Poll: How do you feel about death penalty?

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

The death penalty is something I support for certain crimes. I've never truly accepted describing it as barbaric - I do however believe that handing it down as a punishment is something to be taken very seriously. As in; if the case is anything other an a complete lock from start to finish, then we revert to a lengthy prison sentence. The crimes I'd support use of the death penalty for would be serial murder/rape, verifiable child molestation (this does not mean some poor bastard being busted fucking a 16 year old), treason and war crimes (though that last one would probably be covered under the various military justice codes rather than civilian).

 

[SmallHatLogan]

People keep bringing up vengeance but I don't see it that way. I just see it as a pragmatic solution for removing a person from society who is beyond redemption. Housing them for a lifetime doesn't make any sense to me.

Many criminals can be rehabilitated into productive members of society, though, including sexual predators and murderers.I think the recidivism rate for rapists in the US is roughly 50%, which while very high, means that half of those people won't do it again. Then there's the study from New Jersey I posted earlier in the thread that showed within the scope of the study, none of the 336 convicted murderers had killed again, and less than a third total actually committed any violent or drug felony after being released. I'm not going to kill somebody when I can imprison them indefinitely, especially not when half of those released never commit a heinous crime again.

That's a fair point. But I was thinking more along the lines of very extreme circumstance like mass murderers and serial killers as opposed to someone who murdered someone but doesn't have any kind of pattern of extreme criminal behaviour (not trying to trivialise murder by the way). I did use the phrase "beyond redemption" but I don't know if prison/legal systems ever actually consider anyone to be unrehabilitatable.

So I'm only pro death penalty (in theory) in the most extreme of circumstances.

 

[GamerAddict7796]

As the crimes you have to have committed to get the death penalty in a civilised country are pretty horrific, then killing that person is the best thing for society. That guy who killed all the people at the Batman film shot a 12 year old in the face. This person needs killing. Anders Brevik should be killed. He killed 77 children! That's beyond redemption.

I understand that in some 3rd world countries you can be killed for being gay and I believe that this is disgusting and should be stopped but if you have gone on a rampage and killed children then you don't deserve to live. This coddling the criminal should be stopped.

 

[Baron Teapot]

When all the safeguards, appeals, special equipment and death row costs are taken into account, the death penalty is actually more expensive than simply jailing the prisoners for life. When cuts are being made to healthcare, education, pensions etc, why waste money on this?

You're seriously telling me that taking a murderous rapist out behind a wall and shooting them in the back of the head is expensive compared to keeping someone alive, washing their clothes, feeding them, cuddling them when they have a nightmare, etc, etc, for 70-plus years?

I believe in the death penalty, but exclusively for rapists and murderers, and even then, I'd only like it to be mandatory in cases of rape: murder is occasionally justified, and we've all heard of self-defense. I don't understand how you'd rape someone in self-defense.

There are billions of us on this planet. Killing a few of us who lack even basic morals seems justified.

Also, I don't think drug dealers ought to be punished: there already exists a very real illicit prescription drug-trade in the US, where citizens scam powerful opiates from doctors offices and hospitals. So get rid of the laws and put drug-dealers out of a job, and instead allow the government to profit from drug sales, similarly to how tobacco and alcohol are taxed and sold. I'm all for harm-reduction and education.

But think about it: you go to a pharmacy and purchase something clean and pure. No risk of disease, no risk of infection, and the quality remains consistent, which prevents accidental overdose and death. A pre-packaged injectable solution is far safer than cooking up street dope yourself, and so... why not?

We're sacks of chemicals who consume chemicals, but some of the chemicals we consume are arbitrarily bad? Makes no sense.

Anyway, sorry for that little rant, but c'mon, you know it's true! What needs to be done is to make all drugs seem mundane: educate children about them until they know they're not some mysterious thing, but something dangerous that requires your respect, but not your fear. Similar to how in France there's less binge drinking, (some say) because alcohol is an accepted part of daily-life and thus lacks the appeal it has to British and American teenagers.

 

[JoJo]

When all the safeguards, appeals, special equipment and death row costs are taken into account, the death penalty is actually more expensive than simply jailing the prisoners for life. When cuts are being made to healthcare, education, pensions etc, why waste money on this?

You're seriously telling me that taking a murderous rapist out behind a wall and shooting them in the back of the head is expensive compared to keeping someone alive, washing their clothes, feeding them, cuddling them when they have a nightmare, etc, etc, for 70-plus years?

Yes, because in the real world, it's not as simple as just shooting a person convicted of [insert capital crime] and being done with it. Executioners and equipment used to execute people cost money, as do separate death row cells and appeals court hearings designed to ensure that innocent people aren't executed. How much does that all add up to? Well...


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/20/california-death-penalty-execution-costs

One example, since 1978 California has spent over $4 billion on it's death penalty, with just 13 people executed. Imprisoning a few extra people for life is peanuts compared to that cost, especially since the prison infrastructure will already exist anyway, the only extra cost is food and healthcare. Maybe you'd disagree with me but I'd rather that $4 billion had been spent on improving children's education, or helping poorer people with healthcare costs, rather than ending some scumbag's life a few years earlier.

 

[Baron Teapot]

Overly stringent? There were people who were on death row, later aquitted of any wrongdoing, that even while in the process of making an appeal, the state had tried to execute them. If anything, appeals aren't protecting people enough.

So basically you're saying "But it's mean!"

Are you fucking high or something? The government continuing to try to executeinnocent people before their appeals go through - how is highlighting that as a failure saying "wel, well, well, cuz they're big meanies!", because thats not something minor. One day we might find out that that had actually happened to an innocent person, and on that day we're murderers. We're already murders, as we've executed innocent people in the past before.

1. The onus isn't on the judge to prove why the death penalty is right since it is a law made by congress. The onus is on the death penalty opponent to show why the law should be changed.

The judge can't use any sentence he or she so wishes. There are confines of that law, and guess what? Every law that punishes action by death also have alternatives to that sentencing, so yes, it is on the judge to defend why they choose to go for the one ruling that can't remotely be unfucked.

And I think I've given quite a few reasons. The inherent fallibility of the justice system and that innocent people have landed on death row, the fact that due to the current system that death row is more expensive than life imprisonment (and that even that system is inadequate), the fact that deterrence is an invalid defense since it cannot be demonstrated.

2. Proportionality is something that is also decided by the culture. You haven't made a point.

Its something quite understood and shared through all cultures. I can't think of a single culture where it is acceptable to punish a starving person with petty theft with murder.

3. Once again, the fact that some other culture finds it so abhorrent that they will kill people for it has no bearing on our legal system, which does not kill people for sodomy.

Sodomy is not the point, the point is that society looks back with horror certain activities that have been punished in the past as well with other activties that were completely like, like slavery. The point I was trying to make was that execution is an unacceptable punishment for an activity that is condemned for cultural reasons. Thats the exact same way that genocide functions.

You make some good points, MarsAtlas. I'd like to alter my previous statements to reflect that I know the justice system is not infallible, and frequently fails people in the most abhorrent ways.

However, if there were a means of proving someone's guilt or innocence one hundred percent, I'd advocate for the death penalty. Prisons are over-crowded, dangerous places where the guards are outnumbered and often out-gunned, considering the ingenuity with which prisoners manufacture their own weapons, using all manner of necessary every-day objects. It seems like a waste of money to, as I said, feed, clothe, wash, educate and entertain people who essentially knew what they were doing and then chose to ruin others' lives for their own enjoyment.

It's merciful, perhaps. I would argue that a lifetime in a cage is too horrible to think about, and death would be sweet release. Basically, I'm arguing that it's more humane. Unless they could be put to use, perhaps similarly to penal battalions in the Second World War -- have them sweep for mines and IEDs to protect our soldiers. Make them useful.

You mention that capital punishment is given as a response to activity condemned for cultural reasons, but murder is universally condemned, and all social species condemn those who murder their own.

Of course, a lot of society is to blame: poverty leads to homelessness and desperation. Ever read Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment', or 'The Idiot'? In the former, a deliriously hungry poor man (Raskolnikov) murders an old woman to steal her money, and realizes that it was all a terrible idea. The guilt eats him up and he ends up handing himself in. In 'The Idiot' Prince Myshkin, the titular 'idiot' repeatedly discusses an execution he witnessed. Ultimately, his best friend murders the woman he loves out of a combination of madness, spite and lust. It's quite a complex and fun plot and I can't really do it justice here, but in both of those cases, there is potential justification for the crimes committed.

I'm advocating for the death penalty where such crimes could not be justified: but this brings up its own problems, for when is a crime unjustifiable? Someone mentioned the 2012 Aurora shooting at a screening of 'Dark Knight Rises'. I was going to argue that this was unjustifiable, and in many ways it is, but I'd be pleased to hear your opinions on the subject. Clearly, the killer was suffering from psychological issues and likely not in his right mind, but that's how I reconcile his actions with my morality: no sane person would do that.


Mental illness makes it difficult to determine the level of culpability for those crimes, but at what point are you no longer responsible? People need to take responsibility for their actions. There are countless ways in which James Holmes could have helped himself and improved his lot, but he resorted to murder. I really believe that keeping him alive is a waste: he'll never leave the prison, and there are children dead because of him. It wasn't in self-defense, it wasn't out of desperate hunger or poverty; he didn't even know these people...

However, there are 'sane' people (I mean people who know exactly what they are doing) who carry out these kinds of vicious massacres.

I feel like I'm going around in circles here. Still, I do want to know what you think.

I want to clarify that I don't mean people who kill in self-defense or accidentally. I'm talking about the worst offenders. There are crimes that would make it impossible to continue living, because there's only so much guilt you can survive before ending it. Spending decades trapped in a metal cage sounds frighteningly horrible. Better to put them out of their misery, because they can no longer be a part of society -- they forfeited their right to freedom and safety when they decided to kill innocent men, women and children instead of visit a clinic and discuss their problems with a doctor or counsellor.

It's stated that he was seeing a psychiatrist and I'd like to know why this was even allowed to happen, but that's getting off-topic.

Understand that all other aspects of society (mental-health care, benefits for poor and sick people, health-care, etc) must all be working in order for my death-penalty idea to be feasible. Executing the wrong people is an unacceptable problem, and the idea that the state would execute them regardless of their guilt or innocence seems to be missing the point of the whole "justice" part of the justice system.

 

[JimB]

The purpose and function of government is to deny the governed freedom. I don't mean that in some anarchic way, but in the sense that it's the only thing the law does: it looks at my rights and decides which ones I must not be allowed to exercise. I am not allowed my right to murder people because the government has told me I can't, and we, the governed, accept those limits to our rights and freedoms because we accept that they are in place to protect and serve us.

The death penalty does not protect or serve any right I place value on. It does not protect my safety, because there is no proof it works as a deterrent; it does not protect the rights of the dead, because the dead are dead and have no rights; it does not protect a sound financial policy, because it costs ludicrous amounts of money to execute someone. The only thing it protects is a right to vengeance, and the government is supposed to be better than that. Your right to take pleasure in seeing someone die shouldn't be considered the more valuable right than a prisoner's right to continue living. It's evil.

The American penal system in particular is a self-indulgent, vengeful, spite-driven program, and I cannot say enough bad things about it; but I suppose that's outside the scope of this thread. For now, let it be enough that capital punishment is a gross abuse of government power based on a tragic misunderstanding of government's purpose.

 

[Baron Teapot]

When all the safeguards, appeals, special equipment and death row costs are taken into account, the death penalty is actually more expensive than simply jailing the prisoners for life. When cuts are being made to healthcare, education, pensions etc, why waste money on this?

You're seriously telling me that taking a murderous rapist out behind a wall and shooting them in the back of the head is expensive compared to keeping someone alive, washing their clothes, feeding them, cuddling them when they have a nightmare, etc, etc, for 70-plus years?

Yes, because in the real world, it's not as simple as just shooting a person convicted of [insert capital crime] and being done with it. Executioners and equipment used to execute people cost money, as do separate death row cells and appeals court hearings designed to ensure that innocent people aren't executed. How much does that all add up to? Well...


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/20/california-death-penalty-execution-costs

One example, since 1978 California has spent over $4 billion on it's death penalty, with just 13 people executed. Imprisoning a few extra people for life is peanuts compared to that cost, especially since the prison infrastructure will already exist anyway, the only extra cost is food and healthcare. Maybe you'd disagree with me but I'd rather that $4 billion had been spent on improving children's education, or helping poorer people with healthcare costs, rather than ending some scumbag's life a few years earlier.

It does seem grotesque to put it down to money. The question I want to ask is this: are we only just and moral when it won't cost us?

I'm not one-hundred percent secure in my opinions, so no, I won't necessarily disagree; I don't have all of the answers.

We must be seen to perform capital punishment humanely, and much has already been made over the problems with the 'Lethal Injection', in that it is easy for one of the untrained personnel responsible for performing an execution to miss the subject's vein, thus causing them an agonizing death without sufficient sedation.

First go the barbiturates to knock them out, then a muscle-relaxant that stops them from moving, and finally potassium to stop their heart. This is being supplanted by a combination of the same sodium thiopental barbiturate, with added midazolam (a powerful benzodiazepine used in anaesthesia) and hydromorphone. From the documentation, it appears that this is enough to slow the target's breathing enough to essentially have them suffocate to death.

Trying to kill someone humanely seems like an oxymoron: there is no way to end someone's life with zero pain, suffering or anguish. But the point of the death penalty is to have an individual suffer for their crimes. It's got a lot to do with giving closure to victims' families, and deterring others from engaging in similar crimes, so much so that you could even say that the punishment isn't the most important part.

I truly believe that a lifetime in prison would be far worse than capital punishment, because you'll never leave, and you'll be kept alive for decades. Those on hunger-strike who're forced to remain alive? It's inhumane to force-feed someone against their will. Then again, I remember thinking that Ian Huntley deserved to be kept alive against his will and force-fed for however many years remain on his sentence, because killing those girls meant he forfeited his rights to choose for himself. I feel a little guilty about having that thought, but he's a despicable murderer and I'm not.

The whole thing seems like it has to be tarted up to keep the bleeding hearts from making a big stink about it. But deep down, the public wants people to be punished for their crimes. Tragedies make us want to blame someone. With an earthquake, or cancer or forest-fire there's no clear villain, but in the case of murdering little girls for some sick sexual thrill? That is a crime, the perpetrator of such a crime deserves to be punished, and the death-penalty will forever rid us of them. It implies culpability: do this and you will die. It's simple and straightforward: you're not going to find someone emptying an assault rifle into a crowd of shoppers at a mall, only to mutter "I didn't know it was illegal!" when they are arrested.

There are things everyone is fully aware of being fundamentally wrong and unforgivable, and these crimes may warrant execution.

Is it expensive? Unfortunately, yes. I still say it's easier to just chop off their heads with a guillotine, but it's all about the illusion of humanity. How do you humanely kill someone? It sounds like a riddle!

Still, thanks for providing that link to that article about the costs of the death-penalty.

Yet in practice, the legal process has become so cumbersome, and the dearth of expert death penalty lawyers so extreme, that executions happen rarely if at all. Since 2006 there have been no executions as the state's use of lethal injections has been mired in legal challenges.

"We really want voters to wake up and realise this is a horrible waste of money. If they are going to insist on keeping the death penalty they are going to have to spend even more money to fix it," said Mitchell.

The alternative to capital punishment ? sentencing the most serious crimes to life in prison with no chance of parole ? would by comparison be much cheaper.

Ideally I'd like to spend zero of my money on these scum, as would everyone else. But I think we need to reform the justice system and prevent trials from being dragged out unnecessarily, perverting the course of justice and ensuring that the defendants basically get to live in an expensive hotel suite, waiting for a punishment that will never come.

Take them outside, face a wall and shoot them in the head. This would just solve the problem: I'm sure a firing squad would only take up a few hours, but of course it's all about everything that leads up to it. Defense lawyers employing every trick that they can to delay and stall, and certain types of evidence don't last long. It is a farce. The whole system needs to be scrapped and rebuilt for all our sakes, but it's such a huge and cumbersome beast to fix!

 

[Baron Teapot]

If you can't allow emotion to come into it, what is the point of the justice system at all?

Before I respond, I just want to make sure I understand you correctly: how would you deal with James Holmes?

I find your opinion that having a mental illness can exclude you from any and all consequences quite disturbing. Correct me if I'm wrong, please, but you seem to treat it like a 'Get out of Jail Free' card; he is a killer, and he ought to be punished. In my opinion, the death penalty would be a good fit.

What is the difference between getting drunk and killing someone, for instance with a car, and killing someone because of a mental illness? Yes, you choose to drink. So say it's an alcoholic: he can't stop drinking; it's classified as a disease and needs treatment. He refuses to seek help and instead gets drunk and kills a family whilst driving. How does this compare?

It's just a quick analogy anyway, but still I'd like to see what you think.

Capital punishment is ugly, inhumane and horrible. But murder and rape are ugly, inhumane and horrible. I feel uneasy about paying for such people to relax for the remainder of their lives.

Holmes was a dangerous nut-case with ready access to high-powered semi-automatic weapons. I want to know how the hell a crazy man who'd dress up as The Joker from the Batman mythos and walk into a cinema before calmly gunning down dozens of people down could ever even gain access to such things.

Nobody here would offer a drunken alcoholic their car keys. How did he get those guns? Ah, ignore this if you want 'cause it's getting to be off-topic. We've kind of moved on from discussing capital punishment in general to one specific case.

There are countless ways in which James Holmes could have helped himself and improved his lot but he resorted to murder.

Were there? Moreso, are we really supposed to hold mentally ill people responsible for their actions if they don't seek help for themselves? Most don't believe that they're experiencing any type of mental problems, and that they're completely lucid. What about a paranoid schizophrenic who thinks that very "help" is actually out to get them?

Yes. Of course there were ways and means to help himself. Please don't be obtuse like that, like it was some inevitability that could not have been avoided, because that's just not true and we both know that.

Psychological conditions can be managed, and there are a plethora of pharmacological solutions which can be adapted to fit almost any profile these days, at least enough to prevent someone from massacring a cinema full of people.

Being unable to reliably take your medication can be arranged for: a nurse can visit daily and ensure you're properly medicated. In a worst-case scenario, you could be committed to an institution that would take good care of you. It isn't done out of spite; it happens because someone cannot take care of themselves alone. Such places provide fantastic care most of the time. But whatever happens, they help you.

He was apparently seeing a psychiatrist, which has had its own effects upon his trial. But the psychiatrist must either have not realized that he was so dangerous, or was too incompetent to understand.

A few bad apples give the impression that such places are horrible, but that could not be further from the truth. The article I linked to below mentions a "developmentally disabled fight-club", and I bring it up because I read about this a recently and was appalled.

Here [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2554680/They-ran-disabled-fight-club-Group-home-workers-forced-patients-mental-capacity-pre-schooler-brutally-fight-laughing-taking-video.html]

Neglecting to seek help was a huge mistake on his part, and he chose instead to kill people. His murder-spree wasn't a spur of the moment thing; he had time to dye his hair and adopt a persona and costume, as well as prepare all of those guns for use. It seems as if he planned to do this.

How can you plan to do something, and then do it, but be completely lacking in responsibility?

You make some good points. I guess you haven't read 'The Idiot' or 'Crime and Punishment' because you quote me as if to point out that I made two contradictory statements, when I was pointing out that those crimes were justifiable due to the status of the perpetrator as both starving and too poor to eat; society would not provide for him, ergo he took matters into his own hands. Holmes' murders were nothing like Raskolnikov's crime, because he wasn't a cornered rat lashing out to survive.

It's a really good read. I'd recommend it.

Unless they murdered somebody because they "deserved it", like for example, being gay, or having a differing ethnicity. Then it happens rather commonly throughout human history.

As far as I'm aware, murder has always been considered a crime. Man is a social animal. Social animals frown upon murder, because that which reduces the group or otherwise harms the group negatively affects the survival chances of every individual within it. This has remained in us, and we typically understand that killing our own is "wrong". It's ingrained into our morality: murdering someone from your own tribe has always been a heinous crime.

I'm not talking about killing someone for some arbitrary reason; murder has always been understood to be wrong. Whether there are people who don't consider the killing of certain groups within a population to be murder (like gays or infidels, etc) is another argument.

 

[DANEgerous]

P.S. is it odd that I have a threshold of when it is okay to brutally murder you? If so how brutal must I be and why is it my bad if they killed someone I love? I just can not think past "FUCK YOU DIE!" if I see a person kill without reason. Take any known mass murder out me in a room with them and ask me to eat their heart... done cannibalism be damned.

 

[rutger5000]

Any punishment should only be dished out for either 2 reasons.
1. To discourage the perpetrator from repeating his/her crime. This can be due to fear of getting punished again, but ideally a rehabilitation process is enforced upon the perpetrator, to learn the error of his/her ways and provide alternatives.
2. To disable the perpetrator from ever repeating his/her crime. This is only a valid reason if the risk of repeating the crime is considered too great. In any case it should be done in the most human matter, at times this means the perpetrator needs to be imprisoned. But in some cases the most human way of achieving this is a physical punishment. For example castrating a rapist, in medieval times cutting of the hands of a thief, or in some cases the death penalty (as opposed to lifelong imprisonment).
Punishment for any other reason is simply revenge

 

[Something Amyss]

I might be for it in a world where we could demonstrate without a doubt that it would both be used only for the most heinous offenders and only in the case of irrefutable guilt. Even then, that's a maybe. In a world where the penalty is handed out unevenly and where it's easy for innocent people to go to death row, no. In a country like the US, where we actively limit due process to expedite the punishment of criminals? GOD NO.

 

[Drizzitdude]

The death penalty is usually- and well should be- a last-resort measure to people who are convicted beyond any shadow of a doubt for crimes of the most atrocious nature. I have no problem with seeing a man who gunned down a police officer trying to give a simple speeding ticket AND WAS CAUGHT ON CAMERA DOING IT getting the death penalty.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6z8q4lOrDU
You want to try rehabilitating these fuckers? Go nuts. But while you piss years of therapy and tax dollars on trying to "rehabilitate" a man who just took away some kids' fathers or wives' husbands, I'm not going to shed a single goddamn tear as monsters like this get put in a casket with a nameless grave.

The U.S. HAS the death penalty, and in spite of having one of the largest prison systems in the world, it faces overcrowding as a constant issue. So that we can keep people like this alive. And because people believe that therapy can "cure" pedophilia or sociopathy.

Forgive me, but I don't buy that for a second. We should not be changing all of society to have tolerance for terrorists and psychopaths. It should not be about "being the better person"- it should about taking clear and constant threats from society, and removing them forever.

Pretty much this. If people want to be psychopaths and murderers that is their own choice, but I don't want hear one person complain when they get a bullet in a brain. They don't even deserve the sort of executions that they get either, if they are found without a reasonable doubt and proven to be guilty (Using the video quoted as an example, I couldn't even finish watching it after reading the description) then they should be put down like the rabid animals they are and let their family deal with the body. No tax dollars lost, no time or space wasted. Just done. People say we cannot have a 'civilized' society with the death penalty. Well I don't think we can live in a civilized society where I can kill 77 people, and then demand that I get a ps3 and weekly allowance http://kotaku.com/norway-mass-murderer-goes-on-hunger-strike-for-better-1522910916

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/02/18/convicted-norwegian-mass-killer-anders-behring-breivik-goes-on-hunger-strike-demands-new-video-game-system/