this is when i support the death penalty

[Whoracle]

I'm against the death penalty but even if a killer was able to be rehabilitated I wouldn't want them to be. If you knowingly kill someone under your own will power you should never be allowed back into the general population. You can however rot in solitary confinement for the rest of your life on an extended timeout (hey thats the new rage with liberals and parenting, I think it might have practical applications elsewhere) so you can think about what you've done. Kind of like what my mom used to do me when I was bad, just for a much, much longer amount of time.

 

[Andalyn]

I've seen the footage that Harry mentions.

Kell had assistance from another during the prison killing. A cellmate laid down on top of the victims legs, so that the victim could not get up or get away. With the victim immobilized and helpless, Kell repeatedly stabbed the victim in the head, face, throat, neck, chest, and abdomen.

I also think that Kell's buddy that assisted in the murder should also receive the death penalty, based on conspiracy. One could argue that Kell would not have been able to carry out the act without the assistance of his accomplice.

 

[jasonmccoy]

How? What is the evidence? Wouldn't that be like proving a negative?

First of all, I would say that if anybody is obviously not going to be rehabilitated, it is a double murderer who committed one of the murders while in jail for the other murder. It is hard to imagine anybody who is less likely to be rehabilitated, when you think about it.

Second, and more important, I fail to see why his possible rehabilitation is relevant. He deserves to be executed as a fitting punishment for what he DID--cold-blooded murder by stabbing someone 55 times (let alone the previous murder he committed; if he had been executed for that, his second victim would have been alive today)--not for a future murder he might or might no commit.

To give an example, Hermann Goering certainly could have been rehabilitated. He was an energetic, intelligent man, who was not personally violent. He was not likely to kill people in the streets, and could have been quite a help for the allied reconstructing Germany.

So? Did his excellent rehabilitation chances mean he should not have been sentenced to death? Of course not. He deserved it for what he DID, not the likelihood (or lack thereof) of him killing someone ELSE after his trial.

To say that someone doesn't deserve to be executed for a vicious murder because they MIGHT be rehabilitated--or even, for that matter, because they CERTAINLY would be--is to tell the relatives of the victims, "SCREW your brother/father/mother/etc.; their death doesn't deserve a serious punishment, becasue the murderer won't do it again."

But what gives the Government the right to exact that punishment? What are we really communicating? Certainly not that murder is bad or immoral - because we are allowing our government to do the very same thing! I am with several other posters, while it sounds great and feels emotionally thirst quenching to KILL a sadistic murderer, I am not sure it is in a civilized nation's best interest! We would never thing of supporting a movement whose ralllying cry was to "kill anyone who killed another." This is because we often wait to come to a decision about guilt, suspend judgement until our reason and rationality can overcome our emotional involvement! In the case of a very young murderer (10 or 11) we argue that "he did not know better!" Or if the murderer was instructed to perform the act as part of his patriotic duty, it is seen as ok, if not heroic!
We must be careful when arguing that "if someone commits heinous acts such as homicide via 55 knife entries to the face and neck" they are automatically deserving of death themselves. This will create an opportunity for a very slippery slope. Will another homocidal maniac having killed 55 total people with a single gunshot wound to the forehead be subjected to the same punishment? Or will he deserve worse? And moreover, where do you draw the line (assuming that one does exist in your mind) between who can be rehabilitated and who cannot. Or perhaps I should ask, who despite their actions would you consider attempting rehab?

 

[Whomp]

You keep using that word ... Inigo ontoya

Civilized - Marked by refinement in taste and manners; cultured; polished.

What does being a "civilized country" have to do with how we deal with criminals?
Let's see, killing them is barbaric, but imprisoning them for life is less barbaric.

So the more civilized we become, the less punishment is meted out? Extending that line out, extremely civilized nations give criminals a white sports coat and a pink carnation.

And yes, I'm being ludicrous to make a point. Perhaps we should focus more on the crime and it's relative severity as seen by our society. That's exactly why a jury of our peers gets to recommend sentencing.

Certainly not that murder is bad or immoral - because we are allowing our government to do the very same thing!
<snip>
Or if the murderer was instructed to perform the act as part of his patriotic duty, it is seen as ok, if not heroic!

It seems as if we need some refreshing on our definition of "murder".
The dictionary lists it as The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice.
(Or possibly a bunch of crows)

As far as "what gives the Government the right?" ... we do.

 

[Guest]

I support the death penalty also in the cases if an adult told to a kid to commit suicide.

 

[Victor Danilchenko]

Re: You keep using that word ... Inigo ontoya

Whomp

What does being a "civilized country" have to do with how we deal with criminals?
Let's see, killing them is barbaric, but imprisoning them for life is less barbaric.

So the more civilized we become, the less punishment is meted out?

No. The more civilized a society, the farther it gets away from treating justice as vengeance, and more to treating justice as simply a way to protect society. It's the "eye for an eye" thing that's barbaric.

 

[jasonmccoy]

To elaborate on the thread above. I am of the opinion that a "civilized' society makes use of every scientific fruit possible (ie. technology, brain science, genetics, etc) to prevent acts of violence. However, when acts such as murder do in fact arise, we must first work to understand why. In my opinion, it is understanding why people kill that will move us closer to preventing it.

 

[jasonmccoy]

P.S. The death penalty is costly in addition to barbaric. In addition, it does nothing to deter murderous acts. It only says "if you kill another we will kill you." I hardly see this as teaching a lesson let alone punishment. In my opinion and I would argue in the opinion of many pioneers in the field of learning theory (B.F. Skinner, E.L. Throndike, Mowrer, etc.) termination of life and punishment are oxymorans. Death does not promote rehab!!

 

[Malachi151]

I'm all for the death penalty. The problem is the matter of being assured of guilt. I think that with modern forensics the death penalty needs to be applied more often if there is indeed an increase in the quality of convisions due to forensics.

I don't think that its right to accept that there will be accidental applications of the death penalty, but in cases of certianty it should be used and will quicker execution of punishment, none of this sitting on death row for 15 years first. I mean when you get convicted, within 2 years you need to be gone.

I'm also opposed to the electric chair, I think that lethal injection is just fine. The point of the execution is not to return barbarity with barbarity, and the electric chair is barbaric.

Look, we are a society, we have standards, if you kill or torture people for no good reason then that's it, you need to go. We got too much to do in this world then deal with people like that.

It takes millions of dollars to keep someone in jail for life. Prison is expensive. Every person that is in prison is stealing from society again, well that's not true cause a lot of people in prison should not be there in the first place, I mean wrongly convicted and stupid laws that put people in jail for offences that should not come with prison, like drug posession, etc.

But anyway, if someone murders someone, then goes to jail for life, hell that's just costing us millions of dollars. Ultimately that's taking money from education, etc. If you "murder" you die, end of story, stop wasting our time and money.

Does "government" have the right? Yes, in theory government is the will of society. Of course that's not really true, but in terms of deabte that is what I would claim.

 

[Whomp]

Victor wrote:

The more civilized a society, the farther it gets away from treating justice as vengeance, and more to treating justice as simply a way to protect society

How better to protect society than to remove those who commit the worst crimes, permenantly?

Jasonmccoy wrote
P.S. The death penalty is costly in addition to barbaric. In addition, it does nothing to deter murderous acts.

I would argue that the death penalty is less expensive than inprisoning someone for life.
In addition, the death penalty does plenty for deterring repeat murderous acts by the same offender.

Jasonmccoy wrote:
However, when acts such as murder do in fact arise, we must first work to understand why. In my opinion, it is understanding why people kill that will move us closer to preventing it.

I'm all for learning and understanding as a preventative. But while we're moving closer to preventing it, let's make sure the ones who commit the crime never do it again.

Jasonmccoy wrote:Death does not promote rehab!!

Really? What's the recidivism rate of those who have recieved the death penalty?

Edited for spelling and format[size]

 

[Brooklyn Dodger]

Firing Squad? Montana is the only other state to theoretically allow execution by firing squad, right?

These cases are good for testing the limits of government authority over the individual.

He's no doubt a monster, but I simply believe the state has no right to execute its citizens when realistic measures can be taken to prevent violence against others.

Utah permits execution by firing squad, not Montana. Firing squad is at the option of the prisoner, not the state. It is carried out by a firing squad of five corrections officers. Currently, two prisoners have elected execution by firing squad in Utah, and they are scheduled to die pretty soon.

 

[Victor Danilchenko]

Whomp,

How better to protect society than to remove those who commit the worst crimes, permenantly?

How better to avert future accidents than to kill everyone involved, or at least the opne whose fault the accident is? For that matter, let's kill petty thieves, embezzlers, and jaywalkers, too!

We better the society by averting the crimes while still maximizing happiness of as many individuals as possible. This is why the first choice in a civilized society should be rehabilitation, and second choice protective incarceration. Death penalty is not necessary, and has a multitude of negative consequences for society.

I would argue that the death penalty is less expensive than inprisoning someone for life.

You would be dead wrong -- and had you bothered to investigate the subject before comitting yourself to an opinion, you would have known this.

Death penalty is way more expensive, because of the multiple appeals; but we want and need those appeals, because death penalty is final, and each incorrect death penalty is a murder of an innocent person. In order to prevent such final and un-correctable error, we spend gobs of money to apply extra scrutiny to each death row inmate; and so death penalty costs more than life incarceration. Cutting the cost of death penalty would greatly increase the number of innocents killed, a totally unacceptable trade-off.

In addition, the death penalty does plenty for deterring repeat murderous acts by the same offender.

And it also does pelnty to ensure that a faklsely convicted innocent can never be released, should evidence of their innocence come to light.

 

[Brooklyn Dodger]

Re: Re: You keep using that word ... Inigo ontoya

Whomp

No. The more civilized a society, the farther it gets away from treating justice as vengeance, and more to treating justice as simply a way to protect society. It's the "eye for an eye" thing that's barbaric.

You misconstrue Judaic Law. An eye for an eye was not considered barbaric, as in a requirement for revenge. It was not, for instance, you poke out my eye, so I must poke out your eye. It was a LIMITATION. If you poke out my eye, I may ONLY poke out your eye. I must not also cut off your leg, your arm, and your ear! Over the centuries this has become misunderstood. Think of it not as a mandate for revenge, but a limitation on revenge.

 

[Cain]

Utah permits execution by firing squad, not Montana. Firing squad is at the option of the prisoner, not the state. It is carried out by a firing squad of five corrections officers. Currently, two prisoners have elected execution by firing squad in Utah, and they are scheduled to die pretty soon.

I read the article too

No, I thought there were only two states that allowed death by firing squad, and Montana was one of them (which is wrong; there are three: Utah, OK, and Idaho).

Davefoc writes:

What realistic measures do you have in mind? Have you watched any of the documentaries about the extremes that are necessary to prevent these men from committing more violence and yet some of them still succeed. These are guys that can make weapons from tooth brushes, eating utensils, and just about anything else. I doubt there is any realistic way to prevent murders in these maximum security prisons short of complete isolation of each prisoner.

I was primarily talking about violence from convicted criminals against peaceful citizens. Murder committed inside these prisons, especially against guards, is cause for real concern (butt the same goes for rapes). What's the murder rate in prison? I'm sure a fair number are killed without any kind of weapon other than their barehands.

 

[Skeptic]

But what gives the Government the right to exact that punishment?

In the USA, The same thing that gives the government the right to do anything else: the power granted to the government to express the people's will, by the constitution.

It is true that certain things are forbidden the government by the constitution--such as establishing religion, or arrest without warrant--but not the passage of capital punishment laws.

Morally speaking, things are simpler. Some crimes are so henious that only the ultimate penalty fits them; anything less is an offense against our sense of justice. It would have been a cruel joke on his victims to let Ted Bundy (for example) live.

What are we really communicating? Certainly not that murder is bad or immoral - because we are allowing our government to do the very same thing!

Nonsense. By this view, imprisoning kidnappers, or fining thieves, is also immoral, because we are doing "the exact same thing" the criminals did--restricting their freedom or taking their money.

The killing of a convicted murderer (like that of an enemy soldier at war or an intruder in self-defense) is NOT the same thing as the commitment or murder; not all killing is murder, or even wrong--as in this case.

No, we are precisely saying that life IS precious and that murder IS wrong--because those who would take the life FOR NO CAUSE deserve to have theirs taken AS PUNISHMENT.

The fact that we believe they deserve the worst punishment that we may inflict is precisely proof that we consider their crime the most henious, because it destroys the most precious thing in their victims.

I am with several other posters, while it sounds great and feels emotionally thirst quenching to KILL a sadistic murderer, I am not sure it is in a civilized nation's best interest!

Yes, OF COURSE it is revenge. OF COURSE it is hatered. But what is wrong with hating a sadistic murderer and wishing to do to unto him what he did to his victims? At least part of what we call "justice" is precisely the formalization of revenge, in the form of legal punishment.

Once you divorce the justice system from its commitment to punish offenders for their crimes, the system no longer deserves that name. It might be called a "rehabilitation system", or a "temporarily contained for society's good system", but it no longer has any justice in it.

You ask me what right the state has to engage in revenge and hate. I ask you what right it has NOT to do so. When people gave up the right to avenge wrongs personally and gave it to the government, they gave ON CONDITION that the government, too, will care for justice, and when necessary side with those who were wronged against the criminal.

There are numerous advantages to this: above all, it allows for IMPARTIALITY in the establishment of guilt and, if guilt be found, of punishment--to protect the wrongly accused of punishment, and the guilty of excessive punishment. But when you commit a saidstic murder, death isn't excessive punishment. The state has no right, in such cases, to abrogate its responsibility to bring justice to the victims.

We would never thin[k] of supporting a movement whose ralllying cry was to "kill anyone who killed another."

But we don't. First of all, again, not all killing is murder. In the case of murder, too, there are grades of responsiblilty: murder in the heat of passion in an argument, for example, is seen as less severe than a cold-blooded planned one. There are many other exenuating circumstances (such as mental illness, etc.) Only the most severe murders are candidates for the death penalty. As they should be.

This is because we often wait to come to a decision about guilt, suspend judgement until our reason and rationality can overcome our emotional involvement!

True. That's why there are impartial judges, and the trial takes place after some delay, often in another county. But what makes you think that it is "irrational" to feel hatered and demand revenge of sadistic murderers? What makes you think it is "irrational" to punish those people with death, as an expression of the people's disgust and condemnation of such acts?

No, the idea that revenge and hatered are BY DEFINITION "irrational" is simply wrong. You are quite right that we do not allow INDIVIDUAL feelings of hatered and revenge to determine guilt and punishment--that's why we have impartial judges, etc. . But it is is just as true that the COMMUNITY, as expressed by the judge and jurors, often is quite right in expressing its hatered of the murderer and demand his crime be avenged.

It was right to hate Hitler. It was right to hate John Wayne Gacy. It was right to hate Ted Bundy. To say that this is being "irrational" is to tell us to have no sense of justice.

In the case of a very young murderer (10 or 11) we argue that "he did not know better!"

True. Which is why the death penalty doesn't apply in such cases.

Or if the murderer was instructed to perform the act as part of his patriotic duty, it is seen as ok, if not heroic!

True. Because not all killing is murder. A soldier killng the enemy is not a "murderer" for doing so; in fact he didn't do anything wrong.

(I wonder how many of those who keep ranting that soldiers are "patriotic murderers" because they kill, would also call a mother who saved her child from a sadistic child rapist by shooting him in the act a "family-centered murderer". I mean, she KILLED somoene, didn't she?)

We must be careful when arguing that "if someone commits heinous acts such as homicide via 55 knife entries to the face and neck" they are automatically deserving of death themselves.

Of course not. If this was done in a drunken rage, or by a 10-year-old, or in self-defense that later lost control, or by a mentally retarded person, or by any one of a dozen other excuses, the perpetrator would probably not deserve the death penalty. But the assumption here is that none of these apply to this murderer's case.

This will create an opportunity for a very slippery slope. Will another homocidal maniac having killed 55 total people with a single gunshot wound to the forehead be subjected to the same punishment?

Some "slippery slope"! Yes, if we execute THIS guy, we are now in danger of executing ALL mass murderers! The horror! The horror!

And moreover, where do you draw the line (assuming that one does exist in your mind) between who can be rehabilitated and who cannot.

There's no need. When someone commits such a henious crime, to repeat, he deserves punishment for WHAT HE DID, not because it is, or is not, possible to rehabilitate him. What does it matter if he COULD be rehabilitated? Does this somehow negate the fact that he DID commit a vicious murder deserving of death?

As for "who deserves rehab", that's a whole other question. No doubt, there are many petty criminals, non-violent offenders, and the like, who DO deserve rehab--people whose crime was relatively minor and who, after being punished for it as justice demands, still could contribute to society. But they don't include vicious murderers, whose crime deserve the punishment of death.

 

[Victor Danilchenko]

Re: Re: Re: You keep using that word ... Inigo ontoya

Brooklyn Dodger

You misconstrue Judaic Law. An eye for an eye was not considered barbaric, as in a requirement for revenge. It was not, for instance, you poke out my eye, so I must poke out your eye. It was a LIMITATION. If you poke out my eye, I may ONLY poke out your eye. I must not also cut off your leg, your arm, and your ear! Over the centuries this has become misunderstood. Think of it not as a mandate for revenge, but a limitation on revenge.

That may be the case (arguable), but that doesn't affect the fact that what we call "justice" these days is to a large extent a systematized vengeance.

 

[Malachi151]

You would be dead wrong -- and had you bothered to investigate the subject before comitting yourself to an opinion, you would have known this.

Death penalty is way more expensive, because of the multiple appeals; but we want and need those appeals, because death penalty is final, and each incorrect death penalty is a murder of an innocent person. In order to prevent such final and un-correctable error, we spend gobs of money to apply extra scrutiny to each death row inmate; and so death penalty costs more than life incarceration. Cutting the cost of death penalty would greatly increase the number of innocents killed, a totally unacceptable trade-off.

I knew this would come up.

The expense here is legalistic, and can be avoided by changign the law. The expense of of housing and feeding someone cannot be avoided.

Secondly its wrong to say that itws always more expensive, even as is because it isn't. Its only more expensive in some cases and it depends on how old the convict is.
Improvement of the system could be done to make the death penalty less expensive w/o weakening the quality fo convisions I am sure. One of the problems is all the people fighting against it. Instead of trying to put in law to make it ineffecient and working against the process they could be working with the process and making it more effecient at getting proper convictions.

Of course I do really put most ofthat blame on prosecutors and a corrupt system in the first place, so whatever.

Anyway, the problem is with the system, not with the morality of the question.

 

[Whomp]

Victor wrote:
How better to avert future accidents than to kill everyone involved, or at least the opne whose fault the accident is? For that matter, let's kill petty thieves, embezzlers, and jaywalkers, too!

This is an argument of the beard, or slippery slope argument. You can in no way correlate murder with jaywalking.

Victor wrote:
You would be dead wrong -- and had you bothered to investigate the subject before comitting yourself to an opinion, you would have known this.

You are right. I opened my mouth with what seemed logical in my head. I was wrong. After doing some research, I found you were right. My bad.

 

[Skeptic]

Re: Re: Re: Re: You keep using that word ... Inigo ontoya

Brooklyn Dodger

That may be the case (arguable), but that doesn't affect the fact that what we call "justice" these days is to a large extent a systematized vengeance.

True. That's because, to the large extent, systematized vengence is what justice IS: society taking revenge on the wrongdoer as an expression of its hatered of his actions. I fail to see the problem here.

 

[Victor Danilchenko]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: You keep using that word ... Inigo ontoya

Skeptic

True. That's because, to the large extent, systematized vengence is what justice IS: society taking revenge on the wrongdoer as an expression of its hatered of his actions. I fail to see the problem here.

Now we get to the meat of the problem. Why do we want systematized vengeance? Just because we want to take revenge, doesn't mean that we should. In fact, not taking revenge on criminals -- but merely doing the needful thing to prevent future crimes -- would be an important step towards a society that's more humane overall.