What are your feelings on the death penalty?

Started by Alaric I, February 22, 2013, 01:06:54 PM

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Alaric I

Quote from: "aitm"If we demand the elimination of firearms to save the life of people, why not off the few who have proven no objections to murdering? Murders have escaped and killed again, murders have been accidently released and killed again. Cost aside, ( and I agree it should be much cheaper) my issue with the DP is that the criteria to deserve it must be more stringent. Certain objections MUST be qualified in order to merit the DP. There must be absolute certainty. Then off away.

I agree that the qualifications should be more stringent. Something like TX law that if three people see you commit the murder you go to the front of the line.  If at least three people see you than you get a bullet to the brain, if not and you are convicted and all appeals are exhausted than you get offed (I say that because if the innocent people are found guilty, chances of them being found innocent in this day and age are rare, why make them suffer?). I do also a gree with some others that I wouldn't fight to keep it if it were to be abolished.

Brian37

Quote from: "stromboli"There is more than ample evidence that the death penalty is a bad idea.

It is simply stupid as an idea. All one has to do to know that is to consider what it is like to be falsely accused, not of murder, but anything.

I went to a private school before high school. It was on a high hill with a playground with a sheer drop to the street/sidewalk. It had a concrete wall and railing preventing anyone atop the hill from falling onto the sidewalk/street.

So one day we had a "play day", where the entire school was rewarded for good grades. I was standing by myself next to that rail and actually saw what happened. A car passed on the street below me and kicked up a rock on the street which dinged and made noise on the passenger's side door which the driver heard but did not see. He pulled into the parking lot and accused someone of throwing the rock. Like a dip shit I went up to the principle and told the truth that no one threw the rock. The principle took us all inside and refused to let us out until "someone" meaning me, confessed.

Far too much of media is based on convicting on nature of the charge and not on facts.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers." Obama
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BarkAtTheMoon

Quote from: "drunkenshoe"Well killing someone who commited that kind of a crime, slowly and painfully is my first emotional response, but it doesn't mean anything than revenge.
What exactly would you call leaving someone in a tiny, uncomfortable concrete and iron room for 40 years with no hope of release until they die from some disease? Sounds kinda like killing them slowly and painfully.
"When you landed on the moon, that was the point when God should have come up and said hello. Because if you invent some creatures and you put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, then you fucking turn up and say, 'Well done.' It's just a polite thing to do." - Eddie Izzard

BarkAtTheMoon

Quote from: "drunkenshoe"
Quote from: "BarkAtTheMoon"
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"Well killing someone who commited that kind of a crime, slowly and painfully is my first emotional response, but it doesn't mean anything than revenge.
What exactly would you call leaving someone in a tiny, uncomfortable concrete and iron room for 40 years until they die from some disease. Sounds kinda like killing them slowly and painfully.

Yes you have a point. But I also defined that statement as an emotional one and I didn't say I supported extreme isolation in a tiny place. Then in most countries someone who commited a crime of the sort would be killed by inmates in a week if not seperated. (Mostly what happens here in my country.) May be they should be kept somewhere special. I bet it would cost less than executing people in the long run.

So, I honestly don't know BATM. But giving a LAWFUL decision in name of 'justice' for killing someone, killing by the hand of state while people watching it, all that process is some sort of a religious RITUAL for revenge. Don't you think? It's not the same thing as putting someone in jail for 2 life times. Something is seriously wrong with it as an action and it doesn't help anything. That's what I think.
I don't know. I see it like Plu that it's basically pest control. The simple elimination of someone who is incapable of peacefully living in society without hurting other people, not anything ritualistic. When it's completely eliminated, you end up with universally reviled, horrible people like Charles Manson still alive in prison, an endless reminder to all the family members of his group's victims every time his parole hearing comes up. I don't have a problem with it being kept for the worst of the worst, but there's the occasional monster that just doesn't need to be kept around beyond a few years of study.
"When you landed on the moon, that was the point when God should have come up and said hello. Because if you invent some creatures and you put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, then you fucking turn up and say, 'Well done.' It's just a polite thing to do." - Eddie Izzard

Alaric I

Quote from: "BarkAtTheMoon"I don't know. I see it like Plu that it's basically pest control. The simple elimination of someone who is incapable of peacefully living in society without hurting other people, not anything ritualistic. When it's completely eliminated, you end up with universally reviled, horrible people like Charles Manson still alive in prison, an endless reminder to all the family members of his group's victims every time his parole hearing comes up. I don't have a problem with it being kept for the worst of the worst, but there's the occasional monster that just doesn't need to be kept around beyond a few years of study.


I honestly think it's a pretty good deterrant.  Can you imagine how things would be if there was no real punishment for murder?  "Oh you killed someone? Well that's not nice." *Swat*.  Shit, the thing that got me the most worried as s kid is when we cussed and had to eat kitchenspoon full of tabasco sauce, swat's didn't mean shit.

Bibliofagus

Quote from: \"the_antithesis\"Faith says, "I believe this and I don\'t care what you say, I cannot possibly be wrong." Faith is an act of pride.

Quote from: \"AllPurposeAtheist\"The moral high ground was dug up and made into a walmart apparently today.

Tornadoes caused: 2, maybe 3.

Mister Agenda

If it's 1 in a 100, maybe that's a reasonable ratio of sacrificing innocent people. I'm not so sure. But it's currently a lot more than 1 in 100.
Atheists are not anti-Christian. They are anti-stupid.--WitchSabrina

Jmpty

I vote no. An eye for an eye is not part of my credo.
???  ??

Jason Harvestdancer

It might be interesting to offer convicted murderers and rapists the option of exile.
White privilege is being a lifelong racist, then being sent to the White House twice because your running mate is a minority.<br /><br />No Biden, no KKK, no Fascist USA!

Alaric I

Quote from: "Jmpty"I vote no. An eye for an eye is not part of my credo.

It still is if you beleive on taking away their freedom.  Life is more than the ability to breath.

Valigarmander

The fact that so many innocent people have been executed for crimes they didn't commit is reason enough to abolish capital punishment.

Alaric I

Quote from: "Valigarmander"The fact that so many innocent people have been executed for crimes they didn't commit is reason enough to abolish capital punishment.

So let me ask you this, because so many innocent people have been imprisoned for life, should we abolish life sentences?  Capitol punishment has it's issues but really, how do we pick and choose when and where to abolish things so innocents don't get caught up in it?

Poison Tree

There is a big difference between the death penalty in theory and how it is enacted in fact in America.
As mentioned, we have obviously executed innocent people. While we also imprison innocent people, at least once that is recognized the person can be released.
 It also (seems, at least) to be applied unequally on racial grounds. Of course, the same thing could be said about prison terms, but I don't see how the existence of one injustice should be an acceptable excuse for the existence of another.
The death penalty is also quite costly.
The death penalty, in theory, for some specific criminals, ok. The death penalty as it exists in practice in America, no.
"Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches" Voltaire�s Candide

Thumpalumpacus

My own feelings about the issue:

1) if you murder a child in the process of molesting or abusing them, you're scum and lose the right to breathe.

2) if you commit murder-for-hire ( or commission it), you're scum and lose the right to breathe.

All other capital offenses should be remanded to a life sentence on some island in our possession, where the convicts are supplied with seed, farming tools, and issues of clothing and shoes.  The waters off the island should be used to train Coast Guard units in local search & destroy tactics.  Root, hog, or die, and don't expect much but the most basic assistance from your jailers.
<insert witty aphorism here>

Thumpalumpacus

Quote from: "Alaric I"
Quote from: "Valigarmander"The fact that so many innocent people have been executed for crimes they didn't commit is reason enough to abolish capital punishment.

So let me ask you this, because so many innocent people have been imprisoned for life, should we abolish life sentences?  Capitol punishment has it's issues but really, how do we pick and choose when and where to abolish things so innocents don't get caught up in it?

It's a lot easier to release a wrongly-convicted convict with a payment for the wrong done to him than it is to dig up his bones and reanimate him.  The death penalty should be used much more sparingly than we use it now, especially since we have so many problems with putting the right prisoner on Death Row.
<insert witty aphorism here>