Capital Punishment?

Post Reply New Topic

I agree with you.

Why? If they are in for life with no parole, why keep them alive? They are effectively dead anyway, they will never be free again. No need to waste money on them.

I had one that shot rubber bands.

Like I said (in three posts in this thread), we should keep them alive because they might be innocent.

Judicial errors happen all the time. Even DNA evidence can and has been planted. Even alleged rapists have been wrongly accused, in some cases by children. We can let people out of jail if they turn out to be innocent, but we can't bring them back to life. If the judicial system kills only one innocent person in the name of the people, we are all murderers.

I think that the correct role of a justice system is to protect society, not simply to dole out punishment.

So, if I was going to support the death penalty, I would have to see solid evidence that the death penalty protects society, perhaps by providing an extreme incentive to not commit crime. But everything that I have read seems to indicate that the death penalty does not protect society. It just makes certain people feel better. Well, that's not the point.

Then why do we have a judicial system at all?

No one can be punished because they might be innocent, even one innocent man behind bars is too many!

I assume you can see the flaw in your argument.

Throwing someone into jail is reversible, but killing a person is not.

I don't see any flaw in my argument. We have a responsibility to protect society from criminals, but at the same time, we need to protect innocently convicted people from irreversible harm such as torture and death. Incarcerating people under humane conditions is an acceptable compromise, imho.

Ever been to jail? You can let them out, but it is not reversible. People are different after spending any real amount of time in a cell.

Oh yes, the justice system using the name of the "Greater Good" in vain makes us all responsible for accidental death sentences. That must mean you're guilty of rape if the judicial system ends up locking up an innocent person unlucky enough to end up in a cell with Big Bubba. That type of trauma is totally reversible unlike death right? And I guess we should just completely throw the concept of weighing pros/cons out of the window because it's totally worth having a big, bloated, system biting off more than it already chews just to save one person.

Each human is just one person. If the system exists to serve humans, it only makes sense that its focus should be on one living person at a time, instead of some aggregate statistic on paper somewhere.

Maybe I'm just a romantic. I dislike statistics almost as much as I dislike mosquitoes and lawyers.

Being institutionalized can be psychologically damaging, yes. But jail time is still preferable to being executed, imho.

How much time have you spent in jail? I've spent a few days there. I'd much rather be dead, it's kinder.

I've never been in jail, but I've spent a week in a psychiatric hospital back in the day. On a voluntary basis at first, but when I wanted out after a day because my social anxiety got the better of me, I was restrained and pumped full of antipsychotics.

The rest of the week was pretty much like I imagine jail to be. Only that prisoners aren't forced to take meds that give them convulsions and Parkinson symptoms, and turn them into mindless zombies that are barely able to walk. I've read that haloperidol was used in USSR gulags to break the will of prisoners, and I fully understand why.

Anyway, despite the patient abuse, I would rather go back to a clinic -- or alternatively to jail, where I would probably be treated much more humanely -- than being killed on the electric chair. I can't really imagine that anyone would choose death over life in prison. If the US prison system is that bad, there are some improvements needed.

Last edited by CrazyCatLord on 13 Feb 2012, 6:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

There are people that would choose to die and some that would rather go to prison than die.

If I was in prison I'd rather be in solitary than with other prisoners but there are some people that would consider solitary a fate worse than death.

I've been in a mental hospital 30 days and 2 weeks, reform school for 8 months, and jail for 1 day.

I am against the death penalty.
I believe killing can only be justified for self-defense. Therefore, killing a prisoner who is no longer a threat to society is an evil act.
Further, I feel that sanctioned killing devalues all human life, including that of the victims of violent crimes.
If we want to show that our society truly abhors murder, then it must NEVER be legal.

If we do not execute murderers then we have to cage them and feed them. Which means taxpayers are sentenced to forgo some of their income and their time to maintain a person who did not give a damn about his victim's time. Do you think that is just?

ruveyn