The Death Penalty

[devonin]

Why? The murderer decided that his/her victim's life was no longer valid. S/He's just as human as we are. Does that mean that the murderer has more of the right to judge who can live and who can't than a twelve person unbiased jury?

So your solution is "If a murderer is allowed to decide that someone else's right to life is unimportant, surely we also have the right to decide someone else's life is unimportant"? I find that ridiculous. The answer is: "Nobody has the right to decide someone else's life is unimportant" and that extends to the killer, who had no right to kill someone; and to the people in the justice system, who have no right to kill the criminal.

[NFD]

Also, the cost to give somebody the death penalty is quite a sum compared to just giving them life in prison.

[tha Guardians]

Originally Posted by devonin

So your solution is "If a murderer is allowed to decide that someone else's right to life is unimportant, surely we also have the right to decide someone else's life is unimportant"? I find that ridiculous. The answer is: "Nobody has the right to decide someone else's life is unimportant" and that extends to the killer, who had no right to kill someone; and to the people in the justice system, who have no right to kill the criminal.

I don't think that was the point he was trying to make.
He's opposing the death penalty in his post because he opposes the right to kill others. He doesn't think it any fairer to kill a murderer than for a murderer to kill his victim.

He did not say it was a right of the murderer to kill in the first place. Either you overlooked part of his post or your trying to twist his words.

Neither of your outlooks are really important to me, I was just trying to clear a misunderstanding.

Personally, I think the murderer should choose his form of punishment, whether it be prison, death, or any reasonable justification.

[devonin]

He didn't say it was right of the murderer to kill. What he -did- say was "Does that mean that the murderer has more of the right to judge who can live and who can't than a twelve person unbiased jury?"

The blatant implication of that statement is "If the murderer can kill people, then the justice system can also kill people"

[tha Guardians]

Originally Posted by devonin

He didn't say it was right of the murderer to kill. What he -did- say was "Does that mean that the murderer has more of the right to judge who can live and who can't than a twelve person unbiased jury?"

The blatant implication of that statement is "If the murderer can kill people, then the justice system can also kill people"

In a roundabout way, maybe. Either way, it's irrelevant. He doesn't believe in the right to kill, whether it be a person or a group of people.

2 + 2 = 4
-2 + -2 = -4

2 + 2 ≠ -2 + -2

Just because he believes that a jury has the same right to kill as a person does, doesn't mean that he believes either have the right to kill.

[devonin]

Except he clearly does, as he's been in support of the death penalty for the whole discussion.

[tha Guardians]

Originally Posted by devonin

Except he clearly does, as he's been in support of the death penalty for the whole discussion.

Oh, my bad.
He clearly supports murder.

[tuv]

I would much rather be killed then serving the remainder off my years in the torture of prison. So I think your doing the criminals a favor by ending it much sooner.

[tha Guardians]

Originally Posted by tuv

I would much rather be killed then serving the remainder off my years in the torture of prison. So I think your doing the criminals a favor by ending it much sooner.

I completely agree. Life in prison is life spent miserably and life wasted.

[Soul Slayer]

An eye for an eye.

And I have to agree with tuv. Even though the death penalty is meant to torture them, it is actually helping them. Also, recent studies show that death row inmates are more likely to be well-behaved in prison, because they have nothing left to fight for.

[rzr]

Originally Posted by devonin

So your solution is "If a murderer is allowed to decide that someone else's right to life is unimportant, surely we also have the right to decide someone else's life is unimportant"? I find that ridiculous. The answer is: "Nobody has the right to decide someone else's life is unimportant" and that extends to the killer, who had no right to kill someone; and to the people in the justice system, who have no right to kill the criminal.

The people in the justice system have more of a right to kill the criminal than the original criminal did to kill his/her victim. However, it's not a matter of if a 12 person jury wants to kill them. The jury can't. The jury decides the innocence or guilt of the suspect. He judge, who's proved their adequacy, decides the punishment.

The fact that the judge has proven that they are worthy to decide a person's fate by a long journey of being a lawyer, or other legal official, and shown their honor is what gives them the right to decide a murderers fate, as well.

If this isn't proof enough, let's give a real example. How about someone like Hitler. Would he hat deserved prison, where he could escape and run another holocaust? No. In some instances, where it's dangerous to keep the suspect alive, they must die. If it risks the greater good to simply keep a killer alive, they should be executed.

[devonin]

The people in the justice system have more of a right to kill the criminal than the original criminal did to kill his/her victim.

I feel that they both have an identical right: none at all.

The fact that the judge has proven that they are worthy to decide a person's fate by a long journey of being a lawyer, or other legal official, and shown their honor is what gives them the right to decide a murderers fate, as well.

Yes, but that doesn't magically give them the right unavailable to every other human being, to decide to kill another human being with no consequences.

How about someone like Hitler.

Godwin's Law, you lose.

Would he hat[sic] deserved prison, where he could escape and run another holocaust? No.

I'm hoping you understand how patently ridiculous this line of reasoning is. One, when I say that nobody has the right to take the life of another human except in self-defense I mean it. When I say that I oppose the death penalty on the same grounds, I mean it. Just describing a "really bad guy" isn't going to make me go "Oh...right, him you can kill"

To your specific example: "Run another holocaust"?!? Do you seriously think that if Hitler had been captured at the end of the war and sentenced to say, life in solitary confinement subsisting on bread and water with no contact to the outside world, he could a) escape b) evade recapture c) somehow manage to get re-elected to the leadership of a country with a functioning military and d) persuade that country to start persecuting another race? How ridiculous can you get? Your example is nonsense, and does nothing at all to prove your point.

[rzr]

Originally Posted by devonin

I feel that they both have an identical right: none at all.

Opinion, not fact.

Yes, but that doesn't magically give them the right unavailable to every other human being, to decide to kill another human being with no consequences.

I specifically said that they earned their right through showing they're worthiness by proving to be unbiased and intelligent.

Godwin's Law, you lose.

I'm not aware of thing law...

I'm hoping you understand how patently ridiculous this line of reasoning is. One, when I say that nobody has the right to take the life of another human except in self-defense I mean it. When I say that I oppose the death penalty on the same grounds, I mean it. Just describing a "really bad guy" isn't going to make me go "Oh...right, him you can kill"

Just because you say it, doesn't make it a fact. It's still just your opinion.

To your specific example: "Run another holocaust"?!? Do you seriously think that if Hitler had been captured at the end of the war and sentenced to say, life in solitary confinement subsisting on bread and water with no contact to the outside world, he could a) escape b) evade recapture c) somehow manage to get re-elected to the leadership of a country with a functioning military and d) persuade that country to start persecuting another race? How ridiculous can you get? Your example is nonsense, and does nothing at all to prove your point.

The question was not can Hitler get back in power. The question is does a man or women who creates deeds like he did deserve to live? My opinion is no. Apparently, yours is yes?

[devonin]

Originally Posted by Rzr

Opinion, not fact.

And yours is fact?

I specifically said that they earned their right through showing they're worthiness by proving to be unbiased and intelligent.

I specifically said that nobody can ever have that right, regardless of what they think is their worthiniess to exercise that right.

I'm not aware of thing law...

"As an online discussion continues, the liklihood of a comparison to Hitler coming into the discussion approaches 1. Once Hitler has been mentioned in the discussion, the discussion immidiately ends, and the person who drew the comparison loses whatever the subject at hand is." Basically it says "Eventually someone will get desperate enough to push the Hitler button, at which point they lose."

Just because you say it, doesn't make it a fact. It's still just your opinion.

Yes Rzr, this is a discussion forum, here we discuss our opinions. If there were any fact at all in this matter, there would be nothing to discuss. Saying "Well that's just your opinion" in a CT forum thread is like saying "Well that's just your opinion" when you ask someone what they want for dinner. Your statements are also opinion.

The question was not can Hitler get back in power.

If the question was not could Hitler get back into power, you shouldn't have raised the idea that he could bring about a repeat event on the scale of the holocaust, since I'm pretty sure we all agree that you need to be a large-scale leader of people who idologically follow you to carry out something on that scale. Don't describe a situation where he'd need to regain power if his regaining power isn't supposed to enter into it.

The question is does a man or women who creates deeds like he did deserve to live? My opinion is no. Apparently, yours is yes?

My opinion is that nobody has the right to kill another human being for any reason under any circumstances. Whether they might or might not deserve it has nothing whatsoever to do with my position. Yes he absolutely deserves to die, no he absolutely does not deserve to live. However, I'm prepared to accept that he must continue living because I feel that nobody has the right to end another human's life. That doesn't mean I can't try to have him kept barely alive at the minimum quality of life I can manage.

[Arch0wl]

Violence is an otherwise endless cycle of vengeance that does not stop until one of the involved stops voluntarily. The death penalty is hypocritical, state-supported violence that de-legitimizes law enforcement.

[MrRubix_MK5]

I am too fscking lazy to read through this entire thread, but I will say this.

The death penalty, to me, sends a conflicting message. Say a criminal murders a few people because he feels the victims deserve death given some justification. So, in return, our justice system says "Murdering people is wrong and punishable by death" and so, using that justification, we execute that criminal.

The reason why I feel there's a gray line here is because we're technically using some sort of rationalization to justify killing, much like in the same vein that the criminal did when he executed his victim. What makes our justice system somehow inherently "above" abiding by this right? I just don't see why one has "more of a right" to kill a killer than a killer does his victim. I think killing is not justifiable by any entity, no matter the circumstances.

Besides, it costs a LOT more to execute someone than it does to throw them in jail and feed them for life. The paperwork/legalities involved are so incredibly dense (I recall seeing something on TV where they give you an idea what all has to go into an execution, legally speaking -- and it's absolutely disgusting).

http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=42

Anyways, I just feel that the moral implications involved, coupled with the high costs, make the death penalty something I generally disagree with. Besides, if someone commits atrocious murders, I'd rather they be tossed into jail for life. That kind of long-term suffering is, to me, a far more reasonable punishment for taking the lives of others, especially when compared to actually executing them in return for their crimes.

Besides, the death penalty is, uh, permanent. There have been cases where innocent people have been wrongfully exterminated. At least in jail you have the opportunity to be released if new evidence exonerates you far beyond reasonable doubt (and they do compensate you for your time spent in prison). If you're dead, you can't really do a whole lot. They compensate the surviving family members, I believe, but at that point I don't think money can possibly replace the death of a wrongfully executed family member.

[dore]

I support capital punishment but not with our current system. Honestly, if someone is going to be forced to rot in jail for the rest of his life then I see no harm in expediting the process. I would rather see prisoners working for the benefit of society, in which case taxpayer money funding the prison system is an investment in the country, but I see no benefits to condemning a person to die in jail over condemning them to die a little earlier with a lethal injection.

Sadly, our current system with all its bureaucratic nonsense is horribly inefficient and ineffective; in essence, it's a joke. There are so many better things our government could be paying for than housing and feeding criminals condemned to live out their lives in jail.

[devonin]

The problem with that is that you need to draw lines between what kind of crime is worth killing and which isn't. I suppose the expedient of "Anything that would be a life sentence becomes the death penalty instead" but that's basically what states who have the death penalty now do, and the reason other states don't do that is because they've decided through the legislation process that they don't want executions.

I would certainly be in favour of more by way of prison work programs, but the problem is that they are really only useful for unskilled manual labour, since anything more important shouldn't really be left in the hands of criminals (I don't want them building bridges etc) but there's enough unemployment already that you'd really just be generating make-work programs that don't really accomplish much.

[Master_of_the_Faster]

I don't support the death penalty for a few reasons. From my sadistic view, I want to see people suffer in jail where I can see them suffering rather than give any of these criminals a hypothetical chance to be in a better state after death. As a caring person, I acknowledge that there may be a few criminals that may be able to turn their lives around and come to their senses through prison life. Also, while it is kind of rare for this occurance to take place, there will always be that chance that an innocent person is locked up in prison and will be sentenced to death.

[1961casey]

Excuse me, but who or what decided that anyone has a right to life at all? I didn't decide that, and neither did anyone contributing to this thread. Did your neighbour give you that right? How about the guy driving that dump truck? No? How about the police officer? No, he has to protect my right to life but he didn't give me the right to life. Maybe it was mayor? No? Then who decided I had the right to live? Someone might say that the right to life is self-evident but that doesn't answer the question.

Somewhere, somehow, people decided that the right to life was that basic foundation of their society and everything else extended from that point on. This belief was so fundamental that protecting that right became enshrined in law. The law became responsible for protecting the individual from arbitrary death at the hands of their neighbour. No longer did the individual have to fear for their lives because they knew that the law protected them and that no one would be allowed to profit from their death. The next question was: What would be an equitable punishment for anyone who did take someone's right to life?

It was once declared that justice was 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth but no more than that.' This made sense to people because it was equitable. But how could that apply to a case where someone had lost their right to live? The killer couldn't be forced to take the place of the deceased because it just didn't make sense. How could one unique individual take the place of another unique individual? If we all were cookie cutter copies of each other then, yes, that would work, but we are not. Financial compensation was insulting: how can any amount of money buy back the life of a unique person? It just won't happen! So what does that leave? What does the killer possess that has any value that he or she could be forced to give it up? Do they have something that they value that could match the value of the lost life? Is there some way that by removing the valued possession, the killer would be equitably punished? If justice is 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' then wouldn't 'a life for a life' be equitable also? Cold unemotional logic, dictated that 'Yes, a life for a life would be just.'

So it was put into law also. From then on, just as the law was responsible for protecting the individual's right to life, so would the law determine the equitable punishment for removing that right from someone else and if that was the removal of the killer's right to life, then so be it. From then on, everyone was equal under the law. The law gave people their rights and the law determined the appropriate punishment for the illegal removal of that right. No one could act as if they were above the law and everyone had to answer to the law for their actions. Everyone knew and accepted that the law gave and protected their right to life and it was only the law that could determine whether one's actions gave cause for the person to forfeit their right to life.

However, as time went on, the society changed. People became less willing to accept the law as the bequeether of rights. They began to argue as to whether someone could actually be held resposible for their own actions and therefore answerable to the law. They began to work harder at protecting what they thought were their rights, and less interested in the honour of accepting their responsibilities. They began to confuse their wants with their rights and bitterly wailed when they could not get what they wanted and claimed it was their right. No longer could they accept that there was equitable punishment for improper actions. They cringed at the thought of justice and, instead, sought 'rehabilitation', thinking that they were better people because they were nicer than their forefathers.

Slowly, as time went on, the society started to rot from within. No longer was a high standard accepted in fear that someone might be emotionally damaged. Responsibility was disdained. Wants became rights. 'Do what you want' became the slogan, not 'do what you should.' Self-discipline became a joke and a source of mockery. Integrity was an option. Morality was a distant fairy tale. And justice was non-existant. No longer were sentences equitable. Victims were further victimize by the very institution they hoped would protect them. Slowly, Darwin's law began to take over: only the strongest survive. Society no longer existed.

Over the years, people sought out the strongest from among them and made them their chiefs in hope that their strength would protect them. Sometimes this primitive society worked for as long as that chief survived, but it rarely lasted beyond the life of the chief which was sometimes artificially shortened. Then the people realized that in order to survive, they had to recognize what was important to them. Not just possessions or position but what was fundamentally important to them and to have it formally recognized. Somewhere, somehow, people decided that the right to life was that basic foundation of their society and everything else extended from that point on. . . .