Seekster: Of course not, the problem with the review process is not that its not done enough, the problem is its not done effectively enough. We need much stiffer penalties for prosecutors if it turns out they acted outside of an ethical manner in assembling evidence etc.
Amne you are contradicting yourself so many ways it doesnt even make sense anymore.
Now why is the death penalty more expensive than life in prison? It cannot be just because you let people on death row appeal more. We need to account for millions of dollars here. I would expect that a person in prison for life was already proven guilty of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt and they will probably have a few appeals themselves. Therefore there should be no reasons why execution is millions of dollars more expensive.
Oh I want to cut down costs but the government does have to spend money. The reason I want to cut down on cost is because I think there is wasteful spending going on here. Sure I might expect the death penalty to be somewhat more expensive than life in prison but there has to be a good reason why its millions of dollars more expensive, something that applies only in death penalty cases and not in all criminal cases.
The legislative process to create such a legal situation would be far more expensive than necessary. Frankly, ending the death penalty altogether would eliminate that process altogether and, as Amnestic pointed out, is guaranteed to cut the costs of the death penalty by 100%.
I don't see how that would be more expensive than necessary. Besides I think having the death penalty on the books is worth the cost and it only really costs money when you use it after all.
i think you forgot about the cost of life. you made a comment earlier as well about how it would be bad to not have it on the books, tell me why that is the case? there are plenty of places without the death penalty, australia being one of them. we dont have psychopaths going around doing unspeakable acts that some think should warrant the death penalty and even if we did, having the death penalty would not prevent it from happening, all it does is kill yet another person.
There are some people that I don't exactly lose sleep over them having received it (o hai Timothy McVeigh, thanks for bombing my city), but overall I feel like the death penalty is implemented WAY too much in the US.
Gorfias: Were I against the death penalty purely on grounds that it crosses a line I am unwilling to cross in the pursuit of justice and deterence, I'd write good on CT. But this repeal was Government saying it cannot do its job. Very unsettling. Government used to be able to do this job. People should be disturbed by this, regardless of which side of this debate you are on.
I'm assuming you added this in an edit, so just a note that when you edit in a quote, the person doesn't receive a notification.
However, addressing what you said, I respond with simply: "Okay?"
Coming from a conservative position, the Government saying it cannot do its job is miraculous only in that the government admits it.
Zekksta: I think some crimes deserve the death penalty, but I won't lose any sleep over it being abolished.
America is one of the few developed countries left in the entire world that still has the death penalty though, even a lot of developing countries have abolished it. The problem with what you said is that I think a lot of people might fundamentally agree with the idea of some crimes being punishable by death, but in practice, the idea of a justice system where it's appropriate for the government to kill its own citizens, even if they have committed horrible crimes, and all of the complications that come with that is untenable.
As for me, personally, I don't see how you can teach that taking a life is wrong by taking a life. I'm against any unnecessary killing, even when it comes to the most horrible people, and I'm glad to see another jurisdiction abolish the death penalty.
I know he's an extreme case, but people like Charles Manson deserve the death penalty.
Zekksta: I think some crimes deserve the death penalty, but I won't lose any sleep over it being abolished.
America is one of the few developed countries left in the entire world that still has the death penalty though, even a lot of developing countries have abolished it. The problem with what you said is that I think a lot of people might fundamentally agree with the idea of some crimes being punishable by death, but in practice, the idea of a justice system where it's appropriate for the government to kill its own citizens, even if they have committed horrible crimes, and all of the complications that come with that is untenable.
As for me, personally, I don't see how you can teach that taking a life is wrong by taking a life. I'm against any unnecessary killing, even when it comes to the most horrible people, and I'm glad to see another jurisdiction abolish the death penalty.
I know he's an extreme case, but people like Charles Manson deserve the death penalty.
While I don' think anyone 'deserves' the death penalty I think you will find that most of us against it do not lose any sleep over some of the terrible killers that get executed.
The main problem I have with the death penalty is the sentencing is not consistent. Women rarely get sentenced to death compared to men and a black man is much more likely to be sentenced to death than a white man for the same crime.
For example, we have Dominique Green, a man who killed a convenience store clerk during a robbery. He was sentenced to death. Then you have Robert Byrd, a white supremacist convicted of kidnapping and murdering the wife of a circle member because he thought she was a snitch. He was sentenced to life. The kicker is he was already serving a 99 year sentence for another murder.
Why is it that someone that killed twice, including a brutal kidnapping and murder of a women, does not get sentenced to death, while a guy who killed someone during a robbery gets executed? The Byrd murder was premeditated and planned, Green killed in the heat of the moment. The sentencing is not consistent. Of course I chose these cases because Byrd is white, Green is black. On paper the crime of Green is not has bad (that seems a bit weird considering they both killed), yet he was the one executed.
Then we have the political motives. A prosecutor looking to move up in the world looks at a case and thinks it would be pretty nice to have a death penalty conviction on the resume. We have to be kidding ourselves if we think that a death sentence has never been handed out because a prosecutor wanted a tick on his record.
I didn't refute that crimes of passion are done out of free will. I'm saying that rational thought doesn't enter into the equation. It's like how when you're drunk, all your bad ideas suddenly sound good. Emotions and rational thought don't mix well together.
I still think the "certainty" factor would have an impact on their thinking.
I'm sorry, but nothing you just wrote seems even remotely qualifiable (thx for correction). I don't think we can ever know the truth or not of what you wrote. We do know Bundy escaped from prison and committed more attrocities.
And how does the Bundy anecdote in any way refute what I just said?
You want to dink around trying to do something that I don't think is doable: to ever really know are people like Bundy like wild animals or automatons, or are they simply evil people who are doing what they want to do? While you're dinking around with them, you endanger society. You don't study people like Bundy: you kill them.
I suddenly have a mental image of a guy who took a 1000 level philosophy course and now thinks he's Descartes. I wonder why?
No idea. I wonder if I'm corresponding with a college sophmore who hasn't really experienced anything of adult life yet.
Gorfias: Were I against the death penalty purely on grounds that it crosses a line I am unwilling to cross in the pursuit of justice and deterence, I'd write good on CT. But this repeal was Government saying it cannot do its job. Very unsettling. Government used to be able to do this job. People should be disturbed by this, regardless of which side of this debate you are on.
I'm assuming you added this in an edit, so just a note that when you edit in a quote, the person doesn't receive a notification.
However, addressing what you said, I respond with simply: "Okay?"
Coming from a conservative position, the Government saying it cannot do its job is miraculous only in that the government admits it.
Was the post directly to you? If so, my bad. If not, to avoid double posting when I have a number of people to whom I respond, I post to one person, quote another, edit copy paste comment to 2nd person.
In spite of what a lot of left of center types in this thread post, right wingers want limited government. What government we do want, we want to function. If I'm headed to work, regardless of what I think of Obama and want to derail his agenda, I want the road paved. I want prisons to successfully hold prisoners, etc.
While I do support the death penalty, I have to agree with you that it seems that there is a imbalance of how it is used. As you demonstrated, it disappoints me to know that race and gender can determine whether or not a person receives the death penalty.
Good. It is an incredibly barbaric thing and it is embarrassing that any of the United States supports it.
Under no circumstances should we teach people that something is wrong by killing them. I'm sure it sounds fun, and there are many people that we, personally, want dead. It is not a good institution to have.
The legislative process to create such a legal situation would be far more expensive than necessary. Frankly, ending the death penalty altogether would eliminate that process altogether and, as Amnestic pointed out, is guaranteed to cut the costs of the death penalty by 100%.
I don't see how that would be more expensive than necessary. Besides I think having the death penalty on the books is worth the cost and it only really costs money when you use it after all.
Reform vs something that can be stuck on a ballot. Additionally, having something that extreme on the books while there's the possibility of a screw-up killing an innocent does more to scare the general populous than a potential criminal.
The system has to be reformed even if you put it to a popular vote...of course then you have to pay for the reform AND the cost of having it on the ballot which isnt cheap.
If murder is wrong, then state-ordered murder must also be wrong... So, if you believe in the death penalty, you must also logically execute the executioner, and the executioner of the executioner, and so on and so on, because the same reasoning you use to justify the initial murder continues to apply to every person that "throws the switch".
LOL. And we need to jail jailers for kidnapping, and then jail the jailers of the jailers. And fines are a theft action, so, we need to jail those who levy fines, and then jail their jailers for kidnapping.
Good point, if we follow Magichead's logic then why is state-sponsored holding someone against their will ok?
My view on the death penalty is that its an option I think I would like to keep but its used far more than it should be. The use of the death penalty should only be reserved for the most heinous of criminals and then used only when there is no reasonable doubt that the individual is guilty of what they are accused of.
Because state sponsored "kidnapping", ie imprisonment, has a purpose beyond mindless vengeance.
Gorfie may not be able to grasp this, but that is what separates murder from the other cases of intervention he mentions. As long as we have the ability to imprison someone for life, there is no objective need to execute them; it fails to act as a deterrent, it costs far more in any justice system which values the lives of the innocent, the ONLY justification -and I use that word reluctantly- for execution is to make the original murder victim's family feel better.
We imprison and execute people for murdering others out of rage, revenge, or other extreme emotional states, yet we are supposed to accept that the state can order someone killed based on those very things?
Fines have a purpose; they deter the poor, and use the money of the wealthy to fund enforcement. Imprisonment has a purpose; it protects society from the truly irredeemable, while also providing opportunities for the rest to reform(or it should, if run properly). State murder has no purpose beyond revenge, and if I'm not allowed to murder based on a desire for revenge, why is the state allowed to murder on my behalf? Surely if it is wrong for me to do so, it is also wrong for the state; the same drawbacks occur in both cases. I cannot murder out of revenge because A; I am committing murder, which society has judged as perhaps the worst crime a person can commit, and because B; I might well kill an innocent by mistake. An execution is the premeditated taking of a life with no situational justification(such as self defense), and that is murder. The courts are still capable of killing an innocent, even with potentially decades of trials and retrials and appeals.
Frankly, I always find it laughable that it's the right-wingers who defend the death penalty; giving government the power to tax you is supposedly tantamount to theft, but giving government the power to actually murder you is totally cool beans? I propose a modification to the cliche; American Republicanism - government small enough to fit into your uterus, or the executioner's needle.
The legislative process to create such a legal situation would be far more expensive than necessary. Frankly, ending the death penalty altogether would eliminate that process altogether and, as Amnestic pointed out, is guaranteed to cut the costs of the death penalty by 100%.
I don't see how that would be more expensive than necessary. Besides I think having the death penalty on the books is worth the cost and it only really costs money when you use it after all.
i think you forgot about the cost of life. you made a comment earlier as well about how it would be bad to not have it on the books, tell me why that is the case? there are plenty of places without the death penalty, australia being one of them. we dont have psychopaths going around doing unspeakable acts that some think should warrant the death penalty and even if we did, having the death penalty would not prevent it from happening, all it does is kill yet another person.
The Death Penalty is needed for when non-lethal justice is impossible. If life in prison is your greatest possible punishment, you are going to end up with a lot of people in prison for life perhaps for vastly different degrees of crimes.
One thing I think we should all be able to agree on is the use of the death penalty on mass murdering war criminals. Just imagine if we could not use execution as a punishment at Nurenberg. Do you really want the likes of say Goehring writing books from prison defending Hitler and encouraging neo-Nazis? Now in Goehring's case he managed to kill himself before he could be executed but the end was the same. How about Saddam Hussein? Its very easy to imagine that Saddam Loyalists would have been more active so long as there was a chance to liberate their figurehead leader from an Iraqi prison.
I want execution kept on the law books as an option because the idea of people like Ted Bundy, Timothy McVeigh, Charles Manson (who actually is not on death row), and most of the people on this list:
Spending the rest of their lives living on the tax payer's dollar is intolerable to me. There are some people for whom it is almost criminal to let them spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Magichead: Because state sponsored "kidnapping", ie imprisonment, has a purpose beyond mindless vengeance.
Gorfie may not be able to grasp this, but that is what separates murder from the other cases of intervention he mentions. As long as we have the ability to imprison someone for life, there is no objective need to execute them
Never mind parole, where people like convited killer Jack Abbot were let out of prison and killed an innocent actor over a trial matter within a month of release; Never mind furlough, where convicted murderer Willie Horton was given vacation from prison and went on a crime spree of unspeakable violence; Never mind escapees like Ted Bundy, who escaped from prison and went on a murderous rampage ending the lives of, I think 2 student nurses; Behind bars themselves, prison guards are murdered, fellow inmates who have commited relatively non-violent crimes can be murdered. Even Jeffrey Dahmer was not put to society's justice when a fellow inmate, a convicted murderer murdered him. EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Scarver if you care to read an example of a murderer, continuing to kill from behind bars.
I read a great argument in favor of life rather than death. It implored abolitionists to fight to see to it that Life in Prison really meant that. It acknowledged that time and time and time and time again, the public has found out the killers were being released when no one was looking, and that had to stop. Life really has to mean life. It was a great essay in a collection of essays on the topic. There was just one major problem with it: it was written generations ago.
Life in prison is a fraud. People need to know that.
Maybe it's not about money or the 'facts' and examples you or others can dig up to support your case. Maybe it's about simply deciding how much value is to be put on one's life. To decide whether any one can have the moral authority commit someone to death. Maybe it's about whether you believe putting an innocent person to death is not worth insuring that you never a let a guilty murderer free. Maybe it's about believing that even heinous criminals are still human beings. Maybe you don't believe these things. Possibly, we have an irreparable difference in values here.
Gorfias: Never mind parole, where people like convited killer Jack Abbot were let out of prison and killed an innocent actor over a trial matter within a month of release
You should also mention the few million people released in the same lifetime period who never did anything wrong ever in their life again and became respectable members of society. Ah, and you should also mention your attitude of wanting prisons to be cheap as possible is the direct cause of Abbot killing again. It's only fair to do so.
I mean, this 'kill them all, kill them all so they can't do anything anymore' chanting is all really funny and probably a great way to express feelings of frustration and vengeance, but we're talking about rehabilitation, not cavemen whacking eachother over the head with clubs. Each man you kill on the death penalty is the ultimate failure of the justice system and another dent in a society that tries to call itself civilised.
Magichead: Because state sponsored "kidnapping", ie imprisonment, has a purpose beyond mindless vengeance.
Gorfie may not be able to grasp this, but that is what separates murder from the other cases of intervention he mentions. As long as we have the ability to imprison someone for life, there is no objective need to execute them
Never mind parole, where people like convited killer Jack Abbot were let out of prison and killed an innocent actor over a trial matter within a month of release; Never mind furlough, where convicted murderer Willie Horton was given vacation from prison and went on a crime spree of unspeakable violence; Never mind escapees like Ted Bundy, who escaped from prison and went on a murderous rampage ending the lives of, I think 2 student nurses; Behind bars themselves, prison guards are murdered, fellow inmates who have commited relatively non-violent crimes can be murdered. Even Jeffrey Dahmer was not put to society's justice when a fellow inmate, a convicted murderer murdered him. EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Scarver if you care to read an example of a murderer, continuing to kill from behind bars.
I read a great argument in favor of life rather than death. It implored abolitionists to fight to see to it that Life in Prison really meant that. It acknowledged that time and time and time and time again, the public has found out the killers were being released when no one was looking, and that had to stop. Life really has to mean life. It was a great essay in a collection of essays on the topic. There was just one major problem with it: it was written generations ago.
Life in prison is a fraud. People need to know that.
If you can point out where in my post I argued that life imprisonment should mean less than life, or where violent offenders should be given parole or furlough, or where prison security should be made more lax to allow criminals to escape, then perhaps this post would have some relevance. Until then, you are using one flaw in the system in an attempt to excuse an even larger flaw; perhaps rather than arguing that, since the system is flawed, we should simply kill people to cover up that flaw, you should adopt the argument you liked so much from that essay?
Magichead: As long as we have the ability to imprison someone for life, there is no objective need to execute them;
Yes there is. If you don't execute them, they can kill again, even behind bars.
theonewhois3: ... Maybe it's about simply deciding how much value is to be put on one's life. To decide whether any one can have the moral authority commit someone to death. Maybe it's about whether you believe putting an innocent person to death is not worth insuring that you never a let a guilty murderer free. Maybe it's about believing that even heinous criminals are still human beings. Maybe you don't believe these things. Possibly, we have an irreparable difference in values here.
That is the best, and probably only argument I accept against the death penalty: that it is an action you will not do, even if it were a more perfect justice, or in the name of specific and general deterrence, as, for you, it crosses a line.
For me, it does not cross that line. I want a more perfect justice, and specific and general deterence.
Blablahb: You should also mention the few million people released in the same lifetime period who never did anything wrong ever in their life again
Where do you draw the line? What if killer, convicted, on day one promises to be nothing but good ever again, meant it, and you could see into his future that he would be a good, contributing member of society. By your argument, he shouldn't even go to jail for a day.
I don't think it should be banned, I just think it needs to be reserved for the most horrible of acts and is a threat to those around them, even in prison. Though that seems unlikely.
Gorfias: Where do you draw the line? What if killer, convicted, on day one promises to be nothing but good ever again, meant it, and you could see into his future that he would be a good, contributing member of society. By your argument, he shouldn't even go to jail for a day.
We don't have to think in extremes. It's a question of the death penalty vs not punishing at all. That's a false dilemma.
There are high quality reliable methods of determining and ensuring that someone is still a threat to society. Your examples come from the US for instance, where rehabilitation consists mostly of dumping someone into the street and forcing them to label themselves as ex-cons towards any former employer. This greatly inceases the odds of re-offending, so if that is the problem, that is what needs adressing.
On that note, if preventing murders is the objective, we are talking about the wrong subject. Criminology teaches us that more punishment does not deter more, and that other factors like socio-economic position, chances in life, education and the availability of weapons is a much larger cause for murder.
Apply that to a specific case; Scott Roeder, a member of the pro-life movement and a member of a radical anti-government freedom group, who's a murderer and bombmaker currently serving a life sentence for the murder on George Tiller, a doctor at an abortion clinic.
From what is known of Roeder, he had psychiatric issues for years and a job history of small temporal menial jobs. Both those things robbed him of the (life and mental) stability to resist the destructive radicalism of both the pro-life and freedom extremist rhetoric.
If Roeder had had acces to quality psychiatric care, the influence of the groups who brought him to kill had been curtailed or weapons had been unavailable to him, it's highly likely he would not have killed.
So if the objective is to reduce murders, banning guns in the few countries that still allow them, enabling universal healthcare and fighting or curtailing the radicalism of religious and political fringe groups should be far more important than any question of punishment.
If I may step in to defend Seekster (with regards to his comment a few pages ago), what I think he's doing is advocating pretty much the same thing I would advocate if I found a legal sentence of death morally justifiable: a drastic shortening of court cases for death sentences in cases that are clear-cut beyond reasonable doubt, and getting rid of it in every other case. Things like being caught red-handed murdering someone with a dozen corroborating witnesses and a videotape as evidence. And I think that if one accepts the premise that death sentences can be morally justified, then that's not just a reasonable, but in fact a genuinely strong position to hold. There is no innocent death, and there's no massive cost incurred.
Stagnant: If I may step in to defend Seekster (with regards to his comment a few pages ago), what I think he's doing is advocating pretty much the same thing I would advocate if I found a legal sentence of death morally justifiable: a drastic shortening of court cases for death sentences in cases that are clear-cut beyond reasonable doubt, and getting rid of it in every other case. Things like being caught red-handed murdering someone with a dozen corroborating witnesses and a videotape as evidence. And I think that if one accepts the premise that death sentences can be morally justified, then that's not just a reasonable, but in fact a genuinely strong position to hold. There is no innocent death, and there's no massive cost incurred.
In a perfect world, I'd accept that argument. However, the presence of a death penalty and reducing the processing time for the death penalty has a greater potential problem than the simple fix of "reducing the monetary cost."
We don't have to think in extremes. It's a question of the death penalty vs not punishing at all. That's a false dilemma.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, but that seems to be the issue.
Hypothetical: Someone has committed a torture murder. Planned it out, carried it out. But will never again be a threat to society. What should happen to that person? Torture executing him back is a line I will not cross even in the pursuit of commensurate justice and general and specific deterence. But a death sentance seems a just, fair, humane, commensurate response.
You know this person will never threaten society again. You also, for the sake or argument, know that punishing him will not deter other similar crimes. What do you do with this guy and why?
There are high quality reliable methods of determining and ensuring that someone is still a threat to society.
I know litte about this group, but this is not the first time I've heard something along these lines: "Mental Health experts should not be allowed in court for "expert testimony" because their testimony is unreliable. They are no more able to predict a Defendent's future behviour than a layman."
Your examples come from the US for instance, where rehabilitation consists mostly of dumping someone into the street
I am interested in alternatives to corrections, but mostly with entry level criminals. US Prisons, as they are, tend to just be an aggrevating training camps. But murder is not an entry level crime. You're not supposed to be dumping them on the streets: you're suppossed to kill them.
On that note, if preventing murders is the objective...
That is only part of the objective, and we can disagree on how we get there. I think an active death penalty is necessary for both deterence and justice.
gives very interesting example of killer with rough life who might have been a better person with better, society supported, life
A good and interesting example (paraphrased for brevity).
Quality of life is a relative matter. In the US, homicide rates nationally rose with the growth of the welfare state and the decline of harsh, swift punishment and the death penalty, along with increases in gun control. Causal link?
I acknowledge, that stats I posted from 1960 to 1990 can be explained as comparing apple decades to orange decades. There was so much upheaval during those years, to state one knows why stats went one way or another is presumptuous. I ask people to acknowledging that they know Massachusetts and Texas links regarding causal relationships of death penalty to homicide rates need to do the same.
Hazy992: But why? What reason is there other than for petty revenge?
It serves as the final/last form of punishment.
Assuming they're guilty of course.
As pyrate brought up earlier, the death penalty isn't properly applied do to various issues(like allowing race and gender to be factors) determining whether or not it is used. That said, ideally I do support it.
Volf: Yep, but death is a far greater form of punishment.
Greater isn't exactly the term I'd use.
....ok. Well it is the term I would use.
Hmm yeah. Some of the words that spring to mind are 'barbaric' and 'petty'. Now I don't know about you but I don't want to live in Biblical times. This whole 'eye for an eye' thing, kinda childish IMO.
Hmm yeah. Some of the words that spring to mind are 'barbaric' and 'petty'. Now I don't know about you but I don't want to live in Biblical times. This whole 'eye for an eye' thing, kinda childish IMO.
...no, I see nothing barbaric about it. If you do something like kill a pregnant women and rip the baby out from her, you will be put to death. I can see no redemption for such crimes.
Hmm yeah. Some of the words that spring to mind are 'barbaric' and 'petty'. Now I don't know about you but I don't want to live in Biblical times. This whole 'eye for an eye' thing, kinda childish IMO.
...no, I see nothing barbaric about it. If you do something like kill a pregnant women and rip the baby out from her, you will be put to death. I can see no redemption for such crimes.
Who said anything about redemption? They're imprisoned. This is revenge porn, nothing more. I don't care how depraved a crime is, I will not stoop to their level by murdering them.
Hazy992: Hmm yeah. Some of the words that spring to mind are 'barbaric' and 'petty'. Now I don't know about you but I don't want to live in Biblical times. This whole 'eye for an eye' thing, kinda childish IMO.
...no, I see nothing barbaric about it. If you do something like kill a pregnant women and rip the baby out from her, you will be put to death. I can see no redemption for such crimes.
Who said anything about redemption? They're imprisoned. This is revenge porn, nothing more. I don't care how depraved a crime is, I will not stoop to their level by murdering them.
It isn't "revenge porn", it isn't a vigilante that is walking up to Charles Manson on the street and shooting him in the head, its the state going through a trail and settling on the punishment of death in the least painful way possible.
Volf: ...no, I see nothing barbaric about it. If you do something like kill a pregnant women and rip the baby out from her, you will be put to death. I can see no redemption for such crimes.
Who said anything about redemption? They're imprisoned. This is revenge porn, nothing more. I don't care how depraved a crime is, I will not stoop to their level by murdering them.
It isn't "revenge porn", it isn't a vigilante that is walking up to Charles Manson on the street and shooting him in the head, its the state going through a trail and settling on the punishment of death in the least painful way possible.
Methodology makes no difference. You're still killing a person just so you can feel better.
i think you forgot about the cost of life. you made a comment earlier as well about how it would be bad to not have it on the books, tell me why that is the case? there are plenty of places without the death penalty, australia being one of them. we dont have psychopaths going around doing unspeakable acts that some think should warrant the death penalty and even if we did, having the death penalty would not prevent it from happening, all it does is kill yet another person.