The Death Penalty

[MSizer]

Actually yeah, I better calm down lol. Everybody has topics that they get heated on lol, I guess this topic is my "nerve" spot! xD

Although I gotta totally disagree why your idea of veiwing everyone as equal is the better position. Yeah, if they're all innocent then of course, but we're talking about Murderers and Rapists and Peadophiles!

You cannot just say that they're all equal to upstanding, law abiding civilized Citizens! What kinda of insult is that? So the person who spent 7 years in medical school and became a successfull Doctor and helped save the lives of many injured people, at the end of the day, will be equal in value and contribution, to a Murderer or Rapist?

So if you had to save only one of them, you'd struggle?

By viewing everyone as equal, regardless of what they've done, you're either:

1) Devaluing the lives of normal upstanding people.

or

2) Cherishing and favouring the lives of Murderers, Rapists and child molestors.

The reason I come to this conclusion is because whenever we judge someone, we do it off what they've said/done, and then we hold them in higher/lower regard. But you, even when faced with a murderer, will still judge him and still find him just as valuable as a Doctor. Either that or you judge the Doctor and the restof civilized society, and find them all equally as useless as the murderer.

That's the only way I can see it.

I don't think it's that simple. I think the value of human life is intrinsic, and therefore each and every single one of us has it (and so do animals, but that's not significant in this case, I just like to add it). If I were posed with a dilemma situation, where I could save only one life, sure I'd choose a doctor over a child molestor, but not on the grounds of what they have done but rather on the grounds of the potential for each to do good. Now, of course, the child molestor doesn't seem to have the potential to do much good, as well, he does appear to have the potential to do terrible harm, but again, that's why I think for now we have to lock them up (which I don't like but admit it's necessary) and that we also owe it to them to try to understand why they do what they do. I believe that thier brain is fundamentally different than ours, just like I was born white and my adopted cousin was born asian. We didn't choose it, and we couldn't have chosen otherwise. Therefore, I think it's a sign of a morally enlightenend population to seek to understand and "fix" (whatever that turns out to be) such people for thier sake, for their vicitms' sakes, and all those loved ones affected too.

 

[Aquitaine]

I don't think it's that simple. I think the value of human life is intrinsic, and therefore each and every single one of us has it (and so do animals, but that's not significant in this case, I just like to add it). If I were posed with a dilemma situation, where I could save only one life, sure I'd choose a doctor over a child molestor, but not on the grounds of what they have done but rather on the grounds of the potential for each to do good. Now, of course, the child molestor doesn't seem to have the potential to do much good, as well, he does appear to have the potential to do terrible harm, but again, that's why I think for now we have to lock them up (which I don't like but admit it's necessary) and that we also owe it to them to try to understand why they do what they do. I believe that thier brain is fundamentally different than ours, just like I was born white and my adopted cousin was born asian. We didn't choose it, and we couldn't have chosen otherwise. Therefore, I think it's a sign of a morally enlightenend population to seek to understand and "fix" (whatever that turns out to be) such people for thier sake, for their vicitms' sakes, and all those loved ones affected too.

You said in an earlier post, that no-one can ever understand what goes on in another person's mind. So how would you know that these scumbags aren't exactly the same as us, in terms of mental function?

It's thier personality that determines what they do, it doesn't neccessarily mean that a murderer is as "misunderstood" or "vulnerable" as a retarded person.

As for you and your cousin, yeah you were both born the way you were, there's no choice in that. But their certainly is alot of choice involved when an individual decides what they're gonna do with their lives.

We don't owe jack to the murderers/rapists and child molestors, instead, we owe it to the victims and their relatives for failing to prevent it in the first place. We also definitely should not be giving them free food and shelter when there are so many more people who desperately need it. Why not give it to all the homeless people, and just toss the m/r/p's out into the middle of an ocean?

 

[MSizer]

You said in an earlier post, that no-one can ever understand what goes on in another person's mind. So how would you know that these scumbags aren't exactly the same as us, in terms of mental function?

It's thier personality that determines what they do, it doesn't neccessarily mean that a murderer is as "misunderstood" or "vulnerable" as a retarded person.

As for you and your cousin, yeah you were both born the way you were, there's no choice in that. But their certainly is alot of choice involved when an individual decides what they're gonna do with their lives.

We don't owe jack to the murderers/rapists and child molestors, instead, we owe it to the victims and their relatives for failing to prevent it in the first place. We also definitely should not be giving them free food and shelter when there are so many more people who desperately need it. Why not give it to all the homeless people, and just toss the m/r/p's out into the middle of an ocean?

I think we're starting to go in circles at this point. You're right, I can't know what's going on in another person's head, but we know that there are criminals who have been found to have brain injuries, and when they're healed, they stop being criminals. I just can't possibly imagine that any "normal" person would do any of those horrible things - I just don't buy it.

Anyway, I think we've both expressed ourselves, and I'm going to respectfully disagree at this point. Sorry bud, just the way I feel about it - no disrespect personally.

 

[Nepenthe]

Many are inclined to test the efficacy of punishment solely by its value as a deterrent: but this is too narrow a view. Punishment is the way in which society expresses its denunciation of wrongdoing, and, in order to maintain respect for law, it is essential that the punishment inflicted for grave crimes should adequately reflect the revulsion felt by the great majority of citizens for them.

<Poisonshady313 was quoting a Justice here but I left the quote intact>
The exact same argument may be applied by in opposition to the death penalty; it's yet another argument from emotion to justify the punishment. Some crimes are so outrageous the perpetrator relinquishes their right to live freely and should be imprisoned for life. But capital punishment is met with revulsion as well. I wouldn't be convinced by someone arguing abolition if they said something similar. I don't see this as a particularly convincing argument to support the death penalty.

It is a mistake to consider the objects of punishment as being deterrent or reformative or preventive, and nothing else.

But isn't "... in order to maintain respect for law, it is essential that the punishment inflicted for grave crimes should adequately reflect the revulsion felt by the great majority of citizens for them" an argument from deterrence just re-worded?

 

[Valjean]

If I decide a person is detestable and kill him it's considered murder, and I'm counted a criminal.
If a group decides a person is detestable and kills him it's an execution, and its counted as justice.

I don't see the difference. A group is no more reasonable or authoritative than an individual, despite declaring themselves so.

 

[Aquitaine]

I think we're starting to go in circles at this point. You're right, I can't know what's going on in another person's head, but we know that there are criminals who have been found to have brain injuries, and when they're healed, they stop being criminals. I just can't possibly imagine that any "normal" person would do any of those horrible things - I just don't buy it.

Anyway, I think we've both expressed ourselves, and I'm going to respectfully disagree at this point. Sorry bud, just the way I feel about it - no disrespect personally.

Well, in an ideal world. If those murderers were somehow victimless then I'd totally jump onboard with you on this.

Only thing is, the damage has been done, it's too late. We're better off spending our resources on fresh citizens and people who're poor and need help, rather than trying to fix a murderer.

Not only that but I doubt it would work. The UK has adopted your way of thinking for it's seriosu offenders, they're all "rehabilitated" and it clearly doesn't work, they get let out and rape/murder again.

Some Humans are just bad people, and if we want to get anywhere we're gonna have to learn to judge and respond to these individuals and deal with them, not wasting time money and effort to try and "fix" them after they've already committed a horrible thing.

Here's another thing, rather than spending our efforts trying to "fix" murderers, why not spend our efforts trying to "guide" our children better through their lives, and detect these mental issues much earlier on and address them so they turn out much better and when they grow up, they simply don't want to murder/rape?

 

[Aquitaine]

If I decide a person is detestable and kill him it's considered murder, and I'm counted a criminal.

If a group decides a person is detestable and kills him it's an execution, and its counted as justice.

I don't see the difference. A group is no more reasonable or authoritative than an individual, despite declaring themselves so.

The difference is that the first line is of a person wanting to kill an innocent person.
The second line is of a group deciding what to do with a murderer for the best purpose of protecting society.

If he's dead, he cannot possibly escape or re-offend.

 

[misanthropic_clown]

If I decide a person is detestable and kill him it's considered murder, and I'm counted a criminal.
If a group decides a person is detestable and kills him it's an execution, and its counted as justice.

I don't see the difference. A group is no more reasonable or authoritative than an individual, despite declaring themselves so.

Essentially the difference is that if we were to have a system of justice where one individual decided the life or death of the guilty, there is a risk of personal interests and bias unduly influencing the decision. The group aspect eliminates the risk that someone could be executed for reasons or influences other than the crime they have committed.

 

[Valjean]

The difference is that the first line is of a person wanting to kill an innocent person.
The second line is of a group deciding what to do with a murderer for the best purpose of protecting society.

If he's dead, he cannot possibly escape or re-offend.

Presumtiouous.
He was guilty and I'm protecting society.
line two: Find someone, punish him, assusage public ire.

Two can play at this game, Paul.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

 

[Poisonshady313]

But capital punishment is met with revulsion as well.

More from the justice, to respond to this:

Any attempt to discern contemporary standards of decency through the review of objective factors must take into account several overriding considerations which petitioners choose to discount or ignore. In a democracy, the first indicator of the public's attitude must always be found in the legislative judgments of the people's chosen representatives. MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL's opinion today catalogues the salient statistics. Forty States, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Government still authorize the death penalty for a wide variety of crimes. That number has remained relatively static since the end of World War I. Ante at 339-341. That does not mean, however, that capital punishment has become a forgotten issue in the legislative arena. As recently as January, 1971, Congress approved the death penalty for congressional assassination. 18 U.S.C. § 351. In 1965, Congress added the death penalty for presidential and vice presidential assassinations. 18 U.S.C. § 1751. Additionally, the aircraft piracy statute passed in 1961 also carries the death penalty. 49 U.S.C. § 1472(i). MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN's dissenting opinion catalogues the impressive ease with which each of these statutes was approved. Ante at 412-413. On the converse side, a bill proposing the abolition of capital punishment for all federal crimes was introduced in 1967, but failed to reach the Senate floor.


At the state level, New York, among other States, has recently undertaken reconsideration of its capital crimes. A law passed in 1965 restricted the use of capital punishment to the crimes of murder of a police officer and murder by a person serving a sentence of life imprisonment. N.Y.Penal Code § 125.30 (1967).


I pause here to state that I am at a loss to understand how those urging this Court to pursue a course of absolute abolition as a matter of constitutional judgment can draw any support from the New York experience. As is also the case with respect to recent legislative activity in Canada and Great Britain, New York's decision to restrict the availability of the death penalty is a product of refined and discriminating legislative judgment, reflecting not the total rejection of capital punishment as inherently cruel, but a desire to limit it to those circumstances in which legislative judgment deems retention to be in the public interest. No such legislative flexibility is permitted by the contrary course petitioners urge this Court to follow. In addition to the New York experience, a number of other States have undertaken reconsideration of capital punishment in recent years. In four States, the penalty has been put to a vote of the people through public referenda -- a means likely to supply objective evidence of community standards. In Oregon, a referendum seeking abolition of capital punishment failed in 1958, but was subsequently approved in 1964. Two years later, the penalty was approved in Colorado by a wide margin. In Massachusetts in 1968, in an advisory referendum, the voters there likewise recommended retention of the penalty. In 1970, approximately 64% of the voters in Illinois approved the penalty. In addition, the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws reports that legislative committees in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Maryland recommended abolition, while committees in New Jersey and Florida recommended retention. The legislative views of other States have been summarized by Professor Hugo Bedau in his compilation of sources on capital punishment entitled The Death Penalty in America:

What our legislative representatives think in the two score states which still have the death penalty may be inferred from the fate of the bills to repeal or modify the death penalty filed during recent years in the legislatures of more than half of these states. In about a dozen instances, the bills emerged from committee for a vote. But in none except Delaware did they become law. In those states where these bills were brought to the floor of the legislatures, the vote in most instances wasn't even close.
​

This recent history of activity with respect to legislation concerning the death penalty abundantly refutes the abolitionist position.

 

[Poisonshady313]

The second and even more direct source of information reflecting the public's attitude toward capital punishment is the jury. In Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510 (1968), MR. JUSTICE STEWART, joined by JUSTICES BRENNAN and MARSHALL, characterized the jury's historic function in the sentencing process in the following terms:

The jury is given broad discretion to decide whether or not death is "the proper penalty" in a given case, and a juror's general views about capital punishment play an inevitable role in any such decision.
​

A man who opposes the death penalty, no less than one who favors it, can make the discretionary judgment entrusted to him by the State, and can thus obey the oath he takes as a juror. . . . Guided by neither rule nor standard, . . . a jury that must choose between life imprisonment and capital punishment can do little more -- and must do nothing less -- than express the conscience of the community on the ultimate question of life or death.
​

One of the most important functions any jury can perform in making such a selection is to maintain a link between contemporary community values and the penal system -- a link without which the determination of punishment could hardly reflect "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." Trop v. Dulles, . . .
​

Any attempt to discern, therefore, where the prevailing standards of decency lie must take careful account of the jury's response to the question of capital punishment. During the 1960's, juries returned in excess of a thousand death sentences, a rate of approximately two per week. Whether it is true that death sentences were returned in less than 10% of the cases, as petitioners estimate, or whether some higher percentage is more accurate, these totals simply do not support petitioners' assertion at oral argument that "the death penalty is virtually unanimously repudiated and condemned by the conscience of contemporary society."It is also worthy of note that the annual rate of death sentences has remained relatively constant over the last 10 years, and that the figure for 1970 --127 sentences -- is the highest annual total since 1961. It is true that the sentencing rate might be expected to rise, rather than remain constant, when the number of violent crimes increases as it has in this country. And it may be conceded that the constancy in these statistics indicates the unwillingness of juries to demand the ultimate penalty in many cases where it might be imposed. But these considerations fall short of indicating that juries are imposing the death penalty with such rarity as to justify this Court in reading into this circumstance a public rejection of capital punishment.

One must conclude, contrary to petitioners' submission, that the indicators most likely to reflect the public's view -- legislative bodies, state referenda and the juries which have the actual responsibility -- do not support the contention that evolving standards of decency require total abolition of capital punishment. Indeed, the weight of the evidence indicates that the public generally has not accepted either the morality or the social merit of the views so passionately advocated by the articulate spokesmen for abolition. But however one may assess the amorphous ebb and flow of public opinion generally on this volatile issue, this type of inquiry lies at the periphery -- not the core -- of the judicial process in constitutional cases. The assessment of popular opinion is essentially a legislative, not a judicial, function.

 

[Aquitaine]

Presumtiouous.

He was guilty and I'm protecting society.
line two: Find someone, punish him, assusage public ire.

Two can play at this game, Paul.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

I guess that depends on our views on whether killing someone is right or wrong.
Personally, I think it's circumstancial.

Some people should be killed, some shouldn't.

What I define as the "line" from where an individual looses his/her right not to be killed is when they murder some innocent person. It doesn't mean that I support some bloodthirsty veiw that we should all start killing random people for no reason.

There's every difference in the world, between a murderer killing an innocent, and the State executing a guilty murderer.

 

[kai]

Here's something interesting, from the 1972 Supreme Court dissenting opinion in the case of Furman V Georgia.

For those who don't know, this is the opinion in favor of retaining the death penalty:


While retribution alone may seem an unworthy justification in a moral sense, its utility in a system of criminal justice requiring public support has long been recognized. Lord Justice Denning, now Master of the Rolls of the Court of Appeal in England, testified on this subject before the British Royal Commission on Capital Punishment:

Many are inclined to test the efficacy of punishment solely by its value as a deterrent: but this is too narrow a view. Punishment is the way in which society expresses its denunciation of wrongdoing, and, in order to maintain respect for law, it is essential that the punishment inflicted for grave crimes should adequately reflect the revulsion felt by the great majority of citizens for them. It is a mistake to consider the objects of punishment as being deterrent or reformative or preventive, and nothing else. If this were so, we should not send to prison a man who was guilty of motor manslaughter, but only disqualify him from driving; but would public opinion be content with this? The truth is that some crimes are so outrageous that society insists on adequate punishment, because the wrongdoer deserves it, irrespective of whether it is a deterrent or not.

an interesting read



The denunciation argument

This argument is stated clearly by Lord Denning in the Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment:
The ultimate justification of any punishment is not that it is a deterrent, but that it is the emphatic denunciation by the community of a crime: and from this point of view, there are some murders which, in the present state of public opinion, demand the most emphatic denunciation of all, namely the death penalty.
The problem with this argument is that capital punishment is not the only forceful way of expressing our outrage—we can also do so by declaring a person no longer fit to live amongst us. Nor is it the most emphatic way of doing that—we could sentence a person to torture, followed by capital punishment, followed by ignominious burial. Why, then, should we think that capital punishment is just the right thing to say, so to speak, in certain circumstances? Meaningful speech, whether symbolic or otherwise, must serve a function. What is the purpose of emphatically denouncing murder? If it is to remind the community of the heinousness of certain deeds with a view to reducing their incidence, the denunciation argument reduces to the deterrence argument, and fails for the same reason. On the other hand, if that is not the function, the denunciation argument seems to be the retributive argument all over again—we express the outrage of the community in a way which fits the crime—and likewise fails, for capital punishment must then not only appear to be an arbitrarily chosen mode of expression, but also one used at the risk of doing a grave injustice to an individual.



http://www.bccla.org/positions/dueprocess/84capital.html

 

[kai]

Just a note on Lord Denning


As a High Court judge Denning sentenced people to death, which he said at the time "didn't worry [him] in the least". Denning maintained that for murder, death was the most appropriate penalty, and that in cases where mistakes had been made there was always an appeals system.[44] In the 1950s there was growing opposition to the use of the death penalty, and a Royal Commission was appointed to investigate abolishing it. Denning told the Commission in 1953 that "the punishment inflicted for grave crimes should adequately reflect the revulsion felt by the great majority of citizens for them".[44] He later changed his mind about capital punishment, regarding it as unethical.[45] In 1984 he wrote that "Is it right for us, as a society, to do a thing - hang a man - which none of us individually would be prepared to do or even witness? The answer is 'no, not in a civilised society'".[46]



Alfred Denning, Baron Denning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[nonbeliever_92]

For what reason,
To what cause,
By whose ethics,
Through which laws,
Is it ever rightly just
To take the life of another?

 

[Poisonshady313]

For what reason,
To what cause,
By whose ethics,
Through which laws,
Is it ever rightly just
To take the life of another?

For capital punishment
to inflict justice
by the ethics of American society
through the laws of 36 states.



That's only in regards to the death penalty.

Self defense is another example.

Also... it is a corrections officer's right to shoot an inmate who is trying to escape.