The Death Penalty

[MinDonner]

At the risk of losing my Eurocommie credentials, I consider myself ideologically pro-death-penalty (though opposed on practical grounds, because the justice system can't be trusted to get the right guys). However, I'm well aware that this is just a half-baked opinion formulated sometime during my student years and not really considered in any detail since, so I'm throwing it out to the board in the hope that we can kick some sense out of the topic.

So - for or against? Punishment or deterrent? Eye for an eye versus society's right to eradicate its more troublesome citizens?

[Hereward]

*Regathers kindling*

When do we start?

[Artas]

Against. They can take away your freedom, but they can never take your life.

[Ski the Swift]

Can't we just put the sickos down a dark hole?

[kungtotte]

I am against the death penalty on principle for a number of reasons. It's difficult to ascertain beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone is guilty of the crime they committed. I don't think the ends justify the means. I think it's difficult to justify where the line is drawn as to what crimes deserve the death penalty. I think putting society in the role of arbiter of human life is a dangerous proposition. It obviously doesn't work as a deterrent.

In practice though? I can't say I lose sleep over murderers and rapists dying. I don't think we should be the ones killing them, but there it is. I also don't have any real suggestions as to what punishment should be meted out instead.

For the most part I think the penal system is broken. It is essentially long-term storage of people, sweeping the problem underneath the rug in the hopes that things will magically solve themselves. Should we be punishing criminals and hope that things get better by themselves, or should we try to rehabilitate those with a chance of coming back into society and saving real incarceration for those incurable cases who would normally fry on the chair?

[Galactus]

The death penalty is a blatant violation of the right to life, i is inhumane, unethical, falls any kind of standardof decent justice. It's a violation of human rights and an atrocity against common sense.

[Chaldanya]

What Galactus said. And also the state shouldn't be in the business of killing it's own citizens.

N

[Hereward]

The atavistic part of my brain says yes, there are those who deserve no better. The more rational part says no, the justice system is not good enough to play with such high stakes. Also, having people sitting around on death row for years seems cruel and the process itself makes me uncomfortable. However, I don't have moral objections to the state taking a life after due process, or about the "right to life". I'm just queasy about the details.

[kuroishi]

I'm against it. On top of all the ethical reasons (what Galactus said, basically), it's a stupid and retarded way to deal justice. It prevents any review of trial and denies a human being of any possibility of redemption.

Now I can understand that parents of a victim of an horrific murder would want the one who did it to die. And I don't know how I would react if this would happen to me.

But they are wrong, and I would be wrong. Justice is not and should not be a matter of emotions.

[Lightning Lord]

I'm against it. The death penalty is about vengeance, not justice. That's not right. I don't think those convicted of heinous crimes should have comfortable lives thereafter, but I think they should remain alive. I'm not suggesting particularly uncomfortable lives, either.

I thought the West Wing put it nicely in one of their episodes. How does the death penalty inhibit crime? A lot of executees live their lives under threat of death, one far less humane than a state-sponsored murder. No real deterrent if you're already afraid of dying. If it isn't actually keeping crime down (I've never seen studies supporting this, though I am open to being wrong), that leaves "making the victims' families feel better...which equals vengeance. Not okay.

[Sophelia]

The death penalty is a blatant violation of the right to life, i is inhumane, unethical, falls any kind of standardof decent justice. It's a violation of human rights and an atrocity against common sense.

:agree:

There are people on this board who seem, without any kind of pathology, to be willing to murder other human beings (under the name of the 'death penalty' ;) ). Yet it wouldn't cross my mind to think those boarders should die for it, any more than that somebody who actually does murder/injure another human being for their own twisted reasons should die. It seems like the worst kind of all-or-nothing thinking, to regard a person as without humanity and therefore not deserving of being treated as human, due to certain thoughts and behaviours of theirs.

Responsibility to others means it is necessary to curtain their [murderers/rapists etc.] freedoms in a lot of ways simply for the protection of others. Why people want to add further unnecessary irreversible inhumane punishment to that is beyond me. If anything needs adding it should try to add something positive, as one would do for any person.

However I believe in the right to death as well as the right to life. This means that I think that if a person is (for example) serving a life sentence without parole because they will always be a danger to others, and if after attempts to help that person lead as fulfilling a life as they can within the constraints on their freedom that we have to impose, they feel their life is not worth living, I would support their right to decide for themselves if they wished to die. (I think it's incredibly tragic how many prisoners commit suicide - not just because perhaps they could have been helped, but because there is no legal euthanasia). Maybe I am callous in regretting that they don't have that option, since it suggests I wouldn't be too upset if they took it, and maybe there is some truth in that*, but I do think that all people who find their lives unbearable in the long term should have this option.

* but we are talking hypotheticals here, and it would be different having met a person

Edited for clarity

[Dark Knight]

In a perfect world, I would oppose death sentence. and by perfect world, I mean a world where if a person is found guilty of a crime that the penalty for it is spending the rest of your life in prison, than actually he spents his entire life in prison.

In a perfect world, I would support death sentence. and by perfect world I mean a world where the justice system is impecable and always condemns correctly the correct person. By the way, in such a world I woulld also support punishments such as gelding a rapist and leaving the thief without a hand.

Since we don't live in a perfect world, and by that I mean that the justice systems are usually corrupt or just incapable, and people who are condemned for life in prison after killing dozens of innocents are released in "captives exchange", by that meaning 3 dead soldiers for a hundred prisoners with blood on their hands, most of whom later return to bloodying their hands some more...OK, maybe the latest is relevant to my country alone, but there are other examples - people kill, deemed "insane", go for a mental hospital for a few year, and than released back to the society after the have been "cured"...and of course more likely than not, that person will continue commiting the same crimes(I have plenty of examples in my country).

So, for me this question is not one I have an answer for. The chance to kill an innocent man versus the chance that a guilty man will avoid his just punishment...which chance is better? where is the risk lower?

Anyhow, innocents will die.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Well the death penalty certianly prevents people with a penchant for killin others from doing it again. Heck some guys kill people while they are in prison. If they're in for life what have they got to lose? Particularly, if there is no death penality for the act of killing someone after you've been incarcerated for murder.

[mormont]

Well the death penalty certianly prevents people with a penchant for killin others from doing it again. Heck some guys kill people while they are in prison. If they're in for life what have they got to lose? Particularly, if there is no death penality for the act of killing someone after you've been incarcerated for murder.

This sort of cuts to my position on the issue: which is that I am opposed to the death penalty where we can be reasonably sure that we have alternative means to ensure that offenders don't pose a further threat. (That some prisoners, even in a very wealthy country like the US, actually do reoffend while in prison is not because those countries lack the ability to prevent this, but because they lack the will to spend a reasonable proportion of their GDP on their prison system, lock up people inappropriately, and refuse to run their prison system on the basis of sound research rather than popular prejudice.)

So, in medieval times, it was necessary to have a death penalty, and I won't criticise that. In poorer countries, it may be necessary to have a death penalty, and I will not condemn them for that. But in the modern-day US, it is not necessary. There is not one argument for it that hasn't been utterly discredited in that context. It is, as LL says, a matter of revenge and that is not a legitimate driver of social policy. So I will criticise that, I'm afraid.

[Bronn is God]

If mankind can evolve enough where there are only crimes of passion, then support. Until that time, I am against it.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Mormont,

I must say that's a fair point.

[Guest Raidne]

I believe in an incapacitation theory of criminal punishment and am therefore against the death penalty.

I think that once you are convicted a horrific violent crime you lose certain rights that allows the government to make presuppositions about the likelihood that you will commit violence toward others, and to take appropriate precautions to prevent you from doing so. I also think deterrence is important, but not with regard to the death penalty.

Therefore, if someone, say, commits kills the person who kidnapped/abused their child, I would subject them to a lifetime of monitoring, perhaps, and maybe enough jail time to serve as a deterrent, but not life in prison.

[S John]

The atavistic part of my brain says yes, there are those who deserve no better. The more rational part says no, the justice system is not good enough to play with such high stakes. Also, having people sitting around on death row for years seems cruel and the process itself makes me uncomfortable. However, I don't have moral objections to the state taking a life after due process, or about the "right to life". I'm just queasy about the details.

I pretty much agree with this. If someone forced me to pick, I'd probably choose 'pro' but I'm more than a little concerned about the system getting it wrong. I do believe that not everyone can be rehabilitated, but have no suggestions on who gets to make that decision. Nor would I envy that person.

As for the justice vs. vengance... meh, I don't know. My opinion is that there are crimes vile enough that death is a just sentence, horrible enough that one forfeits thier 'right to life'. I don't think it is the place of a justice system to deal in revenge... but if both purposes are served? That concept doesn't rattle me too much.

Edit: repeated myself

[Guest Raidne]

But that presupposes that "just" is self-defining - saying that one life for another is "just." All you're accomplishing there is evening it out. Is that all justice is?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Raidne,

Doesn't that suggest the life of the unjustified murderer is of more value than the murderer's victim? In the sense that the murderer's life must be preserved while the victim's life was not.