Don't let the door hitcha in the ass on the way out! (Death penalty)

[Boozy]

I don't support the death penalty. No exceptions. Killing people is wrong. I don't kill people, and I do not allow my country to do it in my name.

[Lyra]

wait for him to mess up again

You see, this is where I have a problem. Who is on the recieiving end of him messing up again? How would you feel if it was your daughter, sister, mother, cousin, et al?

For your punishment to work, everytime he gets out, he has to mess up (or end) annother person's life.

With the death penalty, he's done.

I agree very strongly that we need MUCH better checks and balances on proving guilt. Too many folks are getting out of life sentances (or the death penalty for that matter) when it's proven thru modern technology that they were innocent all this time. Not only is that scary to me in a "what if that had been me?" way, it's awful that these people spent all this time in prison, or under the threat of death for something they did not do.

Obviously some improvements need to be made in our "justice" system.

However, when it is proven...and considerable time has gone by while they played with "bubba", then the death penalty should be carried out on these people who think it's just fine and dandy to rape and murder people.

Yes, it's revenge. Personally, I think it's fair revenge. Justice, IMHO.

[IDrinkaRum]

I do not support the death penalty at all. Killing is killing no matter if it's the person who ends up the prisoner in the legal system or the government, local or federal.

As (I believe it was) Martin Luther King, Jr. said: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we'd all be blind and toothless".

Life in prison without parole. Enough people locked up in the jails, there will always be short tempers/fuses, they'll kill each other anyway. That's how Jeffrey Dahmer was killed - by another inmate.

[LadyMage]

You see, this is where I have a problem. Who is on the recieiving end of him messing up again? How would you feel if it was your daughter, sister, mother, cousin, et al?

For your punishment to work, everytime he gets out, he has to mess up (or end) annother person's life.

With the death penalty, he's done.

I agree very strongly that we need MUCH better checks and balances on proving guilt. Too many folks are getting out of life sentances (or the death penalty for that matter) when it's proven thru modern technology that they were innocent all this time. Not only is that scary to me in a "what if that had been me?" way, it's awful that these people spent all this time in prison, or under the threat of death for something they did not do.

Obviously some improvements need to be made in our "justice" system.

However, when it is proven...and considerable time has gone by while they played with "bubba", then the death penalty should be carried out on these people who think it's just fine and dandy to rape and murder people.

Yes, it's revenge. Personally, I think it's fair revenge. Justice, IMHO.

yes our system needs to be fixed, I agree with that, but remember that person is still human

if they killed someone close to me I would be sad yes, but I would not stoop to their level, I would not become bloodthirsty, I would not want revenge because it never ends well, it never feels good, and it eats you inside out.

There is no 'fair revenge' only revenge and its bitter, not sweet. I am not a murderer, I am not a killer, and I will not avenge someone for something that I can not fix, can not change, and their blood will not cure. Their blood will not bring back the dead, nor will it fix everything. Justice is taking them off the street for good and putting them in a small box with no sunlight, no fresh air and no more sex (except for bubba/bertha, depending on the jail), revenge is killing them, giving them release early via death.

Now which sounds better, since we can't see hell and not everyone believes in it folks

[rahmota]

I am conditionally for the death penalty. If we can be certain beyond all uncertainty ,not just reasonable doubt, that a person premeditatedly murdered a person or in certain rapes then doing the rope dance would be somethign I would pay to see. Not to mention all the other reasons why there are current problems with the Death penalty implementation like AFP said.

In cases of accidental death, or crimes of passion and such prison, rehabilitation and other methods would be something I would agree with.

Its too unfortunate that we dont have real psychics where the sort of punishments could be quite a bit more creative and effective.

How would you feel if it was your daughter, sister, mother, cousin, et al?

For myself honor would require the person's death at my hands, failing that that person would die at the hands of the state. I would be duty bound to see to it that that person did not spend the rest of their life gloating about it, enjoying the air that my person should have been breathing. And this may sound cold but there are people in this world I could put a bullet in their head and then go out to mcdonald's without a second thought or it ever coming back to haunt me.

Evil, true evil such as the cold blooded mass murderers, rapists and seriel killers do not deserve to live in our world. We put mad dogs down. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahlmer, folks like that are no better or no more deserving of life than a mad dog.

Enough people locked up in the jails, there will always be short tempers/fuses, they'll kill each other anyway.

unfortunately the prison system goes out of their way to make sure the prisoners are unable to kill themselves or each other. In the county jail i was at they took the erasers off the pencils, you could not have a sharp pencil, the sporks where soft bendy plastic, everythign was rounded, you couldnt have hardback books, the sheets where easily ripped, and even doing something like chin ups on the back of the stairs was forbidden as you might injure yourself. If you just took an island and threw the prisoners on it and let them survive or die then that might work or you might wind up with some sort of southern hemisphere country with a fascination for odd hats and overly excitable animal handlers....

[rahmota]

2. Forced too - like in a war, or another form of self defence since the other person might kill you. Cops do this all the time, should we send them to the chair? How about the boys and girls forced to go to war? Should they get the gas chamber?

I placed this one in another posting as the answer to it might be a bit long.

Soldiers do not get the luxury of having such deep philosophical thoughts as does their actions constitute murder or self-defense. It is not their job to think about these things. That is the job of the generals and the politicians and the philosophers.

Soldiers are given the task of carrying out their mission. Of being placed in a situation that may or may not require them to use deadly force to resolve the situation. usually though the only way to resolve it is the application of force. Because the people they are opposing are willing to use force to prevent the soldier from doing their job. It is the soldiers job to clean up the mess when politicians and philosophers are unable to learn to play nice together.

Police officers are a different situation than soldiers as they are tasked with keeping civil order and are public servants. Their job and their duties are not to use lethal force as the first solution to a mission profile. Unfortunately there are times when they are forced to do so.

Civilians and people in general though have a basic right to defend themselves by any means necessary. And this includes the right to kill a person in the case when that person is trying to kill them. I do not like the way our current justice system will punish a person for killing their attacker. If a person attacks another and the person being attacked defends themselves with lethal force that person does not deserve to be punished for their actions. Maybe not given a medal either at times but definately needs more support and consideration and help than they do receive.

Life is filled with complex situations. There are times though when the swirl of chaos does still and thigns come into focus with a startling clarity of purpose and these times are usually the ones where life and death hang in the balance.
Soldiers do their job and that job is to sometimes kill in the name of their country, their duty, their citizenry.
Police officers protect and serve the public. Sometimes this measn they must fight or die to prevent themselves or another from being killed. They must hold themselves to the highest standards to avoid needless bloodshed but it is still soemtiems required.
Many civilians go their entire life untainted by the touch of evil or violence. Some must defend themselves against it when it is forced upon them. Punish them not, nor pity them but help them.

[CancelMyService]

I would support the death penalty if there was a way to be 100% sure everyone executed was guilty. Even with DNA we seem to be a long way from that. For all the "WHAT ABOUT *insert obviously guilty serial killer/rapist*, SHOULDN'T HE BE KILLED?" that the pro-DP crowd always throw in people's faces, I say how many innocent people with shitty lawyers are you prepared to sacrifice to satisfy your need for revenge? How many people who had the bad luck to run into overzealous cops/judges/DAs are you willing to sacrifice? Not to threadjack, but while cops in general are deified in this country, the truth is a lot of the times they just want to close a case and don't want to be bothered with things like facts or evidence that might disprove their theories and send them back to square one. Not saying all cops are like that, but IMO most of the folks who consider them to be unassailable never had to deal with the police firsthand.

It's also funny that a lot of conservative/right wing people are so rabidly pro death penalty. The same people who will rant endlessly on how you can't trust the government to do anything correctly are certain that the same government is properly administering the harshest punishment possible.

[Amethyst Hunter]

I am against the death penalty.

Give people who would be eligible for the death penalty a choice: Die by lethal injection peacefully, without filing a costly appeal, or spend life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Two choices. Both ensure the person is never a menace to society again.

They didn't give their victims any choice. They don't deserve any choice themselves. I'm with Blas on this one. I don't give a rat's ass if some shithead who raped and executed countless women suffers one whit of pain getting a lethal injection. Tough shit.

Yes, I agree that as it stands now, the death penalty can be skewed towards minorities (Two words: Bush. Texas.), and putting innocent people to death is something that should be avoided at all costs. That's why I said it should only be done in cases where it's proven beyond all reasonable doubt that yes, this is the guilty party, we have every shred of evidence short of actual video footage of him doing the crime (unless they actually DO have footage; then it's a no-brainer).

[CancelMyService]

The only problem is there's been more than one case where it was "proven beyond all reasonable doubt" at trial only to find out years later that it was in fact the wrong person.

Until there's a way to be 100% sure only the guilty are executed I can't get behind the death penalty. I'd rather have murderers get life in prison with no parole than risk killing an innocent person.

Another thing, what kind of punishment is killing someone and letting their punishment end after a few years (allowing for appeals and all that). Having someone sit in prison for 50 years to ponder what they've done is more of a punishment IMO.

[Seshat]

If you just took an island and threw the prisoners on it and let them survive or die then that might work or you might wind up with some sort of southern hemisphere country with a fascination for odd hats and overly excitable animal handlers....

Possible.


Exile


Exile is only viable as a punishment if you separate the genders, sterilise the exiled, or in some other way prevent there from being children of the exiles. Otherwise you get innocent children stuck in a horrid culture.

Early Australia demonstrated that, and so did the Bounty mutineers who moved to Pitcairn Island.

For early Australia: we don't teach the schoolchildren all the details, but read between the lines. The high-ranking officers and their wives and families were rotated and could go home, but the general populace of soldiers were unmarried, and were the ones who could be sent to permanent exile in Australia. Yeah, the misfits, the criminals, and the too-dangerous.
The convicts were mostly male. Some were simply poor and imprisoned for crimes of desperation - stealing loaves of bread and the like. Others were truly criminal.
There were female convicts. Therefore there were also children, at least after a while. Not many of either. There were also officers' wives and families, also not many of either, but those were (I would imagine) untouchable. But ever-present reminders of what everyone else couldn't have.
Add the stresses of survival in a place which, as you all no doubt know, is totally unsuited to the types of agriculture familiar to these people - and you can imagine the culture of the time.
And you can imagine what was likely to happen to Aboriginal women. I'm honestly impressed by how much patience and tolerance the Aboriginal elder councils are showing to "white" Australia in the ongoing negotiations for land rights & such.

For the Bounty mutineers: some of the descendants of the mutineers are still on Pitcairn Island, some were moved to Norfolk. There was a relatively famous rape trial about Pitcairn Island, not so long ago. Here's one report on it. Pitcairn Rape Trial

So yeah - I'm totally against any sort of prison-exile where innocent children can be born to the exiles. (Exile in the political-exile sense, where the exiled is simply going to some other healthy culture, is totally different.)

Imprisonment vs Death Penalty

Unless we have some foolproof way of determining guilt, I'll be against the death penalty as a punishment. However, I'm for death as euthanasia and this applies to some killers.

I'm pro-euthanasia, in cases of incurable suffering and no quality of life. I'm also pro-euthanasia in cases of incurable mental illness that cause suffering to others: such as the majority of people who are helplessly serial killers/serial rapists/serial torturers.

If they can be safely kept locked away and safely given suitable life-quality enrichment, then euthanasia is not necessary. But I would imagine that many of them are just too damn dangerous. I do not consider killing those who are driven to murder, rape or torture by mental illness to be a punishment, but a mercy euthanasia.

I honestly believe that for most serial killers, there has to be something seriously wrong with them. In their brain, in their personality: something. I don't know what, but something. I believe that most of them simply can't learn to understand what they're doing, so punishing them is as pointless as punishing a dog for not doing trigonometry.

The decision to euthanise or imprison these dangerously ill people should be made medically, not judicially, though oversight by an ethics committee (which may include the judicial) is necessary. However if they've committed crimes while ill but are eventually cured, they should be placed in the care of the judicial system.

So having separated out the murderer-because-their-brain-is-broken types, let's look at the murderer-but-mentally-normal types of people. In these cases, we need absolute proof of guilt, for reasons which lots of previous posters have explained. Without that, I'm against the death penalty.

However, presuming absolute proof of guilt, there's no point to allowing repeated appeals and the like. We know who did it, we know why, yadda yadda. Let there be two, maybe three or four or five, reviews by different ethics/judicial committees; just so that people don't get killed because a committee has a bad day. But no need for expensive repeated appeals and retrials; we have this magical absolute proof.

With that proof, I see no need to keep alive people who intentionally murder/rape/torture and are likely to do so again. By this, I mean people like the 'black widow' who marries rich men, arranges their deaths, and inherits. And does so over and over.
I don't see a need for society to kill desperate people who kills their abusive spouses because they can't see any other way out. And there's no reason at all to kill people who kill to defend themselves, children or dependents.
Of course, the middle of that continuum gets tricky - where do you say 'these ones we kill, those we imprison and re-educate'?

Effects on executioners/euthanisers

But there's still one thing that makes me wonder whether the death penalty is a good thing. The effect on the executioner. Heck, the effect on euthanisers makes me wonder about being pro-euthanasia, too.

I don't know much detail, but I watched a show on executioners on the History channel. Edutainment, I know, and probably sensationalised. But apparently quite a few executioners ended up suicidal or depressed, and most were ostracised.

I do know that people who euthanise shelter dogs and cats suffer terribly. I know that police who have to shoot people get paid-by-the-state therapy and for good reason. I know that people who have to cut losses by closing fire/flood doors on a few people to save many end up terribly traumatised.

To be a good executioner or euthanasia-doctor, you need enough empathy to make sure you do the job right. But that's also enough empathy to be horribly psychically injured by it.

[LadyMage]

They didn't give their victims any choice. They don't deserve any choice themselves. I'm with Blas on this one. I don't give a rat's ass if some shithead who raped and executed countless women suffers one whit of pain getting a lethal injection. Tough shit.

Yes, I agree that as it stands now, the death penalty can be skewed towards minorities (Two words: Bush. Texas.), and putting innocent people to death is something that should be avoided at all costs. That's why I said it should only be done in cases where it's proven beyond all reasonable doubt that yes, this is the guilty party, we have every shred of evidence short of actual video footage of him doing the crime (unless they actually DO have footage; then it's a no-brainer).

Then why be them, why kill them in cold blood and give them no choice. Also a lot of those people do tie up the legal system by appealling and trying to save their skins, so technically they still have the choice, they still have the chance of stopping it. We can not take away their right to appeals, since that would be unconsitutional, which is for another time. Why not just not kill them, thus ending the back log.


I also do believe in assited suicide..... for the terminally ill that want it cause they don't want to be in pain, not the people in jail.

seshat - I like your point on exuctioners, no one ever thinks of those poor people that have to do it directly. Think of them people, they might not want to do it.

rahmota - my point about cops and soilders wasn't about punishing them, it was to point out that anyone who kills either by orders or by self defense, in the black and white world of DP should be killed too. They took a life, therefor their lives should be taken. I poined out that was a major flaw

[blas87]

I just cannot see murderers and rapists as people with human beings with feelings. Their victims were people with feelings. Did those pieces of shit care about their feelings or their right to live and not be raped? Not really. Did the guy who killed my cousin and her unborn baby care about her feelings? Not so much. After he killed her, he hid her body underneath a bed and fled the state. That shows just how bad he felt about it.

I'm sorry, but I don't give two shits about how a murderer feels. They didn't give their victims a choice. They didn't care. Why should I care about their feelings? They don't deserve any rights after doing such awful things with no remorse.

I'm sure as hell once they've been incarcerated, sure they feel bad. But it's too late to take it back. And there's no guarantee they'll never do it again. The only way we'll know is if we let them out and they do it again. So that asshole could get out, and ANOTHER family will lose a loved one. Another mother and father will have to lose a child. Another unborn baby may die.

Again, I do not advocate parole. It's basically playing Russian Roulette with innocent people's lives.

[CancelMyService]

blas, you also are certain that the person who killed your cousin did it. There's an alarming number of people on death row who's cases aren't as open and shut.

[blas87]

Perhaps I am being a little closed minded, but from what I'm speaking of, I am only referring to those who have without a doubt killed someone and are 100% guilty.

[Boozy]

Perhaps I am being a little closed minded, but from what I'm speaking of, I am only referring to those who have without a doubt killed someone and are 100% guilty.

Every person on death row later found to be innocent was, at one time, judged 100% guilty.

Human error is unavoidable. As long as there is the death penalty, there is a possibility of innocent people being killed.