Capital Punishment

[bacon]

Stem-Cell Research


One of the newest and hottest research topics is stem-cell researh. With stem-cells, scientists are trying to create new cures for life-threatening and deadly diseases. Though, there is much controversy at hand, as the queation of where these stem-cells come from is questionable.

• Do you think Stem-Cell research should be allowed?
• Do you think the government should continue its research on stem-cells?
• Do you think stem-cell esearch is over-rated?
• Do you think that stem-cell research is immoral?

I understand the controversy over stem-cell research religously. I swear though, if this turns into a religous debate, I will find those responsible and cut their limbs off one by one slowly and painfully until they dont have any left then get alcohol and salt and sprinkle it on their wounds. :3
(But seriously, dont do it. o:<)

 

[Vadon]

(A note: I'm going to refer mostly to the US government in this because 1. The OP is from Arizona, and 2. I live in the US, so it makes sense that my arguments reflect the society I live in.)

Do you think Capital Punishment is cruel: Yes.
Do you think the government sets examples by using the death sentence: Yes.
Do you think Capital Punishment is over-used: Yes.
Do you think that we should abolish Capital Punishment: Yes.
Do you think Capital Punishment sets a bad example?: Yes.

A month or so back, I had a lengthy post that outlined my beliefs on this subject on a different forum. Unfortunately, it seems that the topic has been deleted, so it seems I get to rewrite my position instead of simply copying and pasting it here.

I personally detest the death penalty. I give credence to the brutalization theory and call bullshit on deterrence, I believe capital punishment is an archaic remnant of a barbaric society, and it demonstrates an abuse of power. Instead of punctuating my arguments with flowery rhetoric as I did in the past, I'll just go straight to the point.

Brutalization Theory/Deterrence: The easiest way to describe brutalization is "monkey see, monkey do." The more a sovereign body does something, the more likely their underlings/constituents will respond in course. The more violence our society uses to solve its problems, the more likely people will view it as a viable solution. Y'all might think this sounds silly, but there is some mighty compelling evidence that backs this theory.

Let's look at violent crimes, eh? The US stands out in that it has a fairly high violent crime rate for an industrialized democracy. People try to attribute this violence to many things, and one scapegoat is gun control. Now, I'm a liberal pansy Democrat, but I'm going to concede up front that gun control amounts to practically nothing toward solving violent crime. Why is this? Switzerland and Canada. Switzerland, with its conscription policies, require guns to be in the homes of all able bodied men. Canada has strict regulation where all firearms must be registered with the government. These two countries are practically polar opposites when it comes to gun control laws, yet both have fairly low violent crime rates, at least, when compared to the US.

What I'm getting at is violent actions are created by societies that glorify violence as a solution. If the institutions show little care to the value of life, society will tend to follow suit. What do Canada and Switzerland have in common? The lack of a death penalty. Now, I'm not going to say that all violent crime stops when you get rid of the death penalty, but I would argue that there are some compelling reasons to put credence in the theory.*

But what about the opposing theory? Deterrence?

Bullshit.

I suppose I should clarify that a little bit There are two branches of deterrence theory. One is specific deterrence, the other is general. Specific deterrence refers to the perpetrator and whether or not recidivism will take place. General deterrence refers to the example made and stopping others from committing the same crime. I'll grant that yes, the death penalty accomplishes specific deterrence because... well... you kill the person. But those that argue the death penalty is a general deterrent on other crimes are wrong.

Deterrence implies that folks will not commit capital offenses because they understand the consequence of their actions will be death. But if this were true, I have two questions for you. 1: If deterrence actually worked, why do we still have violent crime? And 2: When you're committing a capital offense, are you really thinking you'll get caught, or for that matter are you really thinking rationally?

All that you get from the death penalty is more violence.

It's an archaic remnant/abuse of power

Most people argue that the best reason for the death penalty is justice.** This next bit is a disheartening bit for me because I have to disagree with philosophers I like. John Locke, the author who brought back the natural laws of life, liberty, and property said that the death penalty was a just course of action for society. Immanuel Kant viewed the death penalty as a categorical imperative, that while it was not desirable, it was our duty to remove those folks from society. With that, however, I view it as a relic. A barbaric instrument utilized in societies wherein they had not progressed to our current level of understanding when it comes to human rights.

But this is the sticky-wicket of death penalty debates and why neither side can convince the other that they're right. It ultimately comes to one's personal definition of justice. I view it as an unjust action. We shouldn't put the power in the hands of the people to take life out of feelings of anger or revenge. We shouldn't have to lower ourselves to the criminal's level so as to give them their just desserts. My moral compass tells me that killing is wrong in all instances. It's why I, even as a secular humanist, am a CO. With that I believe we should abolish it.

In spite of my beliefs, however, I recognize that other's moral compasses point elsewhere. They believe in retribution. An equal or greater amount of pain that the victim felt must be inflicted on the criminal. Folks believe with every modicum of their existence that this view is right. I can't convince people otherwise and I've decided to stop. I disagree with these folks, and I'll state my disagreement, but I'm not going to try to change their views. I'm just going to continue voting for folks that I hope will abolish the death penalty as I'm sure they will vote for folks that will keep it in place. Yay for democracy.

In the end, I'm a realist where it counts. I recognize that war is an inescapable, despicable, and objective truth of human existence. People will have to take other folk's lives. But when we're dealing with our own citizens or people who have become entrenched in our system, we owe it to ourselves to show them and the world a greater investment in life than what they have demonstrated.

*Those of you who have had a good logic or statistics class should be calling foul on me for this argument. I can't just claim that the death penalty is causal for violent crimes, at best there would be a weak correlation, right? Well that's not the argument I'm making. I'm saying that the death penalty embodies the violent nature of a society. It symbolizes a violent culture, so to try to reduce violence we must reject institutionalized forms of it. (Death penalty, torture, etc.)

**To those that believe it's a wise policy financially as in, "Why should we pay for them when we could just kill them and be done with them?" I have two things to say to you. 1. What does money have to do with justice? and 2. It's actually more expensive to utilize the death penalty. I'm feeling lazy and don't feel like finding the sources to back that right now, but because of the legal fees required with the constant appeals that go through for every death count, keeping prisoners on death row, and other bureaucratic issues, the cost of killing a person is more than keeping them alive without parole.

 

[Guest]

;D

 

[Zekallinos]

One thing about guns in Canada is that they are mostly hunting guns. I doubt it is as much the case in the US, since there is much less hunting grounds (just take a look at the map). Now while it's true that the crime rate is pretty low, let's not correlate it to the absence of death penalty so easily. There is a myriad of factors that can influence crime rate, such as education, poverty (Canada has a lot of social programs), drugs and other underground markets, population density (Canada has obviously a low density), climate (who's gonna go out in a snowstorm?). Even minor stuff like transportation networks can play a role.

Because of that, it's really hard to evaluate whether death penalty has an effect on crime rate. Now I believe it's used more as a warning then as a punishment. But does the warning really works? Someone who commits a crime grave enough to get the death sentence probably isn't in his right mind to begin with, does he really care at the point about the death penalty, or think about it to begin with? Perhaps if he has no other purpose in life (ex : killing his wife and childrens), it's actually a way out, as barcode said.

So frankly, I don't see the point of death penalty.

 

[Amos36]

I know I'm only fourteen (and terribly opinionated or so I'm told) but whenever I see a family on TV saying they think their son's killer should be given the death penalty and how the sentence isn't harsh enough I really can't stand it. I mean firstly they know nothing about the guy; he'd probably be mentally or socially messed up etc. or like any Game villain most likely has a bad past. I know someone who raped a girl who had a bad past, but he's now helping to care for her and is on the road to recovery.

An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind as they say. Asking for someone to be killed for being a killer is no better in my eyes than killing someone - it just makes you as bad as them. Besides - like everyone else has said; it's an easy way out and nobody thinks about it beforehand anyway. Not to mention the fact that a government doesn't want lots of people behind bars because of manipulating figures. Or at least in the UK figures are everything.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." - Martin Luther King

 

[Schism]

I currently live in Canada, but I was born in and spent most of my life in the U.S., so I'm going to take this from a U.S. perspective as well.

Do you think Capital Punishment is cruel? In short, no.

In theory, I find capital punishment to be efficient. Not in practice, obviously, because there's nothing efficient in having inmates sitting on death row for upwards of twenty years before their sentence is carried out. As it stands now, capital punishment is a drain on our resources just as much -if not more- than life sentencing would be, so there's really no point, but I wouldn't call it cruel. The criminals that committed these crimes did so of their own volition, so I say let 'em fry. (Or die quietly due to lethal injection, but that just doesn't sound as nicely bloodthirsty.)

The only reason I might be against capital punishment is because of folks wrongly accused. A little collateral damage because our judicial system is a giant clusterfuck is not okay, so maybe yes to capital punishment with the caveat that there must be completely irrefutable evidence that the accused did indeed commit the crime. Video footage, several eye-witness accounts, a confession, or DNA, etc.

Do you think the government sets examples by using the death sentence? Absolutely.

Do you think Capital Punishment is over-used? No.

According to my good friend Wikipedia, there have only been 1,171 executions is the U.S. since 1976. That's an average of 35 executions a year for the last 33 years. There are currently 3,318 inmates on death row. If anything, I think they could stand to step it up a little. These people have been tried, convicted, and sentenced, and instead of having that sentence carried out, they're languishing in prison for years tying up the system in appeals that are largely a waste of time. Not always, because several people have been exonerated with the advent of DNA evidence and such, and I'm all for giving innocent folks the chance to prove their innocence, but come ON. If you're going to execute criminals, do it in a timely fashion, otherwise there's no sense in capital punishment in the first place.

Do you think that we should abolish Capital Punishment: No/Yes.

As stated above, if you're going to do it, then do it. Otherwise we might as well chuck it out the window, save ourselves some effort and possibly money, and just let them rot in regular prison like all the others.

Do you think Capital Punishment sets a bad example?: Eh...

Hard to say. Honestly, I don't think it'll have much of an impact either way. The kind of people that commit crimes that'll earn them capital punishment aren't going to stop whatever horrible act they're about to commit, take a moment to reflect, and think, "Gosh, if I go through with this and get caught, I could get the death penalty! Of course, I'd be able to tie up the system for years and years, but they might eventually get around to giving me that needle when I'm an old fart. Hm, better not risk it." Not gonna happen. Regardless of the system in place to punish them, a sociopath really isn't weighing the consequences of his actions.

The only case in which I see the death penalty acting as a deterrent would be in the case of misdemeanors, since the idiots might think twice if there was actual risk involved, but since we don't punish minor crimes with capital punishment, the point is kind of moot.

Ultimately, I don't believe the existence of capital punishment in its current state has any direct correlation to the amount or severity of crime. The States has a lot going for it, but it has a lot of problems too, and I think we've got a great deal of collective soul-searching to do before we reach the point where things like capital punishment might not be necessary anymore.

 

[Venetia]

I have no problem with the death penalty with extreme/violent criminals outside of it being expensive. These assholes are costing the taxpayers ridiculous sums of money to be kept comfortable in their pigeonholes. It'd be convenient to kill them off but their appeals process takes about 7-20 years and costs roughly as much as it would to just hold them there their whole lives.

In my opinion there needs to be fewer chances for appeal.

Look at it this way.

You do a crime. First, you're placed in holding through your initial court appearances. There is a preliminary hearing, then an actual hearing. The actual hearing may take anywhere from a single session to ... Hell, I heard of one recently going through 20 sessions. Then the judgment is passed. This sometimes takes multiple sessions as well. After you're found guilty, you can appeal. You can appeal pretty much as much as you want. For some cases though you have to get an approval through the prison board. I think there's a waiting period between them but it's something paltry like 6 weeks. Some convicts appeal every chance they get. They have court-appointed attorneys, why not waste govm't money?

If they're a death sentencer, they get even more chances for appeal. Their attorneys place holds on the passing of their sentencing. They cannot, after all, be executed while their trial is reopened. This goes on over and over and over until they run out of extensions. Like I said it usually takes 7-20 years.

This shit is motherfucking expensive. And what are they fighting for? If their death sentence is reduced it'll just end up being a life sentence anyway.

If one judge + jury rules one way, and you think it's wrong, ok fine.
If another one + jury rules the same way, and you think it's still wrong ... eh, ok.
But if ANOTHER one + jury rules THE SAME WAY don't you think the pattern should be pretty well established?

I have no sympathy for these dickweasels. The only problem children are those who are wrongfully accused. But in a day and age of DNA testing and less racial discrimination, where people are not given the death penalty when reasonable doubt comes into play, that is much less of a concern.