What do you think about the death penalty

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Back when people were routinely executed for even small crimes like pickpocketing, and executions were public (thus, presumably being a 'deterrent' by your standards), it was not unusual for pickpockets to be caught canvassing the crowds that gathered to watch the executions, and then be hanged themselves the next week.
Criminals do not committ crimes with the presumption that they will be caught.
In addition, the state killing people as a punishment for wrongdoing reinforces the use of violence as a solution to one's problems.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11065334
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6606873
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-a ... th-penalty
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/09/12/481075 ... dence.html

Last edited by LKL on 14 Oct 2012, 6:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Death penalty is not a deterrent. If murderers are afraid of death, then they're also willing to kill witnesses, police officers and so on to get away.

Israel, Norway, Finland and Switzerland have almost as many households with guns per capita as the US (more if you exclude handguns), yet much lower murder rates.

Actually, it does not. Capital execution has one function - to satisfy the urge for retribution. There are other ways permanently remove wrongdoers from our midst. Penal colonies where the inmates will either grow their own food or die of starvation. Only external guarding is required. In the rare case of an innocent imprisoned he can be extracted and later compensated for lost time.

ruveyn

I do support the death penalty, but it should only be used on those who have committed the most horrible crimes, such as unprovoked serial killing or serial rape, should only be done when there is indisputable forensic evidence that proves beyond any possible doubt that the criminal was guilty, and should be done in cheapest and most efficient way possible(maybe just put a bullet through their head).

Hello ruveyn.

Have you ever lived in extreme misery?

If your answer is no. Please don't ever claim to know that free will exists. K thx bye.
If your answer is yes, please ignore this post.

(I mean really, assume there is free will. Then for some people free will would consist of [[ Shall I Eat more and become obese or should I begin a diet?]] while for other people, free will consists of [[ Shall I steal some wallets or die of hunger today?]]. It is a brave world.



Arguably this is BS.

First of all, let us consider the repercussions. In the case of capital punishment being awarded wrongly, the fault will go to society as a whole, including all tax payers. WE would be the ones killing innocents.

Shall there not be capital punishment, criminals would be the ones killing, rather than anyone who pays taxes... Since there is no evidence of capital punishment ever reducing crime rates, the amount of people killed by criminals would be roughly the same as it is with capital punishment.

The number of innocents dying by criminal acts would not actually drop. And we already know that innocent people would inevitably be killed (This is a fact, justice system has made mistakes and there are documented cases of people that were executed and later proven innocent). So, it seems that capital punishment would actually increase the number of innocent people killed . Worse, the killers would be us. This sounds like a great idea.

The most scary thing is that government would be entitled to pick which innocents die. For some reason, capital punishment in the US is extremely racist: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/opinion/09dow.html . For some reason, executions in the middle easy have a bias towards women...

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I think it would be great and awesome if we could kill all rapists, murderers, kidnappers, etc. Unfortunately I cannot trust any legal system not to kill innocents. In a perfect world this wouldn't be the case . Oh well, in a perfect world those violent people wouldn't exist in the first place. Even if we could prove that fewer innocents would die. I am unable to consider this as an arithmetic problem. Is us becoming murderers the solution for murder? It doesn't seem like it to me.

Quite often, life without parole isn't life after all. You see ruveyn, there really are people who will kill again if they have the chance. Sometimes murderers continue to murder in prison and target nonviolent inmates serving short sentences. Murderers who belong to gangs are in this category and continue to instigate crime on both sides of prison walls. Mandatory death sentences for certain crimes most definitely WOULD be a deterrent!

What I find ret*d is that there exists an insanity defense which basically means that a mentally deranged killer found not guilty by reason of insanity will spend a few years in the loony bin and then be released back into society where they can kill again. People like that really do need to be executed to prevent them from killing again.

In this day and age there are too many possible ways for people in such places to escape. So throw that idea out the window.


However, I really do wonder to what extent jailhouse justice serves as a deterrent to crime. In some cases murderers have begged judges for a death sentence because they are so terrified of what other inmates will do to them(hint!hint!).....

If a prisoner is supervised properly, he won't be able to murder in prison. It happens a lot in the US, but rarely in Europe. Many prisoners here have made plans to kill Anders Behring Breivik or Viggo Kristiansen (a child molester and murderer), without success.

I'm not familiar with how psychiatric patients who murder are treated in the US, but if a person is diagnosed with psychopathy (and no prospects of improvement) in many European countries, life in prison litterally means that.

Which makes me think that in fact, jailhouse justice is better than capital punishment when it can be applied.

If you are a killer or a rapist(or both), you do not deserve the luxury of being protected from violence. That's why I think prisoners who wish to kill Viggo Kristiansen should be allowed to do so because not only will that provide the retribution people crave but will set a very grim example for those who might follow in his footsteps. And that way the blood will not be on the states hands.

The same should be done with Joran van der Sloot.

in what environment would the setting for these penal colonies be?
if there were virgin islands dotted throughout the oceans that could be claimed to develop convict settlements, then many people would jump at the chance to go there.

the very seriously cruel maladroits would be actually quite happy if they saw a gain for their efforts. i think you are correct if you infer that very seriously ruthless people could be quite nice people if they lived in a world of plenty.

i think however it would not be fair if a group of child rapists and murderers got to grow their own food on a tropical island and be always served with free medical attention.


i do not know what should be done. in the wild, a rogue animal is usually tracked by it's own species and dispatched.

There are islands where cast outs can be placed capable of supporting hunting and farming or gathering. Coastal patrol is sufficient to keep the castouts on the island and there need be very little internal patrolling. Once established such an island penal colony would be cheap to maintain, keep the cast outs away from the main society yet afford the opportunity to extract a person wrongly convicted. This has all of the advantages and none of the disadvantages of capital execution.

Once again I say that the main thing is to remove the incorrigible wrong doer from our midst. Retribution while psychologically satisfying (to some) misses the entire point of removing the non-reformable incorrigible folks from our midst.

I fully understand and sympathize with the urge to retributive justice but I find that even killing one innocent person in what is supposed to be the pursuit of justice is excessive. I reject the idea of sacrifice out of hand. We have enough statistics (the record in the State of Illinois) to indicate that our so-called justice system cannot even supply 95 percent correctness. Since capital execution is irreversible and the same social good can be obtained without it, I would say do away with capital execution. I am not a "bleeding heart". I simply recognize that the machinery of "justice" in the U.S. is far from perfect. Indeed it is and open to corruption and bigotry as well. Our system of justice is really not all that good and certainly not good enough that we should use it to kill off people who kill off people.

ruveyn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermax_Prison

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/lo ... rt1123.htm

Supermax prisons are very expensive and are mainly used to house terrorists and other inmates who have caused trouble in prisons of lower security levels. There are STILL plenty of murders that take place in state prisons by violent inmates; many who belong to gangs. These facilities are federal are cost a hell of a lot of money to operate and maintain. The funding isn't there for states to build these facilities and keeping inmates there for a lifetime is cost prohibitive. It saves the state a lot of money to let killers marked for death to be murdered in prison and at least the blood is not on the states hands so prisoner rights advocates and the ACLU cannot claim "cruel and unusual punishment".

Honestly, I don't think we use the death penalty enough. It's rarely used so it's not a deterrant really. I think every state should have capital murder and the appeals process should be faster, say within a year. Same amount of appeals and relooking at the case, but done fast. Rocket Docket type stuff. Then the execution should be public. People should be able to go see it and it should be on pay per view. That sounds horrible, but plenty of sick folks would watch it. People would know that they will die and die soon if they commit capital murder.

I do know that people have been convicted who haven't done what they were accused of. Yes, some would die. If there was any way to prevent that I would say we need to, but we also need the death penalty. As bad as it is, and as unfortunate and horrific as it is that someone innocent could be executed, I have to say that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. That means that if the death penalty overall, used the way I propose to use it, is a deterrant to murder, then it is acceptable that an innocent person be executed rarely like that. If it was a member of my family, of course I'd feel differently. However, I think that it would work much better if it were used publically and often.

I also think DNA evidence or a confession or some kind of absolute evidence should be required before we kill them.

As with the death penalty, 'jailhouse justice' can fall on the wrongfully convicted. Incarceration may take the wrongfully convicted from their lives, but at least they can go back to them with compensation (or so it should be so).

As to deterrent, I doubt it. Either you have the serial killer sort, for whom it is an obsession, or you have the heat-of-the-moment sort, who aren't exactly thinking clearly. Further, there's a fair chance a killer will kill to avoid the death penalty anyway. What should be done is changes at the social level.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es9XrKTTc_4[/youtube]

DNA evidence is not the be-all and end-all of guilt. If the gardener goes into the house for a cup of water, his DNA is going to be in the house; if the father later gets murdered, the gardener isn't necessarily guilty even if his DNA is all over the kitchen.
Edit: I should mention, YES, the sensitivity IS that precise on DNA testing these days.

A shorter appeals process means that more innocent people will be murdered by the state.