Capital Punishment/Death Penalty

[QUOTE="CreasianDevaili"]I said repeat pedophiles. Also, and just to be blunt, I do care more if a small child is raped compared to a grown woman or man. Not saying they deserve it if grown, just not the same severity in my mind. Something just disturbs me on the notion that those children would not understand what is happening while they are being raped and, it seems many times, killed by the sheer force and pressure of the act itself of a full grown person on a small child. Also on necrophiles I really am not disturbed. Do you think when someone digs up a grave and goes at it, that they are assaulting the soul or something?foxhound_fox

Only in extreme cases. I generally don't like it.

Only in extreme cases. I generally don't like it.

sonicare

any particular reason why?

Not death but they should definately lose something. They should have their arm, hand, leg, foot, (other parts), cut off depending on how bad they were. You want to go murder some innocent person that was looking forward to seeing their uncle who had been gone for so long next weekend and was coming home from the convenience store after he finally got some beef jerky for the first time in a while? Off with your right hand, and maybe a foot while your at it.

Not death but they should definately lose something. They should have their arm, hand, leg, foot, (other parts), cut off depending on how bad they were. You want to go murder some innocent person that was looking forward to seeing their uncle who had been gone for so long next weekend and was coming home from the convenience store after he finally got some beef jerky for the first time in a while? Off with your right hand, and maybe a foot while your at it.

Hatiko

sorry i just have to make ENTIRELY distasteful joke. Muslim philosophy much?

[QUOTE="Hatiko"]

Not death but they should definately lose something. They should have their arm, hand, leg, foot, (other parts), cut off depending on how bad they were. You want to go murder some innocent person that was looking forward to seeing their uncle who had been gone for so long next weekend and was coming home from the convenience store after he finally got some beef jerky for the first time in a while? Off with your right hand, and maybe a foot while your at it.

sorry i just have to make ENTIRELY distasteful joke. Muslim philosophy much?

[QUOTE="sonichunter99"]

[QUOTE="Hatiko"]

Not death but they should definately lose something. They should have their arm, hand, leg, foot, (other parts), cut off depending on how bad they were. You want to go murder some innocent person that was looking forward to seeing their uncle who had been gone for so long next weekend and was coming home from the convenience store after he finally got some beef jerky for the first time in a while? Off with your right hand, and maybe a foot while your at it.

CreasianDevaili

sorry i just have to make ENTIRELY distasteful joke. Muslim philosophy much?

a life for an arm doesnt count as equivelant exchange

[QUOTE="Hatiko"]

Not death but they should definately lose something. They should have their arm, hand, leg, foot, (other parts), cut off depending on how bad they were. You want to go murder some innocent person that was looking forward to seeing their uncle who had been gone for so long next weekend and was coming home from the convenience store after he finally got some beef jerky for the first time in a while? Off with your right hand, and maybe a foot while your at it.

sonichunter99

sorry i just have to make ENTIRELY distasteful joke. Muslim philosophy much?

I don't think if you steal you should get your hand cut off.

[QUOTE="sonichunter99"]

[QUOTE="Hatiko"]

Not death but they should definately lose something. They should have their arm, hand, leg, foot, (other parts), cut off depending on how bad they were. You want to go murder some innocent person that was looking forward to seeing their uncle who had been gone for so long next weekend and was coming home from the convenience store after he finally got some beef jerky for the first time in a while? Off with your right hand, and maybe a foot while your at it.

Hatiko

sorry i just have to make ENTIRELY distasteful joke. Muslim philosophy much?

I don't think if you steal you should get your hand cut off.

twas only a joke dont dwell on it lest you reveal its flaws

[QUOTE="CreasianDevaili"][QUOTE="sonichunter99"]

sorry i just have to make ENTIRELY distasteful joke. Muslim philosophy much?

a life for an arm doesnt count as equivelant exchange

[QUOTE="Hatiko"]

[QUOTE="sonichunter99"]

sorry i just have to make ENTIRELY distasteful joke. Muslim philosophy much?

sonichunter99

I don't think if you steal you should get your hand cut off.

twas only a joke dont dwell on it lest you reveal its flaws

Uh... I don't speak smart person. What is "lest" exactly? I've heard it before but...

[QUOTE="sonichunter99"]

[QUOTE="CreasianDevaili"] Eye for an eye started elsewhere.CreasianDevaili

a life for an arm doesnt count as equivelant exchange

i dont see how cutting someones hand off for stealing is equal either because he loses his hand and the man stolen from gets his stuff back

[QUOTE="sonichunter99"]

[QUOTE="Hatiko"]

I don't think if you steal you should get your hand cut off.

Hatiko

twas only a joke dont dwell on it lest you reveal its flaws

Uh... I don't speak smart person. What is "lest" exactly? I've heard it before but...

pretty much it means unless

[QUOTE="Hatiko"]

[QUOTE="sonichunter99"]

twas only a joke dont dwell on it lest you reveal its flaws

sonichunter99

Uh... I don't speak smart person. What is "lest" exactly? I've heard it before but...

pretty much it means unless

Alright.

[QUOTE="CreasianDevaili"][QUOTE="sonichunter99"]

a life for an arm doesnt count as equivelant exchange

i dont see how cutting someones hand off for stealing is equal either because he loses his hand and the man stolen from gets his stuff back

[QUOTE="sonichunter99"]

[QUOTE="CreasianDevaili"] Right. The hand and foot thing for murder also has nothing to do with islamic. Stealing, sure. Which is eye for an eye kind of deal. Which started elsewhere. As I said, because of what you said. CreasianDevaili

i dont see how cutting someones hand off for stealing is equal either because he loses his hand and the man stolen from gets his stuff back

Oh i thought you meant physically

I don't know... On one hand, I think if you take someones life away, you should have yours taken too. On the other, I feel like all human life should be valued... As for weather or not should be legal, that's up to each individual state to decideimo.

Murder is fine as long the blood doesnt get on the carpet...

Against it. I don't think it's anything other than revenge. Life in prison would be much worse imo.

On a side note..and guys, I'm really not trying to turn this into a religious argument, but.. If you're a Christian, and you believe you'll go to heaven as long as you accept Jesus Christ with a "clear heart" no matter what you've done in life, then erm...wouldn't the death penalty be the absolute LAST thing you want? Chances are, if the prisoner knows they're going to be executed, they'll hedge their bets, and if they live here in America, that likely means having a little talk with Jesus before they sit in that chair. So they sit in the chair, get electrocuted (or lethally injected) for 30 seconds, then wake up in a paradise that will last for an eternity. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal if you ask me, much better than having to wait decades in prison for that. Just a thought.

Against it. I don't think it's anything other than revenge. Life in prison would be much worse imo.

On a side note..and guys, I'm really not trying to turn this into a religious argument, but.. If you're a Christian, and you believe you'll go to heaven as long as you accept Jesus Christ with a "clear heart" no matter what you've done in life, then erm...wouldn't the death penalty be the absolute LAST thing you want? Chances are, if the prisoner knows they're going to be executed, they'll hedge their bets, and if they live here in America, that likely means having a little talk with Jesus before they sit in that chair. So they sit in the chair, get electrocuted (or lethally injected) for 30 seconds, then wake up in a paradise that will last for an eternity. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal if you ask me, much better than having to wait decades in prison for that. Just a thought.

KeitekeTokage

good point but i dont think revenge cares about what happens afterwards

I am completely against the death penalty in places where a competent prison system is in effect and a justice system that works objectively to prove guilt. It is an ethically bankrupt practice because no human being has the right to determine whether another lives or dies, regardless of any crime they committed. It is merely state-sanctioned revenge that does nothing but bring the illusion of "closure" to the victim's family and propagates the illusion of "deterrent" despite the statistics proving otherwise. It also is costlier than life-long imprisonment and does nothing to benefit the prisoner. I am a staunch proponent of all, or most violent crime being linked to mental illness, which according to the current laws would make those criminals unfit to stand trial. I do not propose that they are not responsible for their choices, but that they weren't necessarily in complete control of themselves, or had a predisposition to these actions/thoughts with no way of knowing they were wrong. I do believe that punishment is not the answer... because most prisons these days are just training facilities for better criminals. Rehabilitation and the re-introduction to society as a positive and productive member should play a leading role in our justice system world-wide. Nothing can reverse a crime, so I don't know why people want the justice system to reflect that desire in how it treats the convicted.foxhound_fox

This. You my good sir are my hero of the week. Couldn't agree more.

I'm undecided on this issue. I have no problem with killing people under certain circumstances: War, self-defense. I do however have a problem with the justice system condemning people to death, because they've been known to f*** things up in the past. I figure it's better to err on the side of caution. Like Gandalf said, "Do not be too hasty to deal out death in judgement, for even the very wise cannot see all ends."

And why do some people think rape deserves the death penalty? Under what philosophy is that fair?

I am not sure, I know I am happy to live in a country that doesn't have a death penalty.

mixed feeling, if our court system was correct 99.999% of the time i would be all for it for murder, nothing else as a dead man cannot make recompense. i also dont like extended jailing, sending someone to a small room to be unproductive for 30 years helps no one. if you want a rapist to pay his debt make him work and send a portion of his wages to the rapee. payment for damages, our current system offers no payment for damages and only costs we the people butt tons of money. if the damaged party is getting nothing then justice has not been served.

I support the death penalty, because the vast majority of people on this planet operate at the level of fear of punishment, they act so that they don't get punished. Kohlberg explains it better here: http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kohlberg.htmleeveeu

This is wrong, states with death penalty are not some how safer or haveless crime.. IT has been shown time and time again that the death penalty doesn't prevent crime from happening.

I am entirely against it, for a variety of reasons

1. The whole paradox issue. If murderers are sentenced to death, and a society accepts and practices the death penalty, then we all deserve death if we have executed even one innocent person. And given the amount of people released from death row after appeals and new evidence found them not guilty, I think it is safe to say we have have already executed plenty of innocent people

2. How is it remotely ethical to murder someone for murder? We are told from a very young age that "two wrongs do not make a right" or "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind", and yet we turn around and murder people that have killed others. How is it justice? How is it right?

3. Execution benefits no one, least of all the society. Survivors of the victim murdered do not gain any peace or, more importantly, any practical benefits by the execution of the murderer. It is essentially pointless to practice capital punishment from a justice standpoint.

4. It sends the wrong message about the true nature of our legal system. Our legal system should be about rehabilitation and punishment. How is killing someone painlessly a real punishment, especially for something as horrible as murder? Lock them up, put them to work, and throw away the key.

5. Expenses. If you lock someone up for life, you have thousands upon thousands of hours of labor available for any manner of work. If you plan to execute them, you wait a decade or so, spending millions of dollars in legal fees and keeping them locked up in a private cell for a long time.

2. How is it remotely ethical to murder someone for murder? We are told from a very young age that "two wrongs do not make a right" or "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind", and yet we turn around and murder people that have killed others. How is it justice? How is it right?

(Other points)

mrbojangles25

This may come as a surprise to you, but not everybody is told that from a young age. Your grasp of the concept of justice is startlingly poor. There's a difference between disagreeing with someone's reasons for doing something, versus pretending they have no reasons at all.

I oppose the death penalty under basically all circumstances. I won't go into the moral reasons, but empirical data has been very shaky on the effectiveness of the deterrence effect of the death penalty, while costs from a legal standpoint of the death penalty make it simply not worth using. I recommend reading "Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s" (Levitt, 2004), it gives a good overview of what the main contributors to the decline in crime were, what commonly are thought to contribute to the decline in crime but don't seem to have much effect, with references to relevant literature in case you want to read the original sources yourself. The relevant portion for this thread is:

In the 1980s, a total of 117 prisoners were put to death in the United States. That number more than quadrupled to 478 in the 1990s. The debate over the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent has been ongoing for three decades. Ehrlich (1975, 1977) presented early evidence arguing in favor of a deterrent effect. A number of critics demonstrated the sensitivity of the Ehrlich Ž ndings to seemingly minor changes in speciŽ cation (Forst, Filatov and Klein, 1978; Passell and Taylor, 1977; Leamer, 1983; Cameron, 1994). A series of more recent studies that incorporate data from the 1990s, however, have tended to once again Ž nd a deterrent effect (Dezhbakhah, Rubin and Shepherd, 2002; Mocan and Gittings, 2003).

Largely lost in this debate, however, are two important facts (Katz, Levitt and Shustorovich, 2003). First, given the rarity with which executions are carried out in this country and the long delays in doing so, a rational criminal should not be deterred by the threat of execution. Despite increases in capital punishment in recent years, the likelihood of being executed conditional on committing murder is still less than 1 in 200. Even among those on death row, the annual execution rate is only 2 percent, or twice the death rate from accidents and violence among all American men. Among the subsample of individuals engaged in illegal activities, the death rates are likely to be much higher. Levitt and Venkatesh (2000) report a death rate of 7 percent annually for street-level drug sellers in the gang they analyze. Kennedy, Piehl and Braga (1996) estimate violent death rates to be 1–2 percent annually among all gang members in Boston. It is hard to believe the fear of execution would be a driving force in a rational criminal's calculus in modern America. Second, even taking as given very large empirical estimates of the Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s 175 deterrent impact of the death penalty-such as Ehrlich's (1975) classic estimate of seven murders deterred per execution or Mocan and Gittings (2003) estimate of six murders deterred per execution-the observed increase in the death penalty from 14 executions in 1991 to 66 in 2001 would eliminate between 300 and 400 homicides, for a reduction of 1.5 percent in the homicide rate, or less than one-twenty-Ž fth of the observed decline in the homicide rate over this time period. Moreover, any deterrent effect from such executions cannot explain the decline in other crimes. Given the way the death penalty is currently practiced in the United States, it is extremely unlikely that it exerts signiŽ cant in uence on crime rates.

[QUOTE="mrbojangles25"]

2. How is it remotely ethical to murder someone for murder? We are told from a very young age that "two wrongs do not make a right" or "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind", and yet we turn around and murder people that have killed others. How is it justice? How is it right?

(Other points)

Palantas

This may come as a surprise to you, but not everybody is told that from a young age. Your grasp of the concept of justice is startlingly poor. There's a difference between disagreeing with someone's reasons for doing something, versus pretending they have no reasons at all.

its not surprising at all, given the amount of people that believe in the death penalty :P

Though I do not understand what is so poor about my understanding of justice.

Killing someone because they killed someone is revenge, not justice.

I strongly support the death penalty, especially for those guilty of murder or rape.

brickdoctor

[QUOTE="brickdoctor"]

I strongly support the death penalty, especially for those guilty of murder or rape.

bbkkristian

You cannot justify the death penalty for rape really. It's a very gray area.

Killing someone because they killed someone is revenge, not justice.

mrbojangles25

That's not the case in a number of cultures and philosophical systems, and your simple statement to the contrary doesn't invalidate them. For all the typing you did, you didn't actually rebutt anything. You just stated your opinion, as if that decided the issue, and repeated that in your response to me. Perhaps you didn't actually intend your post as a counterargument. Is that the case?

I used to support the death penalty, but I have seen a few cases where it can be abused by system and there are a few cases where DNA proves someone innocent.

For those cases where its 100% sure, (like those kidnappers that killed an entire family), I have no problem with that.

Otherwise, I want life imprisonment with no possiblity of parole

[QUOTE="mrbojangles25"]

Killing someone because they killed someone is revenge, not justice.

Palantas

That's not the case in a number of cultures and philosophical systems, and your simple statement to the contrary doesn't invalidate them. For all the typing you did, you didn't actually rebutt anything. You just stated your opinion, as if that decided the issue, and repeated that in your response to me. Perhaps you didn't actually intend your post as a counterargument. Is that the case?

and? Do you have a point, or are you just giving me **** for the hell of it? because either way I was stating my opinion/beliefs and you are jumping down my throat about it.

This is an ethical debate, I dont think there really is a lot of objectivity here (outside of the financial argument, which is not in favor of the death penalty), so I really do not understand your point. Maybe I should cite religious reasons, would you cut me some slack then?

I'm not sure what your answer to my question is. Do you not wish to continue this conversation?

once i get a sufficent sample size (oh say 500-600 opinions) i should be done. no that is not a large sample size especially not on an issue as divided as this. i have about 200 samples (over all the forums ive posted on so far)

[QUOTE="brickdoctor"]

I strongly support the death penalty, especially for those guilty of murder or rape.

bbkkristian

care to share your reasoning here?

[QUOTE="brickdoctor"]

I strongly support the death penalty, especially for those guilty of murder or rape.

bbkkristian

I go for Capital Punishment because the Criminals will continue doing bad things if there is no such thing.tmaclabi

I go for Capital Punishment because the Criminals will continue doing bad things if there is no such thing.tmaclabi

seems like counties with less violent crime (Japan,Normay,Sweden,Finland,and Iceland) have either no death penalty or very strict constraints on when it is used

Until we can somehow see inside people's thoughts with 100% clarity I'm against the death penalty. It's just too easy to make a mistake/mislead a court decision. Trusting another person's life on the shoulders of a few random civilians? If you were up for the death penalty would you want that?

[QUOTE="tmaclabi"]I go for Capital Punishment because the Criminals will continue doing bad things if there is no such thing.ferrari2001