Three really good reasons to abolish the death penalty

[dwightsteel]

I always find the American debate on the death penalty quite surreal. It is quite bizarre, given that capital punishment has been abolished for so long in virtually every civilised country that it remains incredibly controversial to suggest abolition in the United States. It actually reminds me of slavery, an archaic and barbaric practice which an otherwise-advanced America clung on to for decades after abolition in the rest of the advanced world. The rest of the world has moved on, it's time America caught up.

To compare the death penalty and slavery is really quite an unfathomable leap. You're comparing the owning of other human beings as property to the idea of a possibly extreme punishment for criminals. You can talk about how behind the curve the U.S. has been in comparison to other "civilized" countries, but that hasn't stopped them from being the dominant superpower in the world for a century.

This issue is a far bigger one than you would like to believe. For a democratic country, our crime rates are staggering. More than one prison stateside is dealing with overcrowding issues.

You are completely naive if you think the issue is so clear cut. And don't put yourself above Americans, simply because they conform to a political idea that you do not. You are not superior, so don't let your posts make people think you feel that way.

 

[poet_lawreate]

Thank god this is a non-issue in the UK. Things would have to get pretty bad for us to reinstate the death penalty.

 

[headshotcatcher]

Do you even know how many tax payer money goes to the people who have KILLED OTHERS for fucks sake. There are a lot of regular people who live worse than inmates..

 

[Zersy]

Just do what Batman does

"He doesn't kill people he just leaves them there to die"

 

[electric_warrior]

i think only really sick puppies should get the death penalty, like a dahmer or a bundy. people who will never be safe and whose crimes warrant something drastic. take edmund kemper, the guy will never be released; he cut off his mothers head and had sex with it as well as killing like 7 others. yet he has been held in prison for over 30 years. what is the point? just kill the fucker.
careful disgression would need to be exercised, though. only if the evidence was utterly incontrovertible by any standards, e.g. bodies in or around their house or something like that. or if they confessed fully and accepted that they had done those things.

 

[nekolux]

How about the people who killed many people, ruined many lives and are forever unrepentant?
Do we let them live? Let's face it there are people who deserve to die.
I agree that there are flaws in the system of enforcing such a law, but it is needed.
Also i find your point about it being a deterrent rather illogical. Of course it's a deterrent, it's the same thing with religion. No one is going to do something bad if they know an entity of great power ( God or the dept of justice in this case ) WILL come and get them.

Consequence is the thing that makes people stop and think about their actions.

I always find the American debate on the death penalty quite surreal. It is quite bizarre, given that capital punishment has been abolished for so long in virtually every civilised country that it remains incredibly controversial to suggest abolition in the United States. It actually reminds me of slavery, an archaic and barbaric practice which an otherwise-advanced America clung on to for decades after abolition in the rest of the advanced world. The rest of the world has moved on, it's time America caught up.

Everyone's doing it so we should do it.?
Oh sure well that makes sense!

These civilized nations you speak of were the ones who started colonization and slavery. " Hey all the rich and civilized people are having slaves and getting rich off the expense of the natives. Let's do that too! "

 

[santaandy]

To counterpoint the OP:

1) I disagree. All laws and punishments are open to horrible abuse. We can't just get rid of them; we need better people making/enforcing them.

2) I disagree with your ends but not your point. The death penalty would be an effective deterrent if it were not allowed decades worth of appeals and such. However, for those who do not see it as a deterrent; if the threat of death doesn't stop you from raping and murdering your way through life, shouldn't you be killed anyway? I wouldn't want someone like that to continue to threaten society and quite possibly me and my loved ones.

3) I disagree. We are not implementing reasonable doubt anymore. We are too often resorting to unreasonable doubt. We let people whine and cry and get off for every reason. If we had quality people making and enforcing the law, innocent people would only be convicted if they were framed; which, let's face it, if someone goes to the trouble of framing you they aren't going to stop coming after you if you get out/off. We can't let our fear of punishing an innocent person wrongly get in the way of punishing a monster rightly. Which is better, to risk one innocent person's wrongful punishment, or to guarantee many innocent person's horrible violent murders?

---

For the other points:

Overcrowding - Why should we continue to support someone who is a violent monster? Why should we feed, clothe, and care for murderers and rapists? They didn't care for their victims, and for us to care for the criminals is a profound insult to the victims' loved ones. These monsters have already destroyed innocent members of our society, why should they be allowed to continue to drain us? It's insulting that innocent homeless people starve while guilty monsters get fed in jail. No good will come of it.

Monster Genes - I saw this mentioned and someone else Godwined (sigh). I can't seriously believe that anyone would want a gene that causes people to rape and murder to stay in our gene pool. I shouldn't have to explain this or the history of the Nazis. If genetic engineering provides a cure to those who have mental diseases which cause them to commit such horrors, isn't that cure a betterment of society? Less innocents will be brutalized, and people who aren't in control will be again - and will stay out of jail. Maybe we could even cure sociopathy this way. How is this in any way bad?

Rehabilitation - I agree, not everyone is a violent monster and a threat in general. But that should be evident enough during the trial. If this is your 3rd murder/rape this month, or your 23rd case overall, you obviously are either incapable or unwilling to stop. You deserve death so the rest of us can be safe from you.

Humaneness - This is total horseshit. If you are a violent monster, you have been horribly inhumane to your victims; why in the hell should we be humane to you? You have no right to demand such treatment; and again, it would be a horrible insult to the victims' loved ones. Not because the victims' loved ones are bloodthirsty. It's just that we shouldn't treat the criminals better than the victims. Rorschach said it best: "I was too soft on criminals - I let them live."

Cheap labor - This is for criminals who aren't monsters. We don't have to worry about them turning on us or escaping being a danger to society. If a thief turns on you, it's doubtful he'll kill you. And if a thief escapes, he'll just steal stuff, which is replaceable. Thieves being in and out of jail doesn't bother me, because they are paying for what they've done, and everyone's okay otherwise. Stealing stuff is only worth a certain amount of recompense. Thieves may be risks, but they aren't threats/dangers. Theives don't rape and murder. And if they do, they stop being theives and start being monsters. It's that simple.

The only crimes the death penalty should apply to are intenionally letting someone innocent die (e.g. treason leading to a terrorist attack, drunk driving, etc.), extreme physical violence/murder (murder isn't the only thing you can't recover from), and any sexual violence/child abuse. Basically anything which ruins or ends an innocent person's life. Ironically enough, despite my dislike of Barack Obama, he did make a good point when he said that the death penalty was appropriate when "the community is justified in expressing the full measure of it's outrage."

If it's obvious that you are a violent monster and a threat to society, you should be killed to keep us good people safe.

It's simple - dead monsters don't commit crimes.

 

[beddo]

1. It's open to hideous, terrible abuse. The death penalty is the tool of choice for oppressive political regimes and social movements. It's a handy way of quashing dissent and getting rid of people your society doesn't like for whatever reason. This is true in all countries that use it. Consider the United States: in Texas, people on death row are often there thanks to completely incompetent court-appointed defense lawyers with no experience in such cases (rather than the experienced public defenders that are vital in such a system) - and do I really need to mention the race issue? You can tell me all you like that your own government would never allow such a travesty to occur (or be perpetuated), but you'll excuse me if I'm skeptical.

2. A common argument for the death penalty is that it is an effective deterrent, because nobody wants to get executed. This is bullshit, because nobody commits a crime if they expect to get caught. The psychological evidence here is pretty clear - nobody is going to say "maybe I shouldn't shoot this guy" because they might get executed for it in fifteen years.

3. The death penalty is fundamentally incompatible with the fundamental assumption of Western criminal law, which is that it is worse to punish an innocent man than it is to let a guilty man go free. (This is why you are "innocent until proven guilty," and why you need to be proven guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt" - if there's any doubt, you should be considered innocent in order to avoid any possibility of punishing an innocent person.) It stands to reason that this principle should be enforced especially rigorously the worse the punishment is. A death sentence is about as bad as a punishment gets. Despite this, even such enlightened societies as the United States have executed innocent men. Take the case of Leonel Torres Herrera, who was executed in 1993, despite the fact that he had evidence that could have seen him acquitted. We cannot take the risk of this happening even one more time.

So, let's have some reasoned, level, argumentative dialogue about this issue in here! Please, don't troll, flamebait, or otherwise be a prick.

For me the biggest problem is ethics. I think no person has the right to kill another person. If we kill a murderer then how are we any better than them? Is it worth sacrificing our own humanity to punish someone who has wronged us? To me, it is not, if only because it is a contrived notion.

Clearly, as we can see in oppressive regimes it is often the Government who are the most abhorrent body. If anything we should not have capital punishment to save us from our own governments.

I think it's a debatable point that it is better to let a guilty man go free than an innocent man be punished. I don't disagree but there are rather strong utilitarian arguments against this however, the death penalty does not allow for a correction of a miscarriage of justice.

It seems more and more that the guilty go free, not because we do not know they are guilty but because they employ lawyers who are able to twist the law, to lie and to manipulate the truth, to discredit others who oppose them. they work the system and are in many cases almost criminals themselves; this is not justice.

What I will say is that we underestimate the effect of losing liberty. It is a serious thing to lose, in some cases living with something can be worse than dying for it.

 

[IndieRocker]

Yes it would be wrong to excecute an innocent person but would it be as wrong as to let a guilty person e.g serial killer walk free and kill again

 

[Smiles]

I'm for the death penalty.

All you f***ers can die and burn for all I care.

 

[Lexodus]

I'm a misanthropistic bastard that had a party when JG popped it. Sure, the party was for something else, but I pretended it was for that. I say, keep it, and diminish the number of sick fuckers running around. Oh, and to the guy calling people Nazis-
1. Godwin's Law.
2. I'm Jewish, so there.

Anyway, I'm pro-death because it does, as it has been said, send out a message saying, 'Don't fuck with us." Besides, I cannot be bothered wasting time trying to rehabilitate the huge majority of reoffenders, so...

And, on a final note,

Maybe you're right, but it's much easier to apoligize to someone who's just spent the last 10 years in jail for no reason than it is to someone who's just been executed.

Bullshit. Watch The Shawshank Redemption.

 

[Tyranicus]

T

1. It's open to hideous, terrible abuse. The death penalty is the tool of choice for oppressive political regimes and social movements. It's a handy way of quashing dissent and getting rid of people your society doesn't like for whatever reason. This is true in all countries that use it. Consider the United States: in Texas, people on death row are often there thanks to completely incompetent court-appointed defense lawyers with no experience in such cases (rather than the experienced public defenders that are vital in such a system) - and do I really need to mention the race issue? You can tell me all you like that your own government would never allow such a travesty to occur (or be perpetuated), but you'll excuse me if I'm skeptical.

2. A common argument for the death penalty is that it is an effective deterrent, because nobody wants to get executed. This is bullshit, because nobody commits a crime if they expect to get caught. The psychological evidence here is pretty clear - nobody is going to say "maybe I shouldn't shoot this guy" because they might get executed for it in fifteen years.

3. The death penalty is fundamentally incompatible with the fundamental assumption of Western criminal law, which is that it is worse to punish an innocent man than it is to let a guilty man go free. (This is why you are "innocent until proven guilty," and why you need to be proven guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt" - if there's any doubt, you should be considered innocent in order to avoid any possibility of punishing an innocent person.) It stands to reason that this principle should be enforced especially rigorously the worse the punishment is. A death sentence is about as bad as a punishment gets. Despite this, even such enlightened societies as the United States have executed innocent men. Take the case of Leonel Torres Herrera, who was executed in 1993, despite the fact that he had evidence that could have seen him acquitted. We cannot take the risk of this happening even one more time.

So, let's have some reasoned, level, argumentative dialogue about this issue in here! Please, don't troll, flamebait, or otherwise be a prick.

Then you pay taxes for the murders and rapists to sit in jail for the rest of their miserable lives.

 

[Lexodus]

1. The Jedi don't have a death penalty so neither should we. 2. Shouldn't the guy flipping the switch get the death penalty too since he's committing murder, or does that mans life not matter. 3. It's pretty much only allowed in the southern states of America what does that tell you.

1. the jedi are not real, and dont try to pull the religion one as proof

2. the guy "flipping the switch" was permitted to do so by either the judicial department, or the Government, i dont pay too much attention to those things, so i dont know which. also, that would mean there would be an endless killing line......think.

3. it means we dont like spending money keeping prisoners for 60 or 70 years where we could just put them down. but lets do one better, lets just place ALL of the prisoners in one gigantic prison with sticks, last one alive gets a presidential pardon.

1. That was a joke so lighten up.
2. Of course there would be a big killing line that's what I meant.
3. How much money does it take to keep prisoners alive? They are fed dog shit and wear the same damn clothes every day.

On point 3... Haven't you heard about open prisons? Look it up before you start spouting shit.

 

[Agayek]

I support the death penalty, but only in cases where there is basically no uncertainty. If it can be well established that said person committed a death penalty offense (to me, murder, rape, and aggravated assault with intent to kill), then they should be put to death, swiftly, efficiently, and brutally. All other cases I would support prison time over it.

 

[mark0217]

Hmm, I want the death penalty reinstated ASAP in my country. Why? Rampant. Fucking. Crime. They call it the "revolving door" system, because the criminals come and go. There are people who have been arrested and convited over 20 times, and yet they go on to continue their useless, damaging lives in the street.
All the while they're making more and more babies, who will grow up to be just like them (which is why I'd support abortion as well).
Sadly, the catholic church still holds political sway here in south america, so we're pretty much fucked.