[Adjutant Stormy~]

masan's saddle, on Feb 24 2009, 06:44 PM, said:

Obdigore, on Feb 25 2009, 01:34 AM, said:

Masan's Delicious Saddle:

If someone was convicted with numerous rapes/murders, using DNA or numerous eye witnessess, you better belive I would throw the switch, inject the needle, or put the gun to the back of the head.

More than once ?
Do you think your zeal might come back to haunt you ?

I'm not a commie, pinko sprout muncher or anything, but the idea of someone else's blood on my hands doesn't sit too well with me. I'm not to sure on the legal definitions, but if you live in a state with the death penalty, all duly agreed by the state legislature, that was possibly voted in by your goodself, doesn't that mean that technically speaking you are "throwing the switch ? "

My knowledge of American state/ federal law is a bit crap really so some clarification from some colonial legal type might help.

Most of the death-penalty law in the States remains since the state's creation, not voted in by our legilators. The responsibility that we might have is not abolishing it. but its creation is certainly not our fault.

Also, I am a firm believer in an eye for an eye. Contrary to popular belief, an eye for an eye does not make the whole world blind. That is a perversion of the principle. An eye for an eye leaves two people blind, victim and perpetrator.

[Grimjust Bearegular]

Morgoth, on Feb 26 2009, 06:04 PM, said:

Grimhilde, on Feb 26 2009, 11:49 AM, said:

T'lan Coltaine, on Feb 26 2009, 12:12 AM, said:

to the beggining of the forum.

the capital punishment is a huge debate right now. your right certain crimnals should face the sentance however most cristians and other religion members belive that none can take gods place and kill a man. I myself am an agnostic person. the argument for captial punishment is that fact that some people do attrotious crimes and that they should be punished by death however for those atrose crimes- in my opinion- death isnt enough. Think on it capital punishment has to be painless no matter waht-human rights law or somthin cant rember what english teacher said.

Having a quick painful death or spending all of your life till you die in prision, seeing no loved ones, deprived of anything fun, eating the same measly grub all day,a pointless life eat-sleep-eat-sleep, in my opinion this is worse, i agree with aportion death is truly nothing to fear, luckly the religion members do not complain to this =/.



I might be a bit lacking in knowledge as i am only 14 and to all those religion members out there no discrimination or insult intended.

yeah, I agree with you there. The whole "life sentence is more humane"- argument really doesn't fly with me, because it isn't. An entire lifetime in prison is torture, capital punishment is the way to go IMO.

But when I think about it, there isn't much difference between a life sentence and capital punishment - the outcome is the same. The difference is just how long you have to suffer.

A "friend" of mine wrote a paper on capital punishment. It was ridicolously bad. She stated that capital punishment was murder and that it would entice regular citizens to "take the law into their own hands". She used this expression like 7-8 times. Is there any truth to this?

If you kill someone, you cannot later release them if new eveidence proves their innocence. Seeing that a system can never be perfect, you will at one point execute an innocent. Ergo, life in prison is better than capital punishment.

Executing an innocent is the worst crime a state can possibly commit in my opinion.

It's a moot point IMO. Prisoners on Death Row often spend more than ten years there. If you're not exonerated by then, you ain't innocent.

Besides, a life sentence does not guarantee that the criminal stops being a criminal. Capital punishment does.
A man who’s committed heinous murders is given life sentence instead of capital punishment. Inside the prison he deals drugs, beat up other inmates and finally kills someome..again. The inmate he kills was due for release in just a week. Wouldn’t capital punishment be better in this case?

[Traveller]

Grimhilde, on Feb 27 2009, 09:56 AM, said:

Besides, a life sentence does not guarantee that the criminal stops being a criminal. Capital punishment does.
A man who’s committed heinous murders is given life sentence instead of capital punishment. Inside the prison he deals drugs, beat up other inmates and finally kills someome..again. The inmate he kills was due for release in just a week. Wouldn’t capital punishment be better in this case?

A life sentence might not guarantee that a criminal stops being a criminal, but it also does not guarantee the scenario you've outlined either. There is a lot of historical evidence to show that people kept in confinement for years, even decades, change very differently from the way they were when they went in, or committed the crime they were sentenced for.

Just labelling someone as a 'criminal' and no longer treating them as a person is all very well, but what if that person lives for years in confinement, learns a new respect for freedom and life, and spends years attempting to better themselves or trying to atone for what they did? 15 odd years later they get wheeled out in front of an AUDIENCE and excecuted in front of them, and everyone watching presumably feels that some sort of justice has been done.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 27 February 2009 - 12:28 PM

[Grimjust Bearegular]

Traveller, on Feb 27 2009, 01:20 PM, said:

Grimhilde, on Feb 27 2009, 09:56 AM, said:

Besides, a life sentence does not guarantee that the criminal stops being a criminal. Capital punishment does.
A man who’s committed heinous murders is given life sentence instead of capital punishment. Inside the prison he deals drugs, beat up other inmates and finally kills someome..again. The inmate he kills was due for release in just a week. Wouldn’t capital punishment be better in this case?

A life sentence might not guarantee that a criminal stops being a criminal, but it also does not guarantee the scenario you've outlined either. There is a lot of historical evidence to show that people kept in confinement for years, even decades, change very differently from the way they were when they went in, or committed the crime they were sentenced for.

Just labelling someone as a 'criminal' and no longer treating them as a person is all very well, but what if that person lives for years in confinement, learns a new respect for freedom and life, and spends years attempting to better themselves or trying to atone for what they did? 15 odd years later they get wheeled out in front of an AUDIENCE and excecuted in front of them, and everyone watching presumably feels that some sort of justice has been done.

Well, justice doesn't care if you've changed. Justice is blind.

[Morgoth]

Grimhilde, on Feb 27 2009, 02:39 PM, said:

Traveller, on Feb 27 2009, 01:20 PM, said:

Grimhilde, on Feb 27 2009, 09:56 AM, said:

Besides, a life sentence does not guarantee that the criminal stops being a criminal. Capital punishment does.
A man who’s committed heinous murders is given life sentence instead of capital punishment. Inside the prison he deals drugs, beat up other inmates and finally kills someome..again. The inmate he kills was due for release in just a week. Wouldn’t capital punishment be better in this case?

A life sentence might not guarantee that a criminal stops being a criminal, but it also does not guarantee the scenario you've outlined either. There is a lot of historical evidence to show that people kept in confinement for years, even decades, change very differently from the way they were when they went in, or committed the crime they were sentenced for.

Just labelling someone as a 'criminal' and no longer treating them as a person is all very well, but what if that person lives for years in confinement, learns a new respect for freedom and life, and spends years attempting to better themselves or trying to atone for what they did? 15 odd years later they get wheeled out in front of an AUDIENCE and excecuted in front of them, and everyone watching presumably feels that some sort of justice has been done.

Well, justice doesn't care if you've changed. Justice is blind.

Executing someone is not justice. Executing someone is revenge. These are two very different concepts and I'm surprised you're not seeing the difference

[Morgoth]

Grimhilde, on Feb 27 2009, 10:56 AM, said:

It's a moot point IMO. Prisoners on Death Row often spend more than ten years there. If you're not exonerated by then, you ain't innocent.

Besides, a life sentence does not guarantee that the criminal stops being a criminal. Capital punishment does.
A man who’s committed heinous murders is given life sentence instead of capital punishment. Inside the prison he deals drugs, beat up other inmates and finally kills someome..again. The inmate he kills was due for release in just a week. Wouldn’t capital punishment be better in this case?

Of course it's not a moot point. You can never have a perfect system. No matter how many failsafes you insert at some point the system will fail and someone will be executed wrongly. This is pretty self evident. The question is whether you are willing to accept the chance of an innocent being executed. In order to accept that you must surely have some compelling arguments for as to how capital punishment is in any way beneficial to society. Why should we accept such a risk? Why do we want capital punishment?

1) It's more costly to go for capital punishment than it is to imprison someone for life. Reducing the cost means increasing the chance of making mistakes when handing out the sentence.
2) Capital punishment has never been proven to deter crime. Technically, countries that have capital punishment tend to have a much higher crime rate, though that's not much of an argument considering the countries, but there you go.

It's also important to mention that what decides whether you get the capital punishment in say the us is generally not whether you killed someone or not. The court wants to be fairly certain of guilt if they are to go for execution as an option. What decides it is intent. Why did the person kill. Was it an accident? A crime of passion? Was it planned months ahead and all a great ploy to gain the vicitim's fortune? How then do you measure something like intent objectively? You cant.

In my honest opinion, capital punishment is for those who put the need to feel better about themselves before the needs of society and the people in it.

[Obdigore]

Morgoth, on Feb 27 2009, 09:44 AM, said:

Grimhilde, on Feb 27 2009, 02:39 PM, said:

Traveller, on Feb 27 2009, 01:20 PM, said:

Grimhilde, on Feb 27 2009, 09:56 AM, said:

Besides, a life sentence does not guarantee that the criminal stops being a criminal. Capital punishment does.
A man who’s committed heinous murders is given life sentence instead of capital punishment. Inside the prison he deals drugs, beat up other inmates and finally kills someome..again. The inmate he kills was due for release in just a week. Wouldn’t capital punishment be better in this case?

A life sentence might not guarantee that a criminal stops being a criminal, but it also does not guarantee the scenario you've outlined either. There is a lot of historical evidence to show that people kept in confinement for years, even decades, change very differently from the way they were when they went in, or committed the crime they were sentenced for.

Just labelling someone as a 'criminal' and no longer treating them as a person is all very well, but what if that person lives for years in confinement, learns a new respect for freedom and life, and spends years attempting to better themselves or trying to atone for what they did? 15 odd years later they get wheeled out in front of an AUDIENCE and excecuted in front of them, and everyone watching presumably feels that some sort of justice has been done.

Well, justice doesn't care if you've changed. Justice is blind.

Executing someone is not justice. Executing someone is revenge. These are two very different concepts and I'm surprised you're not seeing the difference

Executing someone can be justice. You removed the rights of people to live/not be raped/whatever, then your rights are removed as well.

[Obdigore]

Morgoth, on Feb 27 2009, 09:58 AM, said:

Of course it's not a moot point. You can never have a perfect system. No matter how many failsafes you insert at some point the system will fail and someone will be executed wrongly. This is pretty self evident. The question is whether you are willing to accept the chance of an innocent being executed. In order to accept that you must surely have some compelling arguments for as to how capital punishment is in any way beneficial to society. Why should we accept such a risk? Why do we want capital punishment?

Why should we allow mass murderers/rapists to run around and do their thing whenever/however they want. No matter how many failsafes you insert at some point, the system will fail and someone will be incarcerated wrongly. This is pretty self evident. Both prison and execution are consequences of actions.

Quote

1) It's more costly to go for capital punishment than it is to imprison someone for life. Reducing the cost means increasing the chance of making mistakes when handing out the sentence.

I have seen this thrown around this thread for quite a while, but noone has ever produced any study that proves this

Quote

2) Capital punishment has never been proven to deter crime. Technically, countries that have capital punishment tend to have a much higher crime rate, though that's not much of an argument considering the countries, but there you go.

Capital punishment has never been proven to not deter crime, either. I have never been proven to not be an alien from Mars, so lets just assume that is correct

Quote

It's also important to mention that what decides whether you get the capital punishment in say the us is generally not whether you killed someone or not. The court wants to be fairly certain of guilt if they are to go for execution as an option. What decides it is intent. Why did the person kill. Was it an accident? A crime of passion? Was it planned months ahead and all a great ploy to gain the vicitim's fortune? How then do you measure something like intent objectively? You cant.

What do you mean how do you measure something like intent objectively? I heard a news story last night, a father and son (17) got in a fight, the son went into the house, grabbed a handgun, walked out, and empied the clip into the father in the front yard. The son then went back into the house, reloaded the gun, walked back outside and emptied the second clip into his corpse. Don't tell me you cannot judge intent.

Quote

In my honest opinion, capital punishment is for those who put the need to feel better about themselves before the needs of society and the people in it.

And in my honest opinion, capital punishment is for those who put the needs of society ahead of the needs of people to delude themselves into thinkg we are civilized and noone does anything so wrong that they can never make it up to society.

[Morgoth]

I must say I've yet to see an argument from you as to why capital punishment is better for society. I'm waiting in excitement.

also, since you've seemingly never seen it before. There's quite a lot of studies around, this article sums some of them up and provides footnotes if you dont trust it
http://users.rcn.com...hpen.html#Costs

Or this one, which is the law aspects of it and the costs, which again show that execution is much more expensive than life without chance of parole.
http://law.jrank.org/pages/5002/Capital-Pu...PUNISHMENT.html

[Obdigore]

Ah yes, your classic 'ignore what everyone says, claim you are correct and that noone else has voiced an opinion'.

Read through the thread. You will see my position clearly defined, and I feel no need to state it once more since you are having trouble reading already.

Thank you for posting those studies.

[Morgoth]

Obdigore, on Feb 27 2009, 05:35 PM, said:

Ah yes, your classic 'ignore what everyone says, claim you are correct and that noone else has voiced an opinion'.

Read through the thread. You will see my position clearly defined, and I feel no need to state it once more since you are having trouble reading already.

Thank you for posting those studies.

No, you're repeating what you've said a number of times, but you're still not presenting any reasona s to why capital punishment is more beneficial to society than life imprisonment, whereas I on the hand have presented several arguments as to why life imprisonment is more benefical for society than capital punishment. You say why you want capital punishment, and that's fine, but I can't see that you've presented any evidence as to how we'll benefit from it.

[beru]

on capital punishment and the teoretical lower crime rate: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=k4L6-0WRfSA see last part

[Obdigore]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_of_Th...e_death_penalty

Quote

This was based on the theory (found in natural moral law), that the state has not only the right, but the duty to protect its citizens from enemies, both from within, and without.

For those who have been appropriately appointed, there is no sin in administering punishment. For those who refuse to obey God's laws, it is correct for society to rebuke them with civil and criminal sanctions. No one sins working for justice, within the law. Actions that are necessary to preserve the good of society are not inherently evil. The common good of the whole society is greater and better than the good of any particular person.

Although I do not agree with the 'sin, or God's laws', the message is the same.

[Morgoth]

Obdigore, on Feb 27 2009, 10:14 PM, said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_of_Th...e_death_penalty

Quote

This was based on the theory (found in natural moral law), that the state has not only the right, but the duty to protect its citizens from enemies, both from within, and without.

For those who have been appropriately appointed, there is no sin in administering punishment. For those who refuse to obey God's laws, it is correct for society to rebuke them with civil and criminal sanctions. No one sins working for justice, within the law. Actions that are necessary to preserve the good of society are not inherently evil. The common good of the whole society is greater and better than the good of any particular person.

Although I do not agree with the 'sin, or God's laws', the message is the same.

but none of that works as an argument for Capital punishment vs life imprisonment. Either is equally well covered by that quote, so why is it that capital punishment, which is costlier and more in danger of ending the life of an innocent man, would better serve society?

[Obdigore]

[quote name='Morgoth' post='536408' date='Feb 27 2009, 03:46 PM'][quote name='Obdigore' post='536393' date='Feb 27 2009, 10:14 PM'][url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_of_Thomas_Aquinas#Aquinas_and_the_death_penalty"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_of_Th...e_death_penalty[/url]

[quote]This was based on the theory (found in natural moral law), that the state has not only the right, but the duty to protect its citizens from enemies, both from within, and without.

For those who have been appropriately appointed, there is no sin in administering punishment. For those who refuse to obey God's laws, it is correct for society to rebuke them with civil and criminal sanctions. No one sins working for justice, within the law. Actions that are necessary to preserve the good of society are not inherently evil. The common good of the whole society is greater and better than the good of any particular person.[/quote]

Although I do not agree with the 'sin, or God's laws', the message is the same.
[/quote]

but none of that works as an argument for Capital punishment vs life imprisonment. Either is equally well covered by that quote, so why is it that capital punishment, which is costlier and more in danger of ending the life of an innocent man, would better serve society?
[/quote]
Why do you believe that allowing mass murders/rapists a chance to break out and continue on their spree serves society better?

As a note, I don't suppose anyone has full access to
[url="http://www.jstor.org/pss/1804842"]http://www.jstor.org/pss/1804842[/url]
through their education institution?

I would very much like to see it as I found a position piece that refers to it and says that that piece that [quote name='http://www.cyberessays.com/Politics/47.htm']Isaac Ehrlich's study, published on April 16,
1976, eight murders are deterred for each execution that is carried
out in the U.S.A.[/quote]

I would like to see the results of that study, but am not willing to pay for it, cheapskate that I am.

This post has been edited by Obdigore: 27 February 2009 - 10:44 PM

[Slum]

I vote to pardon whoever fixed the spelling error.

This post has been edited by Slumgullion Spitteler: 27 February 2009 - 10:45 PM

[Obdigore]

This one

Quote

Analyses are performed for the total level of criminal homicides and homicides disaggregated into two types of murder–felony murder and stranger homicides–testing hypotheses that predict opposing impacts for each type of homicide. As predicted, no evidence of a deterrent or a brutalization effect is found for criminal homicides in general. Similarly, the predicted deterrent effect of the execution on the level of felony murders is not observed. Evidence of the predicted brutalization effect on the level of stranger homicides is observed, however. Supplementary analyses on further offense disaggregations continue to support these initial findings and permit a more coherent interpretation of the results.

But again, I am not willing to pay for the full article.

As noted ' Evidence of the predicted brutalization effect on the level of stranger homicides is observed, however.'

[frookenhauer]

[Mentalist]

@ Obdi:
yeah, I got it.

could send it to you, if you PM me an e-mail address.

[Ain't_It_Just_]

Nobody really has the right to tell someone that they're going to die, no matter if they're wearing a wig or not. But it can easily be deserved.