The Death Penalty

As I wrote earlier Tal, simple primitive revenge. Is what you want. Very easy to do so but that doesnt make it right. Quite few of the ones sentenced to death in most nations are really those evil murdering bastards but 'normal' weak people that have had a rough life, wrong buddies and took the wrong descision at the wrong time.

 

I says that wee shud shock dem ray-pists all the wai too hail. Gad blez de NRA!

 

Just because something is law doesnt make it right in my eyes. All nations have their fair share of strange and/or unjust laws.

 

But I might actually be on your side Blackthorne, if all one had to do to avoid capital punishment was... to be innocent.

One has to be white, and intelligent, and wealthy enough to afford private representation. Oh yes and female. So, here I am, at liberty to annoy you all. Cool for me. But some people find the above requirements kind of hard to swing.

And in America -- being male, Black, stupid, and poor are capital offences.

Deja vu.

And there is no moral difference between causing and knowingly failing to prevent a death, so Taluntain is right there in the vengeance camp, as he confirms is his design. Oy. We just disagree.

 

Your chances of getting the death penalty have more to do with being poor, male, Black, and stupid that with any objective notion of justice for your crimes -- if you in fact committed them. That is what I am saying. But don't take my word for it.

"A 1990 Government Accounting Office (GAO) report summarizing several capital punishment studies confirmed "a consistent pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in charging, sentencing and the imposition of the death penalty...." Eightytwo percent of the studies the GAO reviewed revealed that "those who murdered whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks." In addition, the GAO uncovered evidence (though less consistent) that a convict's race, as well as the race of the victim, also influences imposition of the death penalty."

"Two of the country's foremost researchers on race and capital punishment, law professor David Baldus and statistician George Woodworth, along with colleagues in Philadelphia, have conducted a careful analysis of race and the death penalty in Philadelphia which reveals that the odds of receiving a death sentence are nearly four times (3.9) higher if the defendant is black. These results were obtained after analyzing and controlling for case differences such as the severity of the crime and the background of the defendant. The data were subjected to various forms of analysis, but the conclusion was clear: blacks were being sentenced to death far in excess of other defendants for similar crimes."

For documentation on the poor, stupid and male claims, see...
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/racerpt.html http://www.rightsforall-usa.org/what/appeals/deathpen.htm http://www.aclu-mass.org/issuebriefs/deathpenalty.html

AND finally...

"When in Gregg v. Georgia [the 1972 decision reversing a previous one in 1967 which had declared capital punishment unconstitutional--MeV] the Supreme Court gave its seal of approval to capital punishment,this endorsement was premised on the promise that capital punishment would be administered with fairness and justice. Instead, the promise has become a cruel and empty mockery. If not remedied, the scandalous state of our present system of capital punishment will cast a pall of shame over our society for years to come. We cannot let it continue."
-[U.S. Supreme Court] Justice Thurgood Marshall, 1990
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No, it's not irrelevant, if your argument still contains anything about justice.

If you have dropped that pretence for a good ole honest stoning and damn-the-facts-as-long-as-it-makes-the-victims-feel-better, then more power to you. We certainly have enough male, Black, poor, and stupid people to feed the god of Vengeance for a long time.

 

Hmmm...The DP is always a tough subject. I waffle on it constantly. In general, I believe if you have such low regard for the lives and rights of others, then your life is forfeit when you take the life of someone else. At the same time though, it brings the state down to the level of the murderer...A moral dilemma.

at the same time, I'm not all that crazy about spending my tax money for having some murdering bastard sit in a cell, have cable, 3 squares a day, clothing, and all those other perks! Another point for execution.

But then the appeals process probably costs more than it would cost to keep a prisoner incarcerated. A point for life imprisonment. So then, what's the solution?

Well - I guess I'm leaning toward life imprisonment. But with a twist...Criminals should be caged like veal. Barely enough room to move around, no weightlifting, nothing...Except maybe some kind of beneficial labor that helps society...Who knows, I definitely don't have the answer.

 

Always go with the death penalty. After they are found guilty, put them on death row for a couple of years(2-3), kill them, and then put them on ice. I don't know what the cost of keeping a body frozen is but it maybe better than keeping them alive in prison. I have the belief that we will be able to raise the dead before we will be able to go back in time.

 

Murder is defined as "the unlawful or unjustified taking of another human life." Are you suggesting that a soldier in a war who defends his country and risks his own life is a murderer?

I see nothing but justice being done with the death penalty. As was said earlier, an eye for an eye. This dates back to Hammurabi's Code of Laws with the ancient Babylonians. Under this dynasty, crime drastically decreased. Perhaps the reason that the death penalty does little to deter crime in the United States is because of the 10-15 years required for appeals and the easiness of a reduced sentence due to a technicality.

I can think of a few countries that throw you in front of a firing squad for drunk driving. In these countries, nobody does it. Does that show that the death penalty will deter crime if properly implemented? Yes. America fails to implement the death penalty properly, and this is it's failing. If the day after conviction, you were killed, I think that would serve to reduce crime.

Part of me agrees with Taluntain's idea to allow the victim's family to let off the criminal, but they can easily be threatened well before the guilty verdict in the trial.

 

I guess after reading all the opinions on the boards, I also have to think things through. Admittedly I haven't really spent time to think about the death penalty, but I will share some of my thoughts and opinions so far:

I feel that the punishment should fit the crime. With that said, the premise of Capital Punishments is that there are certain acts which justly warrants the taking of a life. Those who do not believe in the death penalty will have to admit that there are NO acts heinous or brutal enough to deserve capital punishment. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Those of you who have stated that the Death Penalty is unjust, should have the conviction to say that if Osama Bin Laden is caught, he does not deserve the Death Penalty for September 11, and the loss of lives and property his act has caused.

For me, the best argument against the death penalty is not the punishment itself. The problem I have is really with how justice is served. Violet and the others made very good points. Yes, it can (and should) be argued that those innocents put to death by mistake is a failure of the system of justice, and that the punishment (whatever it is) has no bearing on it. It can be further argued that the issues raised regarding race, income, education, poverty, etc., are sociologial arguments, not legal ones, and should be reserved for other fora. It is not the death penalty's fault that there is injustice. The death penalty is there merely to allow justice to manifest. The law has neither passion or prejudice.

Problem is we don't live inside a courtroom, and passion and prejudice do exist within and around us. The law is there also to protect the weakest of society's members, and when they are affected, the conscientious argument can and will definitely see the penalty (whatever it is) unjust as long as the implementation remains unjust. Simply, the death penalty is made an unjust thing, not really because it is wrong in itself, but because it may be, can be, will be and has been sentenced on innocents.

Then again, just because we do not live in a courtroom and are subject to subjectivity is no not excuse to detach ourselves from our emotions. Isn't that an aspect of justice too, seeing things with objectivity? So yes, these passionless courtrooms and legal arenas were created to further fairness and equitability.

I figure it is up to the society in question, with its assortment of belief and value systems, to determine whether DP is unjust or not. Short of a straight up election (referendum?) of the people voting "yes" or "no", I can't see how this can be argued any easier...

... and the majority isn't always right, it just means its popular.

Tough... isn't it?

[This message has been edited by eveningdrive (edited July 11, 2002).]

 

Ah, well, Blackthorne -- you and I just disagree, and this legalistic tit-for-tat we have going would never end, unless I were willing to give you the last word. Which I am.

For the rest of you -- Really there are two issues:
1. The idealized death penalty, or
Is death a just punishment for heinous crimes?
2. The death penalty as practised, or
Can the state be trusted to exercise the death penalty justly?

For me, the second question trumps the first. For me, loss of innocent life is much worse than non-punishment of the guilty. I had thought that this was a cornerstone of ethical jurisprudence -- and indeed it is, at least on paper, in the United States -- but I see that many of you feel the reverse is true. That the execution of the innocent may be a necessary evil if we are to be sure the guilty are executed.

I reject that utterly. I cannot even consider whether execution of the guilty would be a good thing as long as I know that execution of the innocent is part and parcel of the death penalty as practised in the United States.

"If you call [life imprisonment] punishment you have a really perverted view of what a murderer deserves for his crime."
"Because, seriously, the only real justice for a murderer is death."
Maybe I do, Tal. Maybe it is -- what murderers deserve for their crimes I couldn't really say. But I can say that I don't deserve to be both an accomplice and an accessory to the murder of innocents, as I am by paying California taxes. I also don't think *you* deserve to lessen your own humanity, as you invariably do when you consider any human being to be not a human being. Whatever he might do.

All human life has value.

 

inhumane and primitive, don't like the idéa, though i do not beleave in pure evil, there is people that is totaly screwed, and killing them is a choice, but somewhat i dont like it.

 

I still fail to understand... if it's the suffering of the criminal you all want for such heinous crimes, how could you possibly go for the DP... it's just a quick way out. Let them rot in prison for the rest of thier lives.