Capital Punishment For Murderers

[EasilyFound]

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Locking someone up forever doesn't seem quite as satisfying as executing them - like the state has done a half-assed job of the vengence. So I guess that's why I'm in favor of capital punishment. It might seem a bad reason to some, but it feels right to me.

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I thought the premise of this thread was to decide this question by leaving emotion out. Murdering a defendant because it "feels right" or makes someone else, like the victim's family feel better, violates the premise. But maybe that is not what the OP had in mind.

Now for my contribution to this debate. I disagree with how the premise was framed in the OP, which dismisses high falootin philosophy. I don't know what that means if it was not meant to dismiss a moral objecton to capital punishment. Serious and thoughtful people can oppose the death penalty on moral grounds, such as whether the gov't should be in the business of murdering its citizens. I believe it should not be in that business.

I can't help but believe that most people who favor the death penalty do so for emotional reasons or for vengeance, neither of which strikes me as a good reason for choosing the death penalty over LWOP (life without parole). Captial punishment is barbic. Also, look at the other governments that impose capital punishment, and tell me if you like the company.

As a practical matter, we know that innocent people are found guilty of all sorts of crimes, including captial crimes. For me, that factor easily outweighs any other argument for capital punishment. It is depressing that people feel otherwise.

[EasilyFound]

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4. Is there more than a micro chance that the defendent is innocent?

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If you're reluctant to execute somebody because you think they might be innocent, shouldn't you be equally reluctant to send them to prison for life?

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Because if the wrongful conviction is discovered before the prisoner dies in prison, the prisoner can be released.

[PartySNGer]

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I'd say cost shouldn't be a factor because we can afford it.

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We can? The death penalty has cost New Jersey a quarter billion since '83 and is one reason why the state is in financial crisis and AC shut down for a short period.

The hilarious thing about this is there have been nearly 200 capital cases with 60 death sentences given. Of the 60, 50 were later reversed, and of the 10 upheld, all 10 remain on death row. So a quarter billion wasted on the death penalty where not even one man was executed. What a system we have in place.

[Hume]

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If they are convicted of murder and various appeals fail, I'd be 99.999999999999% certain they are guilty.

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So one out of one hundred thousand billion convicted are actually innocent, lol. That number is waaaaaaaay wrong.

[mikechops]

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If they are convicted of murder and various appeals fail, I'd be 99.999999999999% certain they are guilty.

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So one out of one hundred thousand billion convicted are actually innocent, lol. That number is waaaaaaaay wrong.

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Well what's your number then? Can you point to a single case in the last 25 years where someone has been executed for something they didn't do?

[mikechops]

$10m a year ain't so much. Though it would seem NJ is a little overly cautious about carrying the sentences out.

[mikechops]

Thinking about this some more, I was wrong to say I am in favor of the death penalty because it gives the families a measure of vengence. That would imply that we shouldn't execute someone who sadisiticly tortures a bum with no relatives. The vengence is on the part of society as a whole and the victims' families are a proxy for that. I didn't personally know the black dude who got chained to a pickup and dragged down the road, but I am rather glad the guys that did it were executed.

Another additional thought I has is that this debate can't be separated from emotion. I don't disagree with opponents of the death penalty because they are mistaken in their societal utility EV calculations - we disagree because we place different values on the outcomes. They place an almost infinite negative value on the possibility of wrongful execution and I place more value on vengence for a horrific crime. I can't do anything to change their core values, short of murdering a relative and short of wrongfully executing me (which I don't believe is possible) they aren't going to change my mind.

I'm fine with that. It is reasonable for people to have different values, but we should acknowledge that values are the basis for the disagreement, not powers of reasoning.

[Josh W]

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5) Yes, most families feel better.


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This is a misconception that most people seem to have, so I just wanted to point out that it is not actually true in most cases. Forget for the moment whether or not this should be criteria for or against the death penalty. I am not saying that the families of victims do not seek revenge. Most of them will say they want revenge, closure, etc, and a lot of them think the death penalty is suitable for that. In the Oklahoma City Bombing, for instance, most of the families of the victims said they wanted Timothy McVeigh put to death. They said it was the only suitable consequence. However, once he was put to death, almost none of the families of the victims, even those who were there to witness the execution, said they felt avenged. They didn't say he got what he deserved. Many of them even expressed disappointment that the execution didn't give them the feeling of closure and vengence they wanted. And after a while, when those families were interviewed again, most of them said they didn't feel any better at all. Some even said they felt worse and that it didn't accomplish anything, it only caused another death.

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I didn't read your entire reply, but I agree with you. There was a book written by a death row chaplain in Texas some many years ago. He interviewed slightly over 100 families of victims, and asked if they were happy that capital punishment was used. In over 90% of the cases, the families REGRETTED that the criminal received the death penalty. I'll try to look up that book and add it in here...

Josh

[schroedy]

I guess this is high falootin' philosophy, but I simply cannot see how anything could be more cold-blooded and morally wrong than the death penalty.

People who have no familiarity with another person methodically and without remorse extinguish his life. There is absolutely no mitigating factor here -- no emotion, no financial reward, no miscast patriotism, no paranoid delusion . . . .

If I as an individual were to execute (pun recognized, if not intended) such a plan, the world would universally respond with outrage. I don't see how society doing it, even in the name of order, security or vengence makes it any less morally reprehensible.

If killing people is wrong, the death penalty is the wrongest of all possible killings. If killing people is not wrong, then the death penalty is wrong, or at least senseless.

To me, the death penalty is inherently illogical. Like the bumper sticker says, "Why do we kill people who kill people to show people that killing people is wrong?"

[LandonM]

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1. No
Nobody has ever thought about the punishment regarding certain crimes before committing them. Everyone thinks they won't get caught therefore punishment for crimes is completely meaningless as a deterrence. (especially so from a life vs death sentence difference--is there really one in a criminal's mind? I doubt it)

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On the issue of deterrent value, you cannot cite people who have committed crimes in order to prove that the deterrent value is minimal, as those people were undeterred. There will always be the undeterred.
From that point, the question isn't really "does the death penalty deter" as much as it becomes "are we executing capital punishment in such a way that it serves in its proper deterrent capacity"

Like I said earlier... This question asks to prove an unprovable negative, as do all questions that query about the value of preventive measures.
Prove that if I had not changed the oil in my car, it wouldn't have broken down for 100,000 miles...

As an aside, I do believe that the death penalty is of immeasurable value when it is open and made public for all to see. When it is behind closed doors and done in secret, then it becomes nothing more than a vengeful, spiteful action undertaken by the state.

Another question: Say someone murdered the family member- the mother- of another person. The murderer was convicted, and summarily sentenced to death.

On the day of his execution, while being led from the holding cell to the injection chamber- mere minutes before he is about to be executed- the son of the murdered mother shoots the murderer with a rifle from the field across from the prison yard and kills him a couple feet from the entrance to the executioners pen.

Is the son guilty of murder? If so, then how is the state justified to do the same thing mere minutes later? If not, then what is the value of having the state complete the executions in the first place, if their main value is for the benefit of the families?