Death Penalty

[rahmota]

Hello, Misanthropical's unfortunate incidents with a young punk brought this about and I thought I would start this here instead of there.

I am for the death penalty. Even though our American justice system is more into rehabilitation and redemption of criminals, there are some thigns that just cannot be redeemed for, some people who just cannot be rehabilitated. Taking a life in cold blood for no reason other than to proove how tough you are, raping or killing children, these kinda things are just beyond the pale.

I mean the whole basis for rehabilitation is that the person wants to become a productive and reliable part of society. But the only way a person can change is if they are motivated to do so. Motivation comes either from within because a person wants to do so, or it comes from outside because they wish to avoid something like pain or discomfort.

The problem with rehabilitation is if a person does not desire to change and the limited methods the prison system to perseude the person to change are ignored then they can wind up doing their time, learning new skills and being a drain on society. It costs money and resources to house these people. And with the rather tight rules on what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment the modern justice system has to play within some of these criminals wind up having a better life inside the joint than they did before they went in. Free meals, medical care, socialization with their peers, education, and all at taxpayer expense. For some not exactly an incentive to rehabilitate.

I'm not saying that we should go back to the 16th century racks and whips and such but American prisons and the justice system in general could use a bit of an overhaul. I'm also not saying that we should kill em all and let the gods sort them out either.

There are people can be rehabilitated, whose crimes are not violent or heinous enough to be unforgivable. Those people deserve the chance and opportunity to be able to proove they want to atone for their mistakes and to rejoin society in a productive manner.

Then there are those who are so cold, so unfeeling or their crimes are so violent or heinous that they can never be forgiven. That they have no desire to honestly reform themselves. They will return to the same actions, same attitudes the moment they are right back out in the world. These are the ones that should be locked in a bare windowless cell with just a bed and crapper at best to those that need their necks stretched at the worst.

It may not bring back their victims. It may not bring total closure and peace to the families of the victims. But maybe it will deter someone who thinks the punk gang lifestyle of killing innocents is not a wise decision. Yeah life is hard, things suck but it takes a bigger person to stand up for themselves in a peaceful way and pick the right fights and battles to make their personal world better than to just be an animal taking and killing and burning out like a meteor. And at the very least the death penalty will remove that person from society in a permanent and effective way so they can never do their crimes again.

[Rapscallion]

I don't think the death penalty will deter anyone from committing murder or gang-violence etc, unless people can actually see it happen. Also, the methods used today are somewhat less violent than those of yesteryear.

Public executions used to be the norm. A short drop with a noose around your neck, along with dancing at the end of the rope for a while, was quite the gather-round for the great and good of the local region. Hanging these days, if done right, snaps the neck instantly. The old style was far more of a deterrent than either the new version or the current execution methods behind closed doors with very few witnesses.

My problem with the death penalty is not one of proof and how people can be found to be innocent after - the only way it could be accepted is if there was incontrovertible proof of guilt and an appeals process - but where you draw the line. Manslaughter and murder are different - murder is premeditated and manslaughter is heat-of-the-moment. That seems to be a reasonable way of doing things.

However, how about the criminally insane? A guy may have been told by voices inside his head that he had to kill the antichrist, who just happened to be the next person he met. That's premeditated, but would that require the death penalty? Sure, it removes him from the gene pool, but is it really his fault?

Rapscallion

[DesignFox]

I dunno, Raps... If the voices in his head tell him to do horrible violent things, if he cannot be a productive member of society and he cannot be cured of his violent tendencies, wouldn't society be better off without him?

What's the difference between a crazy guy going on a killing spree and a supposedly normal functioning human being doing so? Isn't the urge to do these horrible things a mental disease one way or the other? Where do you draw THAT line?

I think if you can't be rehabilitated you shouldn't be released. If you are a mass murderer or rapist, then you should be put to death. However, I think in cases where the death penalty is considered, great care needs to be taken to ensure the person is truly guilty. Also, the person shouldn't sit on death row for 30 or more years- they should be punished for their crime while it is still relavent.

There are way too many bad humans flitting around and messing things up in my opinion- ridding the earth of the worst of them is probably best for society as a whole.

[rahmota]

True modern "humane" ways of applying the death penalty are very boring to be honest nothign like the good old days of the short drop and a sudden stop, rope dance, guilotene and all but hey thats the price to pay for being a modern caring society that even shows the most violent evil dogs mercy.

Sad thign is many of those scum take advantage of that mercy. And I will agree with you that it is a complex issue and great care must be taken but with sufficent time and effort it could be done. Should eb done actually.

As for the insanity issue I'll pretty much agree with designfox's comments.

[AFPheonix]

I don't care for the death penalty for several reasons.

One, we've already managed to kill a few innocent guys, and found quite a few more on death row who shouldn't be there.

Two, after the process of appeals and whatnot and the execution itself, it turns out to be MORE expensive than just shutting these assholes away for life.

Three, the existence of the death penalty has yet to deter people from murdering or raping others.

Frankly, death is too good for these guys. I'd rather have them rot for all eternity, locked away from the outside, sun, and people, in a small cage. And sometimes when you're lucky, other inmates will dispense some harsh justice of their own, too, a la Jeffrey Dahmer.

[Boozy]

The death penalty is wrong for several reasons, some of which have been mentioned here already. The biggest problem is its irreversibility. The government has already murdered several innocent citizens, and hundreds more have been let off death row after being discovered innocent.
A more shocking statistic: Blacks are killed more often than whites at a ratio of 21 to 1. I can assure you that crime statistics do not come even close to matching this ratio. This sentence is not fairly applied.
What I personally find most distasteful about the death penalty is its philosophical repercussions. A society that values life does not kill human beings. For whatever reason. Who decides what life is worth taking and what life is worth saving? I don't want to hear cries of "But the murderer decided HE'D take a life! He made that decision." Yes, he did. And did we not just agree that that was wrong?
What kind of society says: Killing is wrong. You killed someone. Your punishment is that we kill you.
Internationally, every developed country in the world has agreed that capital punishment is barbaric. Except the United States. They still sit among the glorious ranks of China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and the like.

[blas87]

I should feel comforted in the fact that the man who killed my cousin (and her baby) is going to rot in prison for quite a while (he comes up for parole when I'm 35, and I will do everything I can to make sure he stays in there or so help me God I will kill him with my bare hands). I DON'T feel that comforted.

He took two innocent lives, one of which was not even outside of the womb yet. In cold blood, he choked my cousin to death and hid her corpse underneath a BED, and fled to Minnesota with his son. Her body was found 3 days later. Yes, hiding a body under a bed shows just how much he cared and how sorry he was!

I never got to say goodbye to her. She was only 20 years old, with a bright future. She was attending college, getting good marks, and had a great job. She was going to have a baby and marry this guy, then he kills her, for NO reason!

So he gets to rot in prison thanks to people's tax dollars. And no, he doesn't get to rot in a cage. He gets warm, clean clothes to wear, he gets 3 square meals a day, he gets to exercise, read, hell, he can go to college in prison, and he gets to go outside (even though he is under guard, he STILL gets to go outside and that's the whole point!). The justice system treats him like any other law abiding citizen. He cannot be treated with disrespect or violence. The only bad thing that ever happens to him is an occasional butt rape from a fellow inmate (because believe it or not, most men in prison are scum, but they do NOT tolerate violence against women or children, and if they hear of a new inmate who did something like that, they take action).

I hope to God that every day he gets raped in the showers. I hope that someone has already beaten the living shit out of him before the guards could intervene. I hope to God he stays in prison forever and dies a slow and painful death in there. But that's just not going to happen. He is going to most likely get out when he comes up for parole, no matter WHAT I or anyone else will try to say to convince a judge that he belongs in there forever. His lawyer will come up with some lame excuse that he has learned the error of his ways, he's a good man now, he'll never do it again...

Sorry, but it's not like when you were a kid and you broke your mommy's vase. "Sorry, I won't do it again!". Um, he KILLED two people for NO REASON. It doesn't matter what he is now, he doesn't deserve to ever see the light of day again.

I would love to choke him with my bare hands and shove his corpse under a bed and see how he likes it.

Remember everyone, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It was not self defense NOR an accident. It was intentional. My cousin is gone forever. Her baby never had a chance to exist. That bothers me. This piece of shit does not deserve to breathe the same air as I do. He does not deserve to live.

[tendomentis]

I think the death penalty (if executed intelligently) marks one of the few times when social progress meets natural selection.

For those who say "if killing is wrong, then why are we killing a killer?", think about it on a larger scale.

An individual decides to take the life of a part of our society at large (or multiple people as the case may be). For our society to function properly and to survive, it must act like any other multi-cellular organism and protect itself from elements of itself that would seek to hurt itself (i.e., a virus infecting a host). Society, acting as the larger biological organism destroys that part of it which has demonstrated that it seeks to hurt the larger organism.

That said, I do agree that it should only be used when guilt is undeniable (read, no plausible doubt and appeals exhausted). Putting a murderer in jail forever further taxes (both figuratively and literally) the larger societal organism, thereby doing more harm than good. If used responsibly, the downsides to the death penalty are still less frequent and damaging then the downsides to just keeping murderers in jail forever.

[Boozy]

That said, I do agree that it should only be used when guilt is undeniable (read, no plausible doubt and appeals exhausted). Putting a murderer in jail forever further taxes (both figuratively and literally) the larger societal organism, thereby doing more harm than good.

The death penalty should indeed only be applied in cases where guilt is undeniable (is this ever the case?). "Assuring" guilt costs a literal fortune in trials and appeals. (If you're really interested, Mark Costanzo has written a great book about it called "Just Revenge: Cost and Consequences of the Death Penalty") Applying the death penalty, overall, costs more than life imprisonment. Now, we could of course forgo the appeals process, thereby making the process of capital punishment cheaper...but then we greatly increase the risk of killing an innocent man.
(Note - I ventured into this discussion apprehensively, because I dislike discussing human life in terms of dollars. If a murderer's life is worth, say, $0, what is a thief's life worth? A tax evader's? How about Mother Teresa's life? Was her life worth more than yours and mine?)

I agree that our only concern in the justice and penal system should be protecting society from criminals. I personally do not care about "rehabilitation". Let's just remove the offending individual from society. Life imprisonment achieves this. Capital punishment is unneccessary.

Some people want to see the concept of revenge, most notably Old Testament-style retribution, built into the justice system. Revenge has no place in the legal system of a secular nation. I suppose if America decides to rewrite the constitution and become a religious nation, then capital punishment would not then violate any principles of their justice system. This is providing that they declare some religion other than Christianity as the nation's official religion. Because, despite what appears to be popular belief, Christianity does not condone revenge.
In the meantime, revenge cannot be used legally or philosophically to justify the death penalty under the current American legal system. The "eye for an eye" principle sets a dangerous legal precedence that would leave the system open to some pretty ridiculous punishments.

[rahmota]

i want to say that I can understand and in many ways agree with Blas' sentiments. Her pain and her families pain inflicted by this person is immeasureable and knowing that the punk is getting treated better than some people on the outside is definately not somethign I would find comfortable to think about in her shoes. This is one of those times where revenge and justice are on the same page.

I'll agree that prisons are not places of punishment. What we need to do is remove each and every perk, priviledge and freebie that the prisoners get.

My ideal prison: All cells are 6'*6'*6' there is one bunk, one crapper, one sink in there. There are no windows, no bars, just 4 walls, a solid metal door in one, a light fixture behind bulletproof glass only accessable from a catwalk above the cellblocks. Mounted in the lightfixture is a camera with audio capabilities to monitor the criminal. In the door is a sliding flap that all meals come into. the bunk is a piece of solid metal built into the floor so that nothign can slide underneath it. On the bunk is a 3 inch thick foam rubber pad with no sheets. Climate is controlled so the prisoner does not need sheets or blankets. Prisoner will wear a solid orange jumpsuit at all times that closes by velcro. Jumpsuit to be made out of ripstop nylon. Barring a medical emergency the main door only opens twice in the prisoner's duration of stay once to let him into his cell and once to let him out to reenter the world when his stay is over. No weight rooms, no courtyard, no visitation with other prisoners so he can learn new skills or get in good with other gangs, no cable tv, no internet. Just those 4 walls and his memories each and every day as the cells themselves are sound proofed. Now that is a prison that would deter all but the most effed up criminals from going to it.

And as for them its the rope dance. It is not inhumane to remove a splinter or a tumor from the body social. And that is what these scumbags are. An ugly cancer eating away at society. They do not deserve a cushy treatment. They deserve a fair and impartial trial with set and effective punishments for their crimes. Premeditate murder one and its the rope dance. Nothign indecent, immoral or onhumane in that.

[Dreamstalker]

Frankly, death is too good for these guys. I'd rather have them rot for all eternity, locked away from the outside, sun, and people, in a small cage. And sometimes when you're lucky, other inmates will dispense some harsh justice of their own, too, a la Jeffrey Dahmer.

Maybe put all the truly nasty criminals in one big cage and the problems would take care of themselves.

I'm kinda on the fence about this one. While I do believe that there are some people who just cannot (or should not) be rehabilitated/let loose ever, there is the quagmire of improper identification. I would say that the death penalty should be reserved until it is proven beyond any possible shadow of a doubt that the suspect is in fact the real perp.

I agree that prisons are too overcrowded and possibly also too lax. This reminds me of the Auburn Plan that used to be used in prisons.... However, I do think that the inmates who truly want to better themselves through work study, college courses, etc should be allowed to do so.

[ShockQueen]

It may seem a high perch to stand upon, but I'm against the death penalty PERIOD. Yes, it is wrong, inhumane, and incorrigable what the guilty party did, but killing them does no good. They're expecting to die, and they know the family will continue to go on suffering long after the killer has passed from this existence.

The solution then becomes of how we deal with those who cannot be reformed. The legal system that we have now has prisons that house these people, and even the "supermax" prisons have more amenities than the prisons of long ago had. Throw them all in the Chateau D'If to spend their days, or something along those lines - something that shows them that they WILL be locked away in that dungeon for the rest of their days with no hope of escape or reprieve.....something that causes them to suffer and remember what they did was wrong, and this is their punishment for their misdeeds.

That warden down south had the right idea with the whole "tent city" thing - prisoners had NO AMENITIES and were relegated to very harsh conditions.

Like I said....the taking of ANY life is wrong, but then it just becomes a matter of how you actually deal with the people afterwards that forces a better solution.