Forked from "22-year-old...": My thoughts on the Death Penalty

[USS Triumphant]

Why should we show morality and principles to those who have neither?

Now see, this I will argue against. Our government should always be moral and principled, and treat people and nations with honor and respect. I just don't see any conflict between this and carrying out the government's responsibility to protect its citizenry, whether that be by executing a violent criminal, or bombing the palace of a foreign dictator who hurts our citizens. Give no crap, but take no crap.

 

[thestrangequark]

It really is as simple as that. Above all, it's a question of morals.

Why should we show morality and principles to those who have neither?

By not hypocritically stooping to their level?

What is gained by not killing someone who's done horrible and unspeakable crimes?

What is gained by killing them, aside from the satisfaction of vengeance?

Take the Oklahoma City bombing guy. What would society gain by keeping him around? He was man who coldly killed 168 people without remorse or compassion? Why should we show him something he hadn't shown for others?

Some people, IMHO, society is better without.

Because showing that compassion is how we how that we are better than him. It is how we show that we are moral, and good, and civilized.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Because to do otherwise is to become those you are "punishing."

When it is done for base reasons, then I see your point. But surely you don't believe that there is no difference between someone murdering someone for some personal gain, sick pleasure, or uncontrolled anger, and someone carrying out the will of the state after due process in executing someone to remove the threat and burden they pose for society?

 

[USS Triumphant]

What is gained by killing them, aside from the satisfaction of vengeance?

I don't want vengeance - and you are correct that this should never be the function of any part of our government. I want an end to the threat and burden they pose for society.

I'm still looking at that link, btw, in between posts and Facebook.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

It really is as simple as that. Above all, it's a question of morals.

Why should we show morality and principles to those who have neither?

Why should others show morality and principles towards us if we have neither? And so on, and so on...

At some point someone has to make a decision to be better.

 

[Data Holmes]

Because to do otherwise is to become those you are "punishing."

When it is done for base reasons, then I see your point. But surely you don't believe that there is no difference between someone murdering someone for some personal gain, sick pleasure, or uncontrolled anger, and someone carrying out the will of the state after due process in executing someone to remove the threat and burden they pose for society?

Yes I do believe there is no difference. Threat, removed without execution. Burden, now you are simply saying "because it's cheaper and easier," is that not classifiable as "some personal gain" on the part of the government? Societal call for executions, is this not a simple case of uncontrolled anger and blood-lust?

There is no difference between murder and the DP except the government makes one illegal and the other legal.

The end result is the same for both: Death.
The cause is rooted in the same raw, animal emotion portion of our brains: Greed/cost, Fear, blood-lust/anger/revenge.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The death penalty serves none of its intended goals, and is not the mark of a civilized society. For the various reasons already laid out in this thread, I am wholeheartedly against it.

 

[StarryEyed]

It really is as simple as that. Above all, it's a question of morals.

Why should we show morality and principles to those who have neither?

What is gained by not killing someone who's done horrible and unspeakable crimes?

Take the Oklahoma City bombing guy. What would society gain by keeping him around? He was man who coldly killed 168 people without remorse or compassion? Why should we show him something he hadn't shown for others?

Some people, IMHO, society is better without.

This is a simplification but here is my thoughts on it:

We should abolish the death penalty for US. Not for the monsters who you might argue "deserve to die" but for us. I agree with Kira in a DS9 episode when she said that every time you kill someone, a part of your own soul (for lack of a better secular word) dies.

Think about it. An execution involves coldly, methodically employing force to strap an individual down and ensuring they are absolutely helpless and powerless. Then it it involves coldly, methodically killing them in cold-blood. I don't know about you, but I can definitely say a part of me would die if I ever participated in such a thing. It would make me physically and spiritually (for lack of a better secular word) sick.

What would society gain from not murdering the murderers?

Simple. It would spare us the burden of lowering ourselves to the level of the monsters, to become monsters ourselves. To succumbing to base and petty revenge.

Having to deal with monsters allows us the opportunity to show ourselves that we are better than that. Even when faced with monsters, we may rise up and proudly affirm that WE will not debase ourselves in the same way they do. We need only confine them in the interest of protecting society and celebrate the fact that we will do better. And move on.

Sparing the monsters is for our own moral growth. It's to benefit us, not them.

 

[T'Baio]

Society functions on a whole due to its assumed moral and ethical rule number one: the sanctity of human life, bar none, no exceptions. Without that belief, everything else collapses.

In order to preserve civilization, we must never disobey that law.

The death penalty is the first step in state sanctioned abuse of that law.

 

[TheBrew]

I find that the death penalty is rooted in deep-seated cynicism and that to support it is to say that we are no better than those we execute.

 

[Kelthaz]

The reason I’m opposed to the death penalty is simply because there’s no point in it. The point of a criminal justice system is to rehabilitate criminals and to protect society from said criminals. The death penalty serves neither of those purposes and exists solely for the purpose of revenge. Revenge has no place in a civilized society.

I also believe that no one is intrinsically evil or bad. Most criminals aren’t exactly healthy, well-adjusted members of society who woke up one day and decided to murder someone. Most criminals are not exactly the Die Hard type. I see no reason to further punish people out of some sick desire for vengeance when they need psychological help far more than any punishment.

 

[Arrqh]

As far as I'm concerned, tsq nailed it, but to add a bit...

The ethos of the criminal justice system is to keep society as a whole safe. If the death penalty does not accomplish this any better then a lack of capital punishment and is a greater drain by virtue of being more expensive (which is not "fixable" as most of the costs are on the trial level... unless you want to eliminate due process) then simply for pragmatic reasons it should be abolished. I find the death penalty very repugnant from an ethical perspective, but I recognize that for whatever reason different people may see different... which is why I argue it on the pragmatic level. What "feels right" according to one person is not what is best for society.

 

[USS Triumphant]

I've still been looking over the ACLU info, but one thing in it made me want to stop and comment. They say the death penalty is racist, and their argument seems to be that this is proven because more blacks are sentenced to death than whites. This is an incomplete argument. IF more blacks are sentenced to death than whites when equal numbers have committed the same crime, then I will agree that that is a problem. But if you're just looking at raw numbers of death sentences, then it is entirely possible to have more black people given the death penalty without there being any racism involved at all, if more blacks committed the crimes that warrant it.

Some may want to argue that this is still racist because of historical racist factors that make blacks more likely to commit those crimes. Bull. We're all capable of choosing to murder or not. Do inner cities need education and other programs to improve conditions and maybe try to compensate for some of that historical inequity? Sure. But whether you're white, black, or green, when you're standing over someone with a smoking gun, you have made a choice, and there's nothing racist about prosecuting that choice.

 

[StarshipDefiant]

I've still been looking over the ACLU info, but one thing in it made me want to stop and comment. They say the death penalty is racist, and their argument seems to be that this is proven because more blacks are sentenced to death than whites. This is an incomplete argument. IF more blacks are sentenced to death than whites when equal numbers have committed the same crime, then I will agree that that is a problem. But if you're just looking at raw numbers of death sentences, then it is entirely possible to have more black people given the death penalty without there being any racism involved at all, if more blacks committed the crimes that warrant it.

Some may want to argue that this is still racist because of historical racist factors that make blacks more likely to commit those crimes. Bull. We're all capable of choosing to murder or not. Do inner cities need education and other programs to improve conditions and maybe try to compensate for some of that historical inequity? Sure. But whether you're white, black, or green, when you're standing over someone with a smoking gun, you have made a choice, and there's nothing racist about prosecuting that choice.

I don't really like the death penalty, but what you said is dead on, I find it tiring that people say justice and the police are racist. The color of your skin doesn't matter, if you commit a crime and are caught (and in a lot of cases, you will be one way or another), then you will be tried and punished for it.

 

[Data Holmes]

the ACLU comment has some basis in fact. There have been several studies which found that going only based on crime committed and punishment issued, the DP is handed down several times more often if the convicted is black, verses white.

Most whites get life.

 

[Trekker4747]

I find the death penalty very repugnant from an ethical perspective..

Well I think it's repugnant to "reward" a criminal monster with a lifetime of free room and board, healthcare and having all of his needs met without any responsibilities on his part to society.

Granted, life in prison is no picnic, but the guy is still sucking on air, eating every day, is able to read and enjoy books and is even still legally entitled to other activites because liberal nutjobs sobed over prisons being too cruel so many of them have been made practicaly into resorts.

Sorry, it just doesn't sit right with me to tell someone who had no regard for the lives of others that we value his life enough to not kill him.

It reminds me of the times in movies where the bad guy and the good guy are forced to fight and the good guy gets the bad guy down, he's ready to finish off the bad-guy but then he drops the sword and says he won't kill someone and walks away, then the bad guy takes his advantage to try and off the good guy, who then -in self defense- kills anyway.

That's what we have here. We're saying "We won't kill" when if the monster had the chance, he'd kill again.

Some people are monsters and deserve to be offed and don't deserve the simple pleasures of breathing or sitting a room with their own thoughts to entertain them. Afterall, they didn't think the people they killed deserved them.

 

[TheLonelySquire]

^I have researched it thoroughly, and provided one set of sources. I could provide more, but frankly, the politics and pragmatism pale in comparison to how amoral and appalling I find the practice. Nothing will change that opinion. Terrible crimes have been committed against me and my loved ones -- crimes that in many states would warrant the death penalty, and my opinion still hasn't changed. There is always a better option than murder.

I agree with you and feel the same way about abortion.

 

[Lonemagpie]

I certainly believe there are people who commit crimes so foul that they should not be allowed to live, but in practical terms a reintroduction of the death penalty over here would just mean juries would be less willing to convict, and that more guilty parties would then be let off...

And then there are all the practical considerations to take into account about making sure the guilty are absolutely and definitely *actually* guilty first...

So, ethically and morally I'm all for it, but it's not practical.

Oh, it does piss me off when people refer to it as "murder" and to gangland hits as "executions" since the proper definition of murder is "killing without due legal process" and likewise execution is carrying out a legal responsibility...

 

[Iasius]

And then there are all the practical considerations to take into account about making sure the guilty are absolutely and definitely *actually* guilty first...

I wonder how you would phrase that in law.

I mean the standard right now is beyond reasonable doubt. What could it be next? Beyond unreasonable doubt? Wouldn't say, Aliens made me do it be unreasonable doubt?

And if you say some sort of "only people who are really guilty", then why are the others convicted if they aren't "absolutely and definitely *actually* guilty"?

On a scale from Amanda Knox to Timothy McVeigh, sure there are differences in how certain we are that they're guilty. How do you put that into actual usable law?
Have X number of witnesses? Y number of different types of DNA evidence?

 

[Kemaiku]

-Actually, the death penalty costs more than life in prison.
-It does nothing to deter crime.
-Many people have been executed who later have been proved to be innocent.
-It is abhorrent, uncivilized, useless, and utterly amoral.

ETA: Here are some sources on the ineffectiveness and inherent flaws with the death penalty.

Said perfectly.