Is it wrong to issue a death penalty?

[marharth]

Once again, you can never be sure if you caught the right person...

 

And once again, murdering someone for "justice" is no worse then murdering someone out of rage from someone doing them wrong, which people get the death penalty for.

[Vagrant0]

Once again, you can never be sure if you caught the right person...

I'm sure that when you have someone who has left their DNA in someone's body, who admits it, has pictures of his act, you can be pretty darn sure that he did it. If someone goes into a mall opening fire and is wounded and apprehended after killing a few people, is caught on camera, has a few dozen eye-witnesses who can place him there, was holding the gun, left a note describing why he was doing what he did, and admits his act... You can be pretty darn sure that he did it.

 

The "they might be innocent" argument tends to fall apart in cases where there is overwhelming evidence against someone.

[marharth]

It is hard to pass legislation for certain restrictions on it...

 

How messy would a bill be if you would have to describe certain evidence scenarios?

 

Still either way, what does it help to kill someone? What does it achieve?

 

The most it could do is make someone feel better. Most people who commit murder are mentally unstable in the first place, and your going to kill someone like that just to feel better?

[Surenas]

Foreign supporters of the hang 'em and flog 'em brigade that can't shut up in good time will be banished by the national European executives, that's a fact. By historical means there is no political acceptance left for human rights violations in Europe, especially not for state murder, we were very familar with in the past. Guess what Turkey has understood and corrected within three months of internal debate, everybody else on earth should understand within a similar timeframe, or he never will.

 

Come to Europe. It pays. And sometimes it pays back :laugh:

Edited November 24, 2010 by Surenas

[ginnyfizz]

Oh please, let's not take the European moral high horse, shall we? I have expressed my fears that in the past people have been wrongly convicted or have simply not received a fair trial in capital cases. However, I have also said that I am broadly in favour of capital punishment. The reason is what Vagrant0 has alluded to. Forensics are so much more advanced these days than in the past. My concern would still be media witch hunts in cases where there was perhaps not clear cut forensic evidence, where the evidence was more circumstantial. Should capital punishment be re-introduced in the UK, there would have to be strong reporting restrictions imposed during the investigation of a potentially capital crime, with the full facts only to be revealed when the case came to trial.

 

I would not be too impressed with having categories of murder, some capital and some not. Stick with the system of convicting either of murder or the ability to bring in a verdict of manslaughter as an alternative. And with the relevant Government member being able to issue reprieves and commute death sentences in exceptional circumstances.

 

I find it quite ridiculous that we in Britain had to abolish the death penalty even for High Treason, Piracy and Arson in a Naval Dockyard, due to Blair bowing and scraping to Europe. I do bite my thumb, sirs.

[Vagrant0]

Still either way, what does it help to kill someone? What does it achieve?

One less person sucking up air for one thing. As mentioned, a quick death can be much cheaper (once you get past all the politics, moral dilemmas, and red tape) than locking someone away for the remainder of their life. No, it doesn't deter crime, but if someone wants to throw their life away by committing some grievous act, I say we grant their wishes in the quickest way possible. What does it achieve in keeping people like this alive in prison, where they have to be under constant watch, where they can influence other inmates and corrupt guards, where they can gather a following of fans who have a "thing" for criminals who are never going to see the light of day?

 

You go on and on about wrongful imprisonment and wrongful execution, but most of these things only get found out long after the person has been killed, or long after they've been sentenced to life in prison without parole. How is 40 years beyond bars, where you are being raped, beaten, and harassed day in, day out, wrongfully, better than 1-2 years on death row (where you're mostly isolated and given time to come to terms)? Sure, you may be alive, but you're 40 years out of touch with the world, have 40 years of emotional and psychological scarring, have 40 years of drug addiction (to deal with that trauma), and STILL get treated as if you were a criminal should you try to find work at age 60+. Suicide rate, or repeat crimes among persons who were released from prison isn't as high as it is without reason. And prison overcrowding only makes the effects of time "served" even worse for those who aren't already hardened criminals. Isn't it easier to deal with the thought of wrongful execution instead of wrongful imprisonment that leads to a person who is forever damaged and has to somehow carry on living, usually without help and in the gutter? Imprisonment as it stands, even rightfully is just a self-feeding problem where offenders have few options after being released and the sociology is to either join a gang, become someone's "property" or die. Those who survive to parole are usually well indoctrinated into violence, crime, drug use, or hatred, and often commit a crime just to go back to the world they know.

[Keanumoreira]

Still either way, what does it help to kill someone? What does it achieve?

One less person sucking up air for one thing. As mentioned, a quick death can be much cheaper (once you get past all the politics, moral dilemmas, and red tape) than locking someone away for the remainder of their life. No, it doesn't deter crime, but if someone wants to throw their life away by committing some grievous act, I say we grant their wishes in the quickest way possible. What does it achieve in keeping people like this alive in prison, where they have to be under constant watch, where they can influence other inmates and corrupt guards, where they can gather a following of fans who have a "thing" for criminals who are never going to see the light of day?

 

You go on and on about wrongful imprisonment and wrongful execution, but most of these things only get found out long after the person has been killed, or long after they've been sentenced to life in prison without parole. How is 40 years beyond bars, where you are being raped, beaten, and harassed day in, day out, wrongfully, better than 1-2 years on death row (where you're mostly isolated and given time to come to terms)? Sure, you may be alive, but you're 40 years out of touch with the world, have 40 years of emotional and psychological scarring, have 40 years of drug addiction (to deal with that trauma), and STILL get treated as if you were a criminal should you try to find work at age 60+. Suicide rate, or repeat crimes among persons who were released from prison isn't as high as it is without reason. And prison overcrowding only makes the effects of time "served" even worse for those who aren't already hardened criminals. Isn't it easier to deal with the thought of wrongful execution instead of wrongful imprisonment that leads to a person who is forever damaged and has to somehow carry on living, usually without help and in the gutter? Imprisonment as it stands, even rightfully is just a self-feeding problem where offenders have few options after being released and the sociology is to either join a gang, become someone's "property" or die. Those who survive to parole are usually well indoctrinated into violence, crime, drug use, or hatred, and often commit a crime just to go back to the world they know.

 

Yes, that's called getting off easy.

 

People who stay for 60 plus years are getting what they deserve, the true PUNISHMENT they deserve. Not only is killing them wrong, it also lets them off without any real debt payed. In their minds, they have won.

Edited November 24, 2010 by Keanumoreira

[JimboUK]

Oh please, let's not take the European moral high horse, shall we? I have expressed my fears that in the past people have been wrongly convicted or have simply not received a fair trial in capital cases. However, I have also said that I am broadly in favour of capital punishment. The reason is what Vagrant0 has alluded to. Forensics are so much more advanced these days than in the past. My concern would still be media witch hunts in cases where there was perhaps not clear cut forensic evidence, where the evidence was more circumstantial. Should capital punishment be re-introduced in the UK, there would have to be strong reporting restrictions imposed during the investigation of a potentially capital crime, with the full facts only to be revealed when the case came to trial.

 

I would not be too impressed with having categories of murder, some capital and some not. Stick with the system of convicting either of murder or the ability to bring in a verdict of manslaughter as an alternative. And with the relevant Government member being able to issue reprieves and commute death sentences in exceptional circumstances.

 

I find it quite ridiculous that we in Britain had to abolish the death penalty even for High Treason, Piracy and Arson in a Naval Dockyard, due to Blair bowing and scraping to Europe. I do bite my thumb, sirs.

 

Forensics may be improving but it's still gathered, processed and interpreted by human beings who are still as fallible as ever.

[Vagrant0]

Yes, that's called getting off easy.

 

People who stay for 60 plus years are getting what they deserve, the true PUNISHMENT they deserve. Not only is killing them wrong, it also lets them off without any real debt payed. In their minds, they have won.

But then you have to clothe, feed, and shelter those people for all that time while they do nothing to benefit those who are paying for it other than being somewhere else. It is essentially everyone shelling out $50-$80 a year to pay .1% of the population to be somewhere else. In some cases, it's better to be in prison than it is to be homeless. And I must remind you that prisons are not meant to be punishment, they are meant to be for reformation. Punishment afterall is just a stone's throw away from revenge, which is arguably just as barbaric as killing someone.

 

If you want a real "solution", we should just surgically sterilize, administer frontal lobotomies, and implant tracking devices in convicted criminals and sentence them to serve as slaves to the wronged party, or as cheap, expendable labor. You're not killing them, and the convict is actually repaying society for their crimes... And yet this "solution" is far more immoral and barbaric than the death penalty.

[ginnyfizz]

Vagrant0, I thought people tended to spend much longer than two years on Death Row in the USA, and the stats bear me out on this;-

 

Time on Death Row

 

That's also an interesting article for comparison of the reaction of different jurisdictions, see for example the part about the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, aka the House of Lords, ruling that whilst the death penalty was not illegal in the countries concerned (most of the Caribbean nations), a wait of more than five years on Death Row WAS out of order.

 

Compare with the situation here in the UK in the latter days when you typically had about a month from the judge donning the black cap to the moment the hangman threw the lever.

 

You may shrug off the idea of executing an innocent person, but certainly where I come from, the principle expounded by the English jurist William Blackstone

 

"better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer",

 

Has been the standard that we most adhere to. Even though, as I have said, it has sometimes gone horribly wrong. Actually that principle goes a LOT further back than Blackstone -as far back as Abraham and the book of Genesis, but I will note quote that passage as we are not allowed to debate religion here.