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Do you support the death penalty?

  
  

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Jack Denfeld
20:44 / 19.11.02
I get 1st prize for most original topic.

Does your country, and or state have the death penalty? What do you think of this?

I live in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and the death penalty is in full effect here. I believe Texas has us beat by number of people executed, but we're top 3 I believe.

I've never been a fan of the death penalty, even when I was a younger kid (Rambo, Death Wish, Dirty Harry) in the 80's. Honestly, it was a strange childhood fear that I might be wrongly executed.

Thoughts?
 
 
Jack Fear
00:57 / 20.11.02
The United States is currently the only first-world country that employs the death penalty--or, more properly, employs the death penalty for federal cases and leaves it to the discretion of the states for other offenses.

Massachusetts currently has no death penalty, but there are forever calls to bring it back. I do not agree with them.

Wrongful executions are not the issue: making me, as a citizen, party to killing somone--that's the issue.

I will not kill: and I will not countenance the State killing in my name, either in war or in the name of "law and order." Full stop. End of story.
 
 
Jack Denfeld
01:43 / 20.11.02
Even a just war, Jack? I know some don't believe there's ever a just war, just war and all. But if a country invaded the USA, WW2 style?
 
 
Lurid Archive
01:52 / 20.11.02
Wow, I never even knew that the USA was invaded in WWII. Just goes to show that you really do learn something new on Barbelith every day.
 
 
Jack Denfeld
02:10 / 20.11.02
I meant if the USA was invaded WW2 style, as Germany invaded Poland. WW2 is the 1st war I think of when I think of a war where a country invades another country. So when I say "The USA was invaded WW2 style" I don't mean nazis attacking us, or have any illusions that the USA was invaded during WW2, but if our country was invaded by another country. It's kind of like American slang. "He's a fucking donut."
 
 
01
04:37 / 20.11.02
I don't support it for the simple reason that any legal system needs to allow some room for error. Since the death penalty was reinstated in the 70's over 80 people on death row have had their convictions overturned and have been set free. How many innocent people have been executed?
 
 
tom-karika nukes it from orbit
08:04 / 20.11.02
Having a death penalty, is in my opinion a little like a society claiming itself to be infallible. It isn't, and never will be. But maybe it is useful for a society to think of itself as infallible.

Individual citizens could take comfort in the fact that they are a member of this omniscient, never-erring society-mind which can judge other people's actions well enough to be able to kill them with confidence and without remorse.

But state-sponsored killing is in fact not much to do with the state at all. How many judges / juries does it take to sentence someone to death? I don't know much about different legal systems, including the USA's, but I can't imagine that the decision on whether to excute someone rests with more than a few dozen people at the very most.

I am defintely not advocating death penalties being good as long as they are with larger juries, because with too many people making one decision, you get the phenomenon of 'poplular opinion' - there will always be a large portion of those decision makers who are swayed by the more vocal opinions of one or two other people in the group. Trial-by-Tabloid is not a new phenomenon in this country, and definitely not a good one either. I think this is what would happen if we did true trial-by society. Imagine being executed by telephone-vote.

What is the purpose of the death penalty in the first place? Is it the state protecting it's citizens from dangerous people? It doesn't work that much better than life (real 'life', not 20-something years) imprisonment, and is alot more expensive. Is the purpose to make an example to others? I doubt that people who carry out really serious crimes are doing so with the thought of the potential punishment weighing heavily in their minds, be it prison or death. I'm not a criminologist, but I beleive that most criminals simply think they will get away with it. Either that or they are carreer criminals. But that is another issue again. There aren't many hitmen on death row, are there?

Now some wild speculation - maybe death penalties are given out not as a punishment, but as an admission of inadequacy by the courts and the law. I beleive that to give evidence in court, you must swear on the bible. The existence of an omnipotent higher being seems to be somehow accepted by the legal system. So by killing the criminal, is the court saying 'We cannot judge the fate of this person.' and hand over the trial to God.

I know that the bible probably has nothing more than a symbolic value in a modern court, and that beleiving in a higher being doesn't necessarily mean beleif in an afterlife or a final day of judgement. I know that not all the people on death row or in the legal system necessarily beleive in god or anything else. But the Death Penalty is very old - it comes from a time when, in most Western societies, not beleiving in God was to be a social outcast at best, and denounced as a heathen and burnt alive in too many cases.

So I reckon the death penalty is ineffective, out of date and all round pretty unjustifiable. Unless anyone here is all-knowing and would like to volunteer to carry out judgements. I'm sure there's at least one of you.
 
 
Reference
15:00 / 20.11.02
Don't have the time to write a short reply, so will just throw some bits on the ground...

Seems a bit funny that the same courts that hand out death penalties make people swear on a book that includes the commandment "Thou shalt not kill.", then in some cases kill people; are we to assume that they are higher up on the food chain than God, or that they're a bunch of hypocrites? And if the stuff written in the Bible regarding murder, final judgement etc is true, who will be judged/punished - the judges themselves, the public who voted for the people who put them there or those who did nothing to try and stop such things happening?

The argument that the death penalty is a deterrent is destroyed by the fact that such a penalty is enforced on a regular basis - if it were a true deterrent, then it would have only been necessary to execute one person thousands of years ago.

It would be much more sensible to keep murderers inside for the rest of their life; if the person is truly guilty of the crime, than it would more of a punishment to keep them alive and isolated, and if the person turned out to be innocent, there would be the chance of release and compensatation. What is the point of killing somebody who, by virtue of their crime, has no regard for life in the first place?

Violence - at it's most extreme manifestation involving the act of killing - is the lowest form of communication, yet still has a place in modern society when all other forms of communication have been ignored by the offending party.

Whether it's an army invading your country, or somebody threatening to kill somebody else, the first course of action should be to try and resolve the situation through more civilised means. If this fails, then it would be justifiable to try and disable the army/person without causing a fatal injury, so that the immediate threat can be removed, and negotiations can continue in some form. If this too fails, then the only way to protect the innocent party would be to remove the threat completely.

I would not consider this more immediate way of dealing with a situation to be the same as sentencing someone to death in a court. The latter involves a degree of premeditation on the part of the state, in the sense of creating the penalty, trying the person and then possibly administering the penalty, while the former requires a quicker solution to a regrettable situation that may only be witnessed by the peolple involved.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
15:33 / 20.11.02
Sorry to get all Hausy on your collective arses but the topic here is the death pernalty, which doesn't include war. Start yer' own darn topic if you want to talk about whether killing people in wartime is right or wrong...
 
 
Harhoo
10:02 / 22.11.02
Without spending too much time adumbrating Foucault, I think most people accept that deterrence is a relatively minor function of the death penalty. Flicking through tabloid letter columns whenever the subject is to the fore, it seems that most perceive the advantage of the death penalty as both punishment of the individual and of satiating the need of the tribe for vengeance.
 
 
Char Aina
11:46 / 22.11.02
war is a version of a death penalty.
you are killing a countries people for a wrong they have committed.
or its a type of murder.
when you are killing someone for reasons of personal gain.

i dont think it is a different topic, i think it should be related, perhaps as a sidebar to the main focus. our society's whole attitude to life is the issue, not some particular symptom of it.



i think in terms of coming to an amicable agreement with those who cry for revenge, the only arguments that will work are those that show trhe financial gain(for the bloodthirsty politician) and the added suffering of the convicted(for the family, etc) of being inside for life.

i hate to be such aliberal-in the middle, but we need to stop the killing, in my opinion, and to do so we need to appeal to the sensibilities of the enraged masses.

i personally dont understand their anger, or how it relates to their pain.
i shy away from accusing people of being unable to deal with the emotions involved, because that is patronising as all fuck. the truth is though, i really do see it as a lack in them, that they are unable to see past the initial grief.

can someone please post a reasonable(i mean not spitting fury) rebuttal, that states the case for? i would like to hear an intelligent point of view that contradicts my own.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:20 / 22.11.02
Moderator hat: The topic abstract says "Death Penalty". To describe war as a death penalty is a metaphor. As such, war is not on-topic, although could certainly be a reference point for the main discussion. I suggest a new thread along the lines of "Can there be a just war?", if there's a desire to discuss under what circumstances people would fight or support fighting.
 
 
grant
13:21 / 22.11.02
One of the arguments for the death penalty is that it removes the offender from society on a permanent basis.

Another is that it is equitable and just: a life for a life.


Personally, I don't buy either of those, but hey, you asked.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
14:34 / 22.11.02
Trust the Haus, the Haus is wise, unless he disagrees with me, in which case he's obviously a fuckbake.

Another reason for the Death Penalty which still get used but would seem to be demonstrably false is that it dissuades young crims from doing crime by being the ultimate penalty.
 
 
Char Aina
15:03 / 22.11.02
and in what topic would you suggest you discuss state sanctioned killing?
 
 
Sharkgrin
19:57 / 22.11.02
The US supports it, but the commonwealth (state) of Kentucky does not support the death penalty, and neither do I.

I am all for penal colonies for convictdd murders, completely banished from society, as they have rejected its basic tenets.

The cool thing about penal colonies is that thereis the slim, remote chance of recovery for the convicted if other evidence comes to light. It's also far more terrifying for anyone than a six-to-ten year stay in the prison system.

VR
The Shark
 
 
Mourne Kransky
22:25 / 22.11.02
I think there are probably people who thoroughly deserve the old eye for an eye routine. I think there are probably people who would think it a kindness to be killed quickly and painlessly rather than have to live, incarcerated, for the rest of (or most of) their days.

But as Tony Benn (could hug that man!) said on Question Time last night when Peter Obnoxious-Hitchins spoke in favour of stringing up the Moors Murderers, but what about the Birmingham Six? And that's always the rub for me, however many irredeemable killers you terminate, there would always be human error and a heated rush to judgment in some cases, resulting in innocents being hanged. No point pardoning a dead man.

So nay, nay and thrice nay, as Frankie Howerd was wont to say.
 
 
Turk
04:11 / 23.11.02
Ha, Tony Benn also said 'the purpose of taxation is to tax the rich', or words to that effect.
But anyway,

Of all the ways of looking at the subject I know only one that will truly frustrate the idiots who believe in the death penalty. It is this - you either believe killing people is wrong, or you do not.
As sure as eggs are eggs your death penalty supporters will either bring up the falsehood about a detterent affect, or they'll begin to froth at the mouth about murderers being animals (i.e. not human), which of course is bollocks.

So yeah, killing people is either wrong or it isn't, that's it.
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
08:56 / 23.11.02
I have heard every arguement for the death penalty in my life, and none of them hold water with me. And it's not just the AM radio junkies, either. Quite a few of the more enlightened people I know have been won over to the arguement with the media shoving CRIME!! down our tiny little lizard brains.

"It costs a fortune to keep these people alive." So you are saying that a human life is worth a specific amount of money?

"They might do it again." If that is the case, let's not ever let anyone out of prison, they might re-offend and why allow them to steal, embezzle, smoke pot or forget to pay parking tickets again?

And so on...

Even if the death penality were applied fairly (which is isn't, the stats prove that white people, by and large, don't have to die) it is still Our Government deciding who lives and dies, making them no better than the criminals they go after. Treason is considered a Capital Offense. Ari Fliesher said last October that to speak out against the White House was "aiding terrorists."

That should be enough right there to scare the living hell out of people.

I also find it amazing that hard core right wingers who Hate the government and feel it can do nothing good, will give it the power to kill citizens.
 
 
Linus Dunce
16:16 / 23.11.02
I also find it amazing that hard core right wingers who Hate the government and feel it can do nothing good, will give it the power to kill citizens.

They're also quite often, as many have pointed out, "pro-life."

The death penalty is also unfair too in that if I, say, take a car from someone's driveway, get caught, go to court but can prove that the car was in fact mine because the current owner had bought it from me but not paid for it, I (should) get to go free. Thus, my rights to sequester are comparable to my government's.

Similarly, if I restrict someone's liberty by, say, locking them in the closet, if I can prove they were robbing my house and I had only detained them until the police arrive, I (should) go free. Thus, my rights to imprison are comparable to my government's.

If, however, I were to kill someone and could later prove without a shadow of a doubt they had killed my brother, employee or whomever ...

The government has rights that overide mine, and probably should. But these extra rights only exist for them if they are acting for the general good. As people have pointed out above, imprisoning someone for life is cheaper than killing them, so in what way can they justify the right they deny me? Other than droit de signeur? (sp?) Not very democratic, is it?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:26 / 24.11.02
toksik: Well, you could start a thread called "State-sanctioned killing", that might include both war and the death penalty. Also espionage, trade agreements, the availability of firearms and the availability of abortion, depending on where you wanted to draw the line. This, however, is a thread intended primarily to discuss the death penalty, that is the execution by the state of its own citizens as an act of legal redress for an offence against the state (or the Crown, in Britain, say). For further discussion of what to call a thread that covers the other areas you believe are relevant, I suggest PMing a Head Shop moderator or starting a thread in the Policy. Don't forget to include a topic abstract in the new thread.

To return to the question...the usual arguments for state actions against those it has found guilty are (and Foucault may well get very useful shortly) deterrence (others will see this person being punished and not want to risk being punished in the same way), punishment (this person will be punished proportionally to the magnitude of the crime), seclusion (this person will be placed in an environment where he or she will be unable to commit more crime, as they will be heavily observed and their liberty to move and act curtailed) and rehabilitation (during incarceration (usually) the criminal will be remodelled in such a way that they do not want ans/or do not need to reoffend). There are also subsidiary questions such as how much these things will cost (for example, rehabilitation-based approaches are often more expensive than solutions that favour simple seclusion).

Judicial execution pretty well rules out rehabilitation, as far as I can see. It is an effective means of seclusion, after a fashion, and might be seen as a logical part of a scale of punishment (although I wouldn't say so myself). Deterrence seems a vexed question - is it a *more* effective deterrent than non-fatal punishments?

There are other more pragmatic arguments. Personally, I am opposed to it, and not just on the grounds that for a state to claim the right to terminate its citizens in cold blood strikes me as a very dangerous freedom. On cost, it seems to me that people spend a long time on Death Row, and during that time it seems an almost constant legal challenge is being mounted, presumably at the state's expense in most cases, to their execution, whereas incarceration terms are, at least in this country, decided by internal review and ultimately by the Home Secretary - it's a dodgy system, but it's certainly insourced.

One argument I heard in opposition to the death penalty's reintroduction in the United Kingdom for, say, murder, or child murder, or murdering a police officer, or terrorism, was given to me by a policeman himself, who believed that the juries would be unwilling to convict people who could be sentenced to death by a judge unless they were convinced of guilt not only beyond a reasonable doubt (the standard formulation), but beyond any possible doubt whatsoever, and sometimes not even then, so either guilty people would be acquitted or would be charged by the CPS with less severe crimes, disrupting the entire system.
 
 
Char Aina
13:54 / 27.11.02
moderater hatted:you seem to have taken my question quite literally, but thats probably best. in your intial post to me, you do say it could be brought in as backup for the main point, and thats all i was really about. it seemed originally like that was being resisted.

and to grants arguments for; although i see where they both come from, they werent as fulsome as i was hoping for. to say that a life for a life is fair requires prior agrement that that is indeed a fair and reasonable reaction. if not, surely it needs to be explained. i mean, for example, off the top of my head, what if you kill someone better than you? and who would decide that? how do we weigh the pain caused by the murderer against that we cause to the family of convicted killers?
 
 
The Natural Way
14:06 / 27.11.02
I don't think Grant was offering up the "life for a life" thing as his own opinion, just pointing out that it's one of the arguments for the death penalty that exists *out there*.
 
 
Char Aina
14:25 / 27.11.02
i know he wasnt.

i wanted those who have come into contact with thought out arguments for to state them, in much the same way as i could about some areas of feminism, or white power politics.
i dont agree with all of it, but i do know about it.

my criticism was not that he was wrong, as he even says he doesnt agree( and i can read) but that there was little depth to that argument. it is a common defence, but is often in that slogan-like form.
 
 
grant
15:46 / 27.11.02
The "life for a life" argument doesn't place a life's value on a sliding scale; just that those who take a life (or, as is often the case, lives) out of the world forfeit their own right to life. Eye for an eye and all that. It's an old argument, tied to a correspondingly primal feeling.
 
 
Slim
16:32 / 27.11.02
For the record, I'm against the death penalty. However, I'm against it for one reason only- we end up killing innocent people. It is inexcusable for a modernized nation to continue in a practice that results in the death of innocents. I was reading a book on the death penalty recently and the author relayed a story in which before the execution the prosecutors admitted that they knew that the "murderer" was innocent and that it was his sister who committed the murder instead. They had him killed anyways. That being said, I'll try and argue the other side just because everyone in this thread is against the death penalty.

Who cares if it's more expensive? Monetary matters should have no bearing on the morality of the death penalty. The death penalty IS a deterrent. The person executed will never again commit a crime, simple as that. Think of it as a specific deterrence. Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with killing someone. Without a doubt I would kill someone in self-defense. I would kill someone if I caught them raping someone close to me. There are a whole host of situations where killing someone is an acceptable course of action. Why is it so wrong to execute someone like McVeigh, a man whole killed so many people? I'd like to see a response that doesn't include phrases like "primal response" or "bloodthirsty masses".

One last bit concerning an argument that many people (including myself) have used as a case against the death penalty. I've heard it said that life without parole is a worse punishment than the death penalty and therefore we should give criminals life in prison instead of executing them. But if many people object to the death penalty because it violates the 8th admendment, protection against cruel and unusual punishment, how can a punishment that is worse than execution not be considered cruel and unusual? How can it not be seen as a form of torture?

I apologize if my arguments weren't very good. I find it hard to take the opposing viewpoint when it comes to this topic.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:44 / 27.11.02
would kill someone if I caught them raping someone close to me. There are a whole host of situations where killing someone is an acceptable course of action. Why is it so wrong to execute someone like McVeigh, a man whole killed so many people?

Because the lesson from Tim McVeigh that you are trying to get across is that killing people is wrong.

The examples you gave (self-defence and mid-rape) would both be "in hot blood" - whereas McVeigh's crime (and subsequent execution) would be "in cold blood" -where the killing is carefully planned over a long period of time, during any point of which either McVeigh or the state could have thought through their decision and decided not to commit the act of killing. You would not presumably have the same luxury if your life was under immediate threat.
 
 
some guy
17:32 / 27.11.02
Because the lesson from Tim McVeigh that you are trying to get across is that killing people is wrong.

This is what puzzles me. "We're going to demonstrate that killing people is wrong by, er, killing you."
 
 
Char Aina
18:07 / 27.11.02
okay, then how do you get recompense for three thousand lives? or twelve?
or even just a pregnant mum and baby;two?
 
 
The Apple-Picker
18:23 / 27.11.02
I live in the US, and yes, my state has the death penalty. “Old Sparky”? How callous.

Man, I wish there were someone like my dad on this board. We might get some debate going then.

But I'm not inviting him.

Seems a bit funny that the same courts that hand out death penalties make people swear on a book that includes the commandment "Thou shalt not kill.", then in some cases kill people; are we to assume that they are higher up on the food chain than God, or that they're a bunch of hypocrites? And if the stuff written in the Bible regarding murder, final judgement etc is true, who will be judged/punished - the judges themselves, the public who voted for the people who put them there or those who did nothing to try and stop such things happening?

In addition to the “eye for an eye” thing, God also accommodates capital punishment when, in the beginning, he says “whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed” Genesis 9:6.

Also, I don’t think they can make you swear on the Bible (The process of administering oaths and affirmations could be formalized by gestures -- e.g., asking the signer to raise his/her hand and/or place his/her hand on a holy book such as the Holy Bible, Old Testament, Koran, etc. --it’s not exactly set in stone, and though this quote is from a document which, granted, was meant to elaborate on procedures as a reference for notaries in New Jersey, let’s extrapolate, okay? Eep.), and I’m not even sure about how common it is anymore, swearing on a sacred text when giving an oath. I’ve tried to do a little research just now on the internet and haven’t turned up anything in regard to that. Good old Dad would be able to give us a good idea, though.

okay, then how do you get recompense for three thousand lives? or twelve?
or even just a pregnant mum and baby;two?
Here's the tricky part.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
18:28 / 27.11.02
But killing a murderer doesn't *compensate* for the deaths of the people ze killed, does it? I don't think there *is* any recompense for that. You could see it as a punishment exercised by society upon the criminal, or as the expression of society's desire for vengeance, but I'm not sure that compensation comes into it. Though I expect a lot of people do.
 
 
some guy
19:25 / 27.11.02
how do you get recompense for three thousand lives?

As each life is unique, it is impossible to provide compensation for their loss. And how would yet another death compensate for a killing, anyway?
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
19:51 / 27.11.02
As America seems to be the central example for this discussion it may be worth examining the broad social mentality. Through observation and experience, it appears to me that America has quite a strong element of vengance and revenge. (Please not that I do not nessecarily include posters from America in that observation) However, in a similar manner as the drive for litigation, I think there exists this mind state that demands a restitution which need not be matched by humanistic ideals. Therefore, my conclusion on this matter is that the death penalty is not nessecarily a tool of justice but more so a tool of social balance.

In answer to the original question, I cannot condone a course of action that leads to loss of life and therefore do not support the death penalty.
 
 
Char Aina
01:22 / 28.11.02
i want a proper point. omne that i cant think around in two moves.

life for life, deterrent, and getting rid of the criminal so they can never reoffend...those reasons are too easily turned over.


invite this father of yours, or some random crazy texan/floridian who loves their chairs and gasses and injections.

everybody here is in danger of having one big gang bang, we all agree so much. no one really agrees with the killing at all.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:24 / 28.11.02
Uh...toksik, you *didn't* defeat Grant's arguments. You ignored the one about removing people from society, and presented a counterargument to "a life for a life" that depended on the idea that some people were "better" than others, and their lives of greater value, a concept not acknowledged in those terms by, say, the US legal system (having said which, are there not states where killing people in certain professions mandates the death penalty?). As for Slim's post, it takes more to defeat an argument than just saying "I can defeat that argument really easily".
 
  

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