Capital Punishment For Murderers

[LandonM]

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BOTH are miscarriages of justice (baaad), but one is irrevocable.


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They're both equally irrevocable- one is just more permanent.
You cannot give back years of an innocent mans life no more than you can revive the dead.

Society considers one to be more egregious than the other- I do not. I believe that wrongly incarcerating a man for a substantial period of time is JUST AS BAD as wrongly killing him.
When it's all "undone", you may as well have just killed him anyway.

[jjshabado]

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Society considers one to be more egregious than the other- I do not. I believe that wrongly incarcerating a man for a substantial period of time is JUST AS BAD as wrongly killing him.
When it's all "undone", you may as well have just killed him anyway.

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Thats an assinine statement. I think if you ask the vast majority of freed wrongly convicted people what they'd prefer they'd take losing some number of years of their life to losing all of the rest of their life.

I don't deny its horrible to imprison someone unjustly, but to say its equivalent to killing thelm is ridiculous.

[BadBaron]

This thread was already on page 12 when i got here so forgive me if i tread on someones toes. I am from the Uk and the death penalty was abolished in the mid 60's here (except technically for High Treason and Piracy). In 1965 there were 78 murders in UK, by 2004 that figure had reached over 900. I don't necessarily believe that we can say it was a deterent, we live in a more violent society now.
It seems to me that the only possible reason for it would be as a deterenet and it seems no one can give conclusive proof that it does deter. Whats that thing in the Bible..."an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". Nothing will ever bring the victim back so killing another person seems pointless.
I think that we would all agree that in an ideal world, no one would commit crime. This leads me to think that we should be placing more effort into prevention rather than punishment.
Just a quick final thought, you guys have a lot of guns and a lot of murders, is it possible that the two things are related?

[adios]

Actually what you state doesn't mean the death penalty hasn't been been a deterrent factor. Do you see why? Anyway it's true that the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 but executions didn't proceed in earnest until 1984:

Executions Stats by Year

The DOJ stats you cite:

DOJ Murder Rate Stats

A case can be made that the ongoing executions were a detterent in my opinion. I don't think they support your claim in the least. What are the other reasons that the murder rates have declined?

My original response to your post in part:

I somehow have the feeling that irregardless of what evidence you're presented with regarding the deterrence factor it won't change your mind. This seems to be a prevalent viewpoint. If you could be convinced that for every execution three less murders (just throwing out a number) are committed would you change your mind? I have my doubts.

IMO you're being disingenuous when you bring up the lack of detterent factor being a reason you're opposed to death penalty. The deterrance factor has no bearing on your view whatsoever IMO. IMO you're really opposed because you find it objectionable from a moral point of view. I actually have no problem with that reason. I just don't know why posters don't state their real reasons. It's kind of like DS talks about when people don't acknowledge the validity of the other side of the debate. Instead they have to somehow discredit the opposing viewpoint as opposed to stating that another valid viewpoint exists but they believe their's has more valid reasons.

It may surprise you that I'm actually opposed to the death penalty. The main reason I'm opposed is that I believe that the means to convict someone of a capital offense are too loose i.e. it's too easy to convict an innocent person. There are other reasons but that is the main reason.

[adios]

It would also nice of the post I responded to actually provided a source for his case that there isn't a deterrance factor. You could actually try doing some research yourself, it might take you five minutes or so to come up with some data.

[Matt Ruff]

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I think if you ask the vast majority of freed wrongly convicted people what they'd prefer they'd take losing some number of years of their life to losing all of the rest of their life.

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If you're sentenced to life without parole, you *do* lose all the rest of your life.

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I don't deny its horrible to imprison someone unjustly, but to say its equivalent to killing them is ridiculous.

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My point is that if you take a system that wrongfully sentences people to death and turn it into one that wrongfully sentences people to life in prison, you've fixed the wrong problem.

[David Sklansky]

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I believe that the issue can be decided without emotions or high falootin philosophy or religion. Assuming we are talking about cold blooded murders, committed by "sane" defendents, I see the following four things as objective reasons to be for or against the punishment, as opposed to life without parole.


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i do strongly disagree.

some of the religious / philosophic questions are:

a) does life have an intrinsic value, no matter what a person does? (many christians believe in that)
b) is there a free will?

the answers to the questions matter a lot imo and they surely can't be decided without "emotions or high falootin philosophy or religion".

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The point is that the answers are not clearcut so they shouldn't be the basis for a decision when there are clearcut answers that can be a basis.

[AlienBoy]

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I somehow have the feeling that irregardless of what evidence you're presented

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"Irregardless" is not a word, please stop using it. It makes me cringe.


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IMO you're being disingenuous when you bring up the lack of detterent factor being a reason you're opposed to death penalty.

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I never said I was opposed to the death penalty - you are assuming facts not in evidence. I merely stated that there is not a clear correlation that the death penalty is an effective deterrent.

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It may surprise you that I'm actually opposed to the death penalty. The main reason I'm opposed is that I believe that the means to convict someone of a capital offense are too loose i.e. it's too easy to convict an innocent person. There are other reasons but that is the main reason.

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My primary reservation regarding the death penalty is the obvious imperfection and imbalance in our criminal legal system.

My second reservation is that it is very expensive to carry out an execution due to the legal and related costs.

My third reservation is that I consider it a greater punishment to place an individual into a 4'x7' cell and feed them the minimum life sustaining protein cake and water indefinitely.


AB

[tipperdog]

You have neglected the single most important question: Is killing a person in a controlled environment (i.e. not a war, crime in progress, etc.) an appropriate role for the state?

[AlienBoy]

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You have neglected the single most important question: Is killing a person in a controlled environment (i.e. not a war, crime in progress, etc.) an appropriate role for the state?

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It's been a "role of the state" for most of human history.

AB