The Death Penalty

[HeyYou]

You want someone dead but you don't feel strongly enough about it to take care of it yourself,

 

What is this then? Isn't that the definition of Vigilante? If a crime is committed against us, but, we don't immediately go out and exact 'justice' on the perpetrator, does that mean we don't feel strongly about ANY crime? If someone stole my car, should I go and hunt them down? Or, should I call the cops, whose JOB it is to go and hunt them down?

[Quetzlsacatanango]

I'm not advocating the death penalty, and cops don't carry out executions. Not the judicially declared ones, anyway. Edited September 26, 2011 by Quetzlsacatanango

[HeyYou]

I'm not advocating the death penalty, and cops don't carry out executions. Not the judicially declared ones, anyway.

 

Nice dodge.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Call it what you want, you are essentially saying it is someone's job to go out and kill this guy. I don't know who that person is, but I certainly do not expect them to go do it on my behalf.

[SilverDNA]

"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life.

Can you give it to them?

Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment."

Gandalf,

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,

J. R. R. Tolkien (1954)

There are far more worse fates than death I know of ...

To be found guilty for a crime you didn't commit and be punished for it is one of them. Now how can someone undo a capital punishment for a crime the one who was found guilty has never committed?

What happens if a witness lies due to some prejudices and any evidence supports a such made lie?

So any one here that has the power to undo a Death ?

What is a state that helped to kill an innocent that they found guilty ?

Ignorantia juris non excusat / ignorantia legis neminem excusat

"ignorance of the law does not excuse" / "ignorance of the law excuses no one"

Doesn't get the State an accomplice in a crime when using a capital punishment on an wrongly convicted?

How are accomplices of a crime punished?

So does the executioner stand above the law?

Is the judge above the law?

Is the wittiness that lies above the law?

Or all citizens, all government officials, all judges and all politicians above the law?

Two wrongs do not one right!

I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent.

An Appeal to Honor and Justice,

Though it be of his worst enemies

(1715)

Daniel Defoe

[HeyYou]

I don't think the judicial system is doing all that bad really. Of all the folks on death row, 138 have been exonerated since 1973..... almost 40 years. And those are just those that are ON death row, I can't find statistics on how many lifers for murder there are. Our government kills more innocents than that in a week in various wars. (civilians that have nothing to do with why we are there in the first place.) Terrorists account for MANY more than that......

 

Why should our taxes go to support killers that get a better lifestyle than a percentage of our population? I would much rather spend that money helping folks that need it, than allowing a killer to continue to be a drain on society.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Regardless of how small or large the number of innocent people on death row, one of them could still be you some day, and how would you feel about it then?

[HeyYou]

Regardless of how small or large the number of innocent people on death row, one of them could still be you some day, and how would you feel about it then?

 

ooops?

 

The odds of such happening are vanishingly small. There is a price to be paid for living in an ordered society. This is simply one part of that price. Innocent people die. It's a fact. Thru no fault of their own, they are in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and that's all it takes. What's the difference between the government executing an innocent, and a drunk driver running him over? Either way, you are just as dead. Life, by its very nature, is inherently dangerous. If you don't wanna take the risk, never leave your house. (and move to Malta, or Qatar, so natural disasters aren't likely to get you either.)

[SilverDNA]

>Snip>

Why should our taxes go to support killers that get a better lifestyle than a percentage of our population? I would much rather spend that money helping folks that need it, than allowing a killer to continue to be a drain on society.

There are ways to make even a criminal productive to pay back what he /she owes the society while he/she is serving his/her penalty!

 

And due to all respect to you HeyYou in answering only a view selected of my philosophical questions, You cant deny the truth that there is more wrong that right in only looking at the numbers of persons that died and not view them as individuals. Numbers make it easy not to see the individual life and the families behind that Individual.

 

Oh and one more question :

Have you ever been falsely accused of anything and brought down by self justice by a mob that wants only to see you punished ?

( If the answer is yes, then you know that there is a thin line between justice and revenge).

 

Now try to put all knowllege into a Libra and weight carefully each of my above posted questions and especially the answers that come up, if you answer honestly at last to yourself.

Edited September 26, 2011 by SilverDNA

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Regardless of how small or large the number of innocent people on death row, one of them could still be you some day, and how would you feel about it then?

 

ooops?

 

The odds of such happening are vanishingly small. There is a price to be paid for living in an ordered society. This is simply one part of that price.

 

That is just a ridiculous statement. There are plenty of more orderly societies that don't have the death penalty. So if orderliness is your criteria, you should be anti death penalty. At best there is no compelling evidence that it deters violent crime at all.

Edited September 26, 2011 by Quetzlsacatanango