem to think that murder was the worst crime possible.

Why not add blasphemy to the list?

Why not kidnapping?

Would you rather be raped or held as a slave for a year?
 
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