Capital Punishment For Murderers

[PartySNGer]

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The death penalty does the same thing except cheaper(if the person is relatively young to begin with).

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Source?

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He probably means if we ignore the fact that court costs in death cases are on average 2-3x that of non-death cases, then it is cheaper to put someone to death.

[LandonM]

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5) Is murder a harsher punishment than elimination of freedom for the rest of ones life?

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I would say that it isn't. But I think that life in prison serves to do nothing except remove the person from society. The death penalty does the same thing except cheaper(if the person is relatively young to begin with). And the costs for capital punishment could be decreased even further by limiting what I feel to be the absurd appeal system in place in this country.

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The Justice system in this country is far, far more absurd than our appeal system. It's a horribly ugly truth that no one understands until they have a chance to experience it first hand.

My conception of the legal system was that of your typical upwardly mobile, law abiding, hard working white guy until a few bored agents with nothing better to do decided to undertake a few "virtue tests" to see who would pass and who would fail (better known as "entrapment" in every other country in the free world except this one, where we allow the government to argue the predisposition of the accused AFTER the fact.)

On the issue of the death penalty, I've seen the best and worst of what this society has to offer, and I can say without reservation that there are indeed people who should be put to death (pursuant to my own conceptions of justice). With that said, the system we charge with effecting justice is about as flawed as those people who we expect it to impart justice upon, so in that sense, it's like a boxing match between house cats.

[RJT]

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Yes it is. Why should one innocent person lie in prison to save a random victim from being killed? The innocent person has nothing to do with the hypothetical victom.

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What if it is two hypothetical victims?

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If you are willing to be a person who spends his life in prison to possibly save a random person from being killed, then fine with me. I am not willing to be such a person. I don’t think many people would be very happy with such arrangements.

I’d be hard pressed to volunteer to spend my life in prison if I knew it would save a specific person’s life. I would be less likely to go for it for a random person. I would be extremely unlike to opt for it on the come (that is, that someone might be murdered).

[Copernicus]

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The death penalty does the same thing except cheaper(if the person is relatively young to begin with).

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Source?

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Uhhhh, a $10 injection vs the present value of future food and clothing....let me think, what is larger. This is a tough one.

[Xhad]

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The death penalty does the same thing except cheaper(if the person is relatively young to begin with).

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Source?

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Uhhhh, a $10 injection vs the present value of future food and clothing....let me think, what is larger. This is a tough one.

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Are you suggesting that there are no incidental costs incurred between trial to execution?

[Copernicus]

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The death penalty does the same thing except cheaper(if the person is relatively young to begin with).

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Source?

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Uhhhh, a $10 injection vs the present value of future food and clothing....let me think, what is larger. This is a tough one.

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Are you suggesting that there are no incidental costs incurred between trial to execution?

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None that are (or need to be) signficantly greater than the incidental costs for the judicial system to finally get to the point of "life without parole".

[Xhad]

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The death penalty does the same thing except cheaper(if the person is relatively young to begin with).

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Source?

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He probably means if we ignore the fact that court costs in death cases are on average 2-3x that of non-death cases, then it is cheaper to put someone to death.

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That's not how I would read this passage:

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The death penalty does the same thing except cheaper(if the person is relatively young to begin with). And the costs for capital punishment could be decreased even further by limiting what I feel to be the absurd appeal system in place in this country.

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Implying that it's not just cheaper in the hypothetical.

[Xhad]

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Are you suggesting that there are no incidental costs incurred between trial to execution?

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None that are (or need to be) signficantly greater than the incidental costs for the judicial system to finally get to the point of "life without parole".

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This is definitely going beyond the scope of what actually started this discussion (see my post above), but I would argue that the burden of proof necessarily has to be higher than the burden of proof of life without parole. Even if we assume one is no more inhumane than the other, the latter is still possible to correct if a mistake is discovered.

[chezlaw]

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Cmon. That's the same as 4. I thought you were cured of those kinds of replies.


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No, chez is saying tomorrow we might wake up and decide it is hip to kill people who hit one or to outers. Whereas, yesterday I got convicted of murdering the guy who put the bad beat on me.

Chez just likes to [censored] with your head, David.

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Didn't mean to [censor] with his head. Technically DS is correct but people being incorrectly found guilty of a crime is so different from people being correctly found guilty of a crime that to potentially label both as innocent is confusing. No-one who addresses 4) ever includes consideration of innocent people correctly found guilty of a crime.

Such glories in the past have included:
- execution of scared young men in WW1.
- heresy
- saying a bit of fish is good enough for Jehova
- what did a slave have to do?

They're extremes but 5) is an attack on the foundations of state power whereas 4) is usually just about error rates.

imo its 5) that is the reason state execution is profoundly wrong.

chez

[HDPM]

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One needs to distinguish between the death penalty in principle and in practice. For example, as others have pointed out the death penalty as currently practiced does not offer much deterrence. However, thousands of murders occur every year and only a handful of people are executed. One could argue that the DP is not a deterrent simply because the probability of being executed is so low.

Paul

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I think some people are deterred by laws and punishments. The question is how many people are not deterred by life without parole who are deterred by the death penalty. hard to figure, but my estimate is pretty low. I admit that I thin0k general deterrence is one of the weaker arguments for the death oenalty though. General deterrence is a problem in thinking about the justice system because it quickly leads to justifying ridiculous penalties for certain offenses, at least if you think general deterrence is a major priority.