Eventually death penality abolished

[nemo]

tartanism - your comment was already addressed by an admin earlier in this thread.

 

getting back to the actual point of this thread, which appears to be whether capital punishment should be abolished, i find myself looking for a difference between life in prison without the possibility of parole and capital punishment. cost doesn't appear to be a significant argument. people say that CP is inhumane, but those same people look forward to the inmate getting gang raped for years and years - i'm not catching the humanity in that. it appears that once a person has committed a capital crime, society is simply looking for what it deems to be the best revenge possible.

[questor]

what about shooting an enemy soldier ? is that not capital punishment without a trial ? what if he has a gun aimed at you ? would you kill him ?

[CraigD]

what about shooting an enemy soldier ? is that not capital punishment without a trial ?

No, it is not.

 

The critical distinction between killing a citizen of another state and executing a citizen of your own state is that the latter - Capitol punishment, or any judicial punishment - is authorized by your sovereign – a monarch, a republican government, a community council, a tribunal, etc. This sovereign is asserted to have the authority to kill its subjects as it sees fit – in the case of a despotic monarch, capriciously, while more modern governments presumably employ systems of justice that enjoy the consent of their subjects.

 

When one kills an enemy soldier, the sovereign that authorized you to do it has no sovereignty over that enemy soldier. It could not legitimately hold a “trial” for the enemy soldier before you “executed” him, even if it wanted to. The enemy soldier may, but more likely has not committed any criminal act according to your sovereign or his own – unlike most application of capitol punishment, his prior actions are not relevant to your authority to kill him.

 

The right of sovereign to wage war and their right to execute their subjects are different things.

[Boerseun]

A sovereign state sanctioning the killing (or liquidation, as the Germans referred to it back in '42) of any human being is a distasteful reality, exposing the barbaric roots of our so-called 'civilization'.

 

Whether it be under civil law, or in a military scenario where martial law would be appliccable, in my mind there's no justification for it. Sure - countries will forever be at each others' throats, we can't escape that. But that's why we have diplomacy.

 

Capital punishment is wrong. If the guy committed a particularly heinous crime, sure - lock him up. But don't lower yourself (and your State/Culture/Civilization) to his level by returning the favour. We're better than that.

 

But then again, that's only me speaking.

[CraigD]

A sovereign state sanctioning the killing (or liquidation, as the Germans referred to it back in '42) of any human being is a distasteful reality, exposing the barbaric roots of our so-called 'civilization'. …

Right on, brother!

 

I hope I didn’t give the impression in my previous post that I felt the state is ever “morally right” in ordering the killing of a person.

 

I think this instinctive opinion is shared by many people who are not fully aware they share it. If you scan this thread, you’ll find several statements of the opinion that capitol punishment should be reserved for “monsters”, “sadistic animals”. In some fashion, most people feel that, to deserve execution, a person must have in some way become less than human. The dark times in Europe in the 1940s, and more recently in Serbia, Rwanda, and several other locations, show the ease with which many civilized people will accept the branding of others as “less than human”, and eligible for animal-fashion slaughter. Hardly anyone can think of such awful, genocidal events, and not be disturbed.

 

I have a quandary when it comes to expressing the sorts of emotional responses on a Science forum, though. Although one can construct rational, scientific arguments for why killing, sanctioned or not, is not a beneficial human behavior, these arguments are often afterthoughts to the emotional revulsion that leads one to the “killing is wrong” conclusion. On a site that has an explicit rule against statements like “I’m right just because I know I’m right!”, such reasoning should be suspect. On the other hand, we don’t want to be unfeeling robots, and pride ourselves with being friendly and compassionate, so emotions certainly have a place here.

 

I’ve considered using color or font to signal “this text expresses an emotional judgement” vs. “this text is a scientific argument”. Aside from the problem that few people would recognize the convention without a lengthy explanation of it, it’s often startlingly hard to draw a sharp line between rational and irrational thinking.

 

It’s a good distinction to make a habit of making, though, and one at which I fear not all people, even Science enthusiasts, are adept.

[Tarantism]

what about shooting an enemy soldier ? is that not capital punishment without a trial ? what if he has a gun aimed at you ? would you kill him ?

 

well, during a wartime i believe that is a different story.

[Tarantism]

well, killing a human being is no better if it is in the name of the "law" or protected by the united states. taking someones life, regardless of situation (excluding self defence) is all at the same level to me. i think that making someone actually pay for their crime and making them stay in prison is a lot more humane, and it keeps the government from stooping to the killers level.

 

the gang rape thing is a good point, but the odds are slim that it would happen, since i think that they put the murderers in single cells, showers could be another story though...

 

 

B)

[HydrogenBond]

The problem with the death penalty is that it takes too long to impliment. The result is that most people lose perspective and begin to feel empathy for the thug. If someone broke into your house and killed your spouse and was coming after you, and a police officer shot him dead, this would be the death penalty in real time. It would be considered justified and maybe even too quick and merciful for the violation of an innocent life and pain left behind. If we capture the crimimal instead and stretch it out over many years with only the line of the lawyers being heard (lawyers are the most honest people on earth), we lose perspective and begin to put ourselves in the criminal's place. We just don't put ourselves in the first place that led to this. We judge by the code of a good person.

 

The way I look at it, law is like sports. If one is playing basketball and our competitor wants to play by a different set of rules, which allows him to cheat and gain unfair advantage, are we still obiligated to play by the honest rules that will put us at a disadvantage. Or does the cheater set the rules of engagement for both of us? With murderers one can not just take their ball home because the game will not end there for the victims and those left behind. If anything the death penality should be considered the mercy. Justice would require parity or to be killed in the same fashion one killed another plus a little extra for violating the rights of another and creating this mess in the first place.

[Rincewind]

The problem with the death penalty is that it takes too long to impliment. The result is that most people lose perspective and begin to feel empathy for the thug.

I would actually say that the lack of immediacy enables one to actually gain a bit of perspective as it allows for time to think through the full consequences of an action.

 

If someone broke into your house and killed your spouse and was coming after you, and a police officer shot him dead, this would be the death penalty in real time.

I think it is very important to distinguish carefully between a "heat of the moment" killing and a carefully premeditated killing.

 

Killing in self defence, or in the defence of another's life, especially when as the result of an action by a law enforcement officer, must be accepted in society, with the proviso that non-lethal restraint was not a reasonable option given the circumstance.

 

Capital punishment is premeditated murder, and should not be excusable in any circumstances.

[Rincewind]

... we lose perspective and begin to put ourselves in the criminal's place.

Once again, I would call that gaining perspective, not losing it.

[questor]

i can only assume that none of the posters here have undergone the horror and grief that one would feel if a close one had been brutally murdered without mercy. it is undoubtedly difficult to feel empathy for someone you don't know and a crime you had not witnessed. some crimes, like those of Jeffrey Dahmer are so heinous as to strain belief and cry out to remove this man's genes forever from the earth so another Dahmer cannot be born. i don't understand how one can condone killing an innocent fetus, but try to protect someone who has proved themselves to have no mercy or humanity. please don't try to obfuscate this by talking about the instant at which a fertilized egg becomes a human being. this is a stupid attempt to justify societal approval for one type of murder while excusing the barbarians among us. to carry the anti-execution argument further, i assume none of you would give the death penalty to Saddam, or those religious Muslims seen chopping off heads on TV.

after all, we must be consistent.

[CraigD]

i can only assume that none of the posters here have undergone the horror and grief that one would feel if a close one had been brutally murdered without mercy.

Your assumption is incorrect – see my post #9 to this thread.

 

The assumption is not, however, unreasonable The world pre capita annual murder rate is about 3/100,000. Even assuming that most of our membership live in the US, the rate is only 6/100,000. Assuming each person has 10 close ones, and has known them for 30 years, you’d expect to need to poll nearly 400 people to find one who has had a close one murdered.

 

I can attest that losing a close friend to murdered invokes stronger feeling of anger and grief than losing one to illness of accident. Still, neither I nor any of the other close friends and family of my murdered friend appeared to me to undergo a change in their opinion of capitol punishment. Those who supported it continued to support it, those who opposed it, continued to oppose it.

[Rincewind]

i don't understand how one can condone killing an innocent fetus, ... please don't try to obfuscate this by talking about the instant at which a fertilized egg becomes a human being. this is a stupid attempt to justify societal approval for one type of murder while excusing the barbarians among us.

It is not murder unless there is a human victim, so talking about the instant at which a fertilized egg becomes a human being is not an obfuscation, but a point that must be proved in order to establish abortion as murder.

 

Anyway, that has nothing to do with subject of this thread, and should be taken up in the Abortion:murder thread, if so desired.

[Tarantism]

the death penalty is unethical.

 

i saw on the news last night that they found one person executed innocent. one might say "oh, its just one person out of the, say, 998 that have been executed" but i believe that one is one too many.

 

it is not ethical for our government to end lives.

[HydrogenBond]

The loss of an innoscent life on death row is my only concern when it comes to the death penalty. The way around this is to get at the heart of truth. I would allow those on death row to request a mediation using all the tools of science for getting to the truth like lie detecters and truth drugs. An innoscent man will not condemn himself under a truth drug unless he wanted to die. The quilty man will not be able to cheat on all the tests. This would speed up the process and cut into lawyer profits. If an innoscent person is found than there should either be accountability or compensation or both.

[CraigD]

The loss of an innoscent life on death row is my only concern when it comes to the death penalty. The way around this is to get at the heart of truth.

I completely agree (with the primacy of truth in determining guilt or innocence – my personal religious system does not permit me to support execution). The notion that, in a judicial proceeding, “you’re entitled to all the truth you can afford”, is, to my mind, revolting.

I would allow those on death row to request a mediation using all the tools of science for getting to the truth like lie detecters and truth drugs.

Here, I believe, we encounter some obstacles. The most common form of “lie detector”, the polygraph, has repeatedly been shown by well-controlled studies to be little more effective than chance. In practice, many people later convicted of the crime in question base on hard evidence, multiple witnesses, and confession, easily passed polygraph examinations, while people later vindicated by incontrovertible evidence failed these examinations miserably,

 

Similarly, “truth drugs,” (which have historically include every thing from vodka to sodium amytal to LSD), while fairly effective at getting uncooperative people to speak openly, seem little able to assure that they speak truthfully. Like hypnosis and ordinary conversation, these drugs, while of little apparent use in assuring truthful speech, do appear to be of limited but dramatic use in getting people to believe things that are certainly and provably false.

An innoscent man will not condemn himself under a truth drug unless he wanted to die.

Likely true.

The quilty man will not be able to cheat on all the tests.

Historically untrue. Many very well known criminals have successfully cheated at all the tests administered by multiple people considered the best in their profession.

This would speed up the process and cut into lawyer profits. If an innoscent person is found than there should either be accountability or compensation or both.

Again, I wholeheartedly agree.

 

The problem would appear to be developing Scientific tools that are actually effective at determining truth. There are at least 2 approaches to this, each with merits and flaws

• Neurological and physiological devices – in effect, “lie detectors” that work. Current research in fMRI appears to hold promise in this area, but it’s uncertain if any such device developable in the near future could not be fooled by a well informed cheater.
  
• Surveillance devices. Advance in audio-video technology suggest that it might be possible in the fairly near future to make uncorruptable recordings of essentially every moment of every human beings life. Determining truth would then be a simple matter of following due process to subpoena the pertinent recordings. Cautious people, however, worry about the potential for abuse, especially by “Big Brother”-style repressive government.

I am personally, as a proponent of the idea and social movement of Openness, in favor of the “surveillance devices” approach. Privacy, I believe, while currently a very important and valuable legal concept, is in actuality a stop-gap solution to the problem of judicial corruption. A society truly governed by Law and able to reliable determine truth would not, I believe, need absolute guarantees of privacy.

[lindagarrette]

the death penalty is unethical.

 

i saw on the news last night that they found one person executed innocent. one might say "oh, its just one person out of the, say, 998 that have been executed" but i believe that one is one too many.

 

it is not ethical for our government to end lives.

Guess what? Our government ends lives all the time. Remember we are in the midst of a war against the people of Iraq.