Hi.
I was wondering about the death penalty and if/how it can be justified, and have got a lot of questions. I notice a lot of people here on Randi Forum seem to oppose the idea.
What I'm wondering is, why is it so absurd to think that one could potentially forfeit their right to life if they commit an evil that is heinous enough and the evidence of guilt overwhelming? What is so fundamentally wrong with this idea? We know the right to liberty can be sacrificed either temporarily or permanently as a punishment – it's called “prison”, and we use it all the time and few have qualms about its use.
Consider the case of a (fictional) guy named Dogg, a sick, sick puppy (pun intended). Dogg, as the name implies, acts like a dog when he commits his horrific crimes. He's a serial killer that likes to kill victims with his fake-clawed hands and his teeth, and chews and mauls their bodies like, well, a dog. He manages to kill dozens of people and elude the cops, but then his luck runs out and the cops make their home. Further investigation leads to the evidence against Dogg mounting until it becomes overwhelmingly clear that he is guily. He even admits freely to the twisted crimes.
So we have overwhelming evidence and a horrific evil, so why no death penalty?
Now, this question doesn't seem interesting enough in isolation. I notice that on this forum, many seem to also support the idea of military action – war, especially against terrorists and other bad people. Now, war involves killing. And in this case, the idea is to try and kill the bad guys. So how does this work with opposition to the death penalty? Consider, for example, that many here approved of killing Osama bin Laden, QUHHdaffy, and probably all kinds of other nutters and terrorists. Yet why is it OK to kill these bad people in a military raid, but it is NOT OK to kill Dogg in the state electric chair?
Now, I want to go over a few arguments that have been raised to oppose the death penalty. One such argument is that the death penalty can be misapplied and you can execute an innocent man/woman instead of the guilty one. This is regrettable, and indeed it should be minimized. Yet when we consider war, we see that often in cases such as the drone strikes against terrorists, innocents can get killed, and I suspect in these cases that the ratio of innocents killed to guilty killed is much worse than in the case of the death penalty. (Although I'm not sure how one would go about researching that – any ideas? I'd like to figure it out.) But this doesn't discredit war as an option, albeit perhaps not a preferable one, in the eyes of its supporters. So why can't a little “collateral damage” be accepted for the death penalty?
Another argument that naturally would come up here is that the death penalty “does nothing” that prison can't do. Like that the D.P. removes sickos like Dogg from the world so they can't harm anyone else, and so does throwing them in prison for the rest of their lives and throwing away the key. Yet why not do that with terrorists? Why not kidnap them and toss them in some kind of prison instead of killing them? Note that I suppose in this case that since they're in a foreign country, it might not be legally possible to do it, but if it were possible, would you still support lethal strikes (and continue to oppose the DP)? Regardless, the “do nothing” argument may still have a good point. But still, we can also raise the question of life forfeiture mentioned earlier.
Another argument is that the death penalty ignores the possibility of “rehabilitation” of the offender. Why not do that with terrorists? Why not try and capture them and try to “rehabilitate” them? Is it because they are “not rehabilitable”? Yet the same can hold true with criminals. Criminals can be irrehabilitable, and what if Dogg happens to be one of those? It's called psychopathic disorder. Once psychopathic disorder is confirmed, then it is likely that the criminal cannot be rehabilitated. So again, why is it OK to kill bin Laden, but NOT OK to kill Dogg?
Another argument is that death penalties encourage a “culture of violence”, and so perhaps(?) may contribute to what they seek to stop. And yet, militarism doesn't?
There are some arguments however, to which the “military” question seems less relevant, like the idea that death penalties discriminate against “minorities and the poor”, though one could perhaps argue that poor countries are hurt worse by a war. But this doesn't seem to be clearly parallel to “discrimination against 'minorities and the poor'” in the way it is understood as applying to the death penalty.
Yet from the above, it seems like that there may be a case that if you accept military force as a valid option in dealing with certain kinds of bad guys, that it may be reasonable also to be warm to the idea of the death penalty as a valid option in some circumstances, at least insofar as its being morally acceptable or objectionable is concerned, even if one doesn't prefer it as a matter of personal taste.
What do you think? Discuss.
I was wondering about the death penalty and if/how it can be justified, and have got a lot of questions. I notice a lot of people here on Randi Forum seem to oppose the idea.
What I'm wondering is, why is it so absurd to think that one could potentially forfeit their right to life if they commit an evil that is heinous enough and the evidence of guilt overwhelming? What is so fundamentally wrong with this idea? We know the right to liberty can be sacrificed either temporarily or permanently as a punishment – it's called “prison”, and we use it all the time and few have qualms about its use.
Consider the case of a (fictional) guy named Dogg, a sick, sick puppy (pun intended). Dogg, as the name implies, acts like a dog when he commits his horrific crimes. He's a serial killer that likes to kill victims with his fake-clawed hands and his teeth, and chews and mauls their bodies like, well, a dog. He manages to kill dozens of people and elude the cops, but then his luck runs out and the cops make their home. Further investigation leads to the evidence against Dogg mounting until it becomes overwhelmingly clear that he is guily. He even admits freely to the twisted crimes.
So we have overwhelming evidence and a horrific evil, so why no death penalty?
Now, this question doesn't seem interesting enough in isolation. I notice that on this forum, many seem to also support the idea of military action – war, especially against terrorists and other bad people. Now, war involves killing. And in this case, the idea is to try and kill the bad guys. So how does this work with opposition to the death penalty? Consider, for example, that many here approved of killing Osama bin Laden, QUHHdaffy, and probably all kinds of other nutters and terrorists. Yet why is it OK to kill these bad people in a military raid, but it is NOT OK to kill Dogg in the state electric chair?
Now, I want to go over a few arguments that have been raised to oppose the death penalty. One such argument is that the death penalty can be misapplied and you can execute an innocent man/woman instead of the guilty one. This is regrettable, and indeed it should be minimized. Yet when we consider war, we see that often in cases such as the drone strikes against terrorists, innocents can get killed, and I suspect in these cases that the ratio of innocents killed to guilty killed is much worse than in the case of the death penalty. (Although I'm not sure how one would go about researching that – any ideas? I'd like to figure it out.) But this doesn't discredit war as an option, albeit perhaps not a preferable one, in the eyes of its supporters. So why can't a little “collateral damage” be accepted for the death penalty?
Another argument that naturally would come up here is that the death penalty “does nothing” that prison can't do. Like that the D.P. removes sickos like Dogg from the world so they can't harm anyone else, and so does throwing them in prison for the rest of their lives and throwing away the key. Yet why not do that with terrorists? Why not kidnap them and toss them in some kind of prison instead of killing them? Note that I suppose in this case that since they're in a foreign country, it might not be legally possible to do it, but if it were possible, would you still support lethal strikes (and continue to oppose the DP)? Regardless, the “do nothing” argument may still have a good point. But still, we can also raise the question of life forfeiture mentioned earlier.
Another argument is that the death penalty ignores the possibility of “rehabilitation” of the offender. Why not do that with terrorists? Why not try and capture them and try to “rehabilitate” them? Is it because they are “not rehabilitable”? Yet the same can hold true with criminals. Criminals can be irrehabilitable, and what if Dogg happens to be one of those? It's called psychopathic disorder. Once psychopathic disorder is confirmed, then it is likely that the criminal cannot be rehabilitated. So again, why is it OK to kill bin Laden, but NOT OK to kill Dogg?
Another argument is that death penalties encourage a “culture of violence”, and so perhaps(?) may contribute to what they seek to stop. And yet, militarism doesn't?
There are some arguments however, to which the “military” question seems less relevant, like the idea that death penalties discriminate against “minorities and the poor”, though one could perhaps argue that poor countries are hurt worse by a war. But this doesn't seem to be clearly parallel to “discrimination against 'minorities and the poor'” in the way it is understood as applying to the death penalty.
Yet from the above, it seems like that there may be a case that if you accept military force as a valid option in dealing with certain kinds of bad guys, that it may be reasonable also to be warm to the idea of the death penalty as a valid option in some circumstances, at least insofar as its being morally acceptable or objectionable is concerned, even if one doesn't prefer it as a matter of personal taste.
What do you think? Discuss.
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