Capital punishment

Infidel Castro

Infidel Castro

New member
Dave, I feel down after reading that. One thing I dispute is your \"humans suck\" line. Catch-all statements like that explain nothing.

We are of course animals in clothes to an extent, but through our social interaction as a species and the requirement to co-operate, we have reached a point where I think the majority of humans are what can be called \'decent\' rather than sucky (I feel like a kid writing that word, but not in a good way).

Your overall viewpoint shows a certain amount of detachment. Everything alright over there?
 
Avelorn

Avelorn

Sven Jonsson
@Evil Dave:

You are too cynical. Do you want evidence for the opposite just go to some hell-holes in the world and see how some people help each other get through the day. Read about survival strategies in the death camps of the Nazi empire. There is not a \"thin veil of civility\" over our animal lusts. Gross oversimplification and does not answer much of our pro-social behaviour. Our being is essentially social and multi layered. We are not crap we are not special snowflakes either: we just are. Most humans have the potential of atrocities as well as unselfish, altruistic actions.

In essence the society we build can lift some aspects up and make other invisible for the time being. Belief in the human for me does not mean to believe that every child is pure and that we just mess them up with our society. It means to recognise the good with the bad and see to that the society we build encourages the good and discourage the bad. What is good what is bad? I\'m not going to go relativist as that is a choice to not take responsibility for coming generations. But I have no delusion of a perfect society either. A little bit freedom a little bit constraint topped of with a good portion of that ridiculed peace, love and understanding. That is the cocktail I will try to build anyway.

I can recommend you a book if you haven\'t read it, that touches on some points that are excellent according to me and also give you a first peak into the topic I\'ve been studying for the last 3 years at the uni. Social psychology. It\'s a short book but not an easy read.

Christopher R. Browning - Ordinary Men : Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

@Reverend: Some excellent points!
 
freakinacage

freakinacage

Well-known member
Originally posted by reverend
Dave, I feel down after reading that. One thing I dispute is your \"humans suck\" line. Catch-all statements like that explain nothing.

We are of course animals in clothes to an extent, but through our social interaction as a species and the requirement to co-operate, we have reached a point where I think the majority of humans are what can be called \'decent\' rather than sucky (I feel like a kid writing that word, but not in a good way).
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i know what you mean but i feel that the balance seems to be going in their favour of late
 
freakinacage

freakinacage

Well-known member
oh i dunno. i\'m not just talking violent crime here. i am talking \'legal\' stuff. just loads of arseholes who are out there only for themselves
 
S

ScottRadom

Shogun of Saskatchewan
Originally posted by reverend
Originally posted by ScottRadom
Originally posted by El Matador
Honestly i think that the death penalty serves as an easy way out and the post above shows my point. I also think that solitary confinement for life is the worst thing you can ever be sentanced with, weither or not its torture can be debated i think.
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I agree that to be left alone for the remainder of your years with your own thoughts is a punishment worse than death. But I think then that this illustrates that the solitary confinement is not a method we would use to rehabilitate a criminal, and that if we agree the punishment is far worse, why not execute him?

...

Interesting to find out where people sit on this issue, and stil a really bizarre thing to find myself posting about on this forum.
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Because it\'s the easy way out. Most offenders should have a rehab arrangement, but the very worst, evilest and most deranged folk need a different approach. Killing them is one way but SOMEONE has to do the deed. That person is then a killer themselves. Let\'s be frank here: we can either behave like animals in clothes or we can face the fact that we\'re intelligent and moral creatures trying to make sense of our place in the cosmos. We can either kill a serious offender and sate our need for hard justice or we can go along a different route and try to deter people with different means. My suggestion of solitary confinement is still - unfortunately - crude, but it has to be a better alternative than another individual having to take the life of that serious offender. The person who administers the dose, points the rifle, presses the button...what then happens to them for taking a life in cold blood? Until we know more about the mind and how parts of it can be changed for the better (we\'re still a long way from that as an option and even then it throws up echoes of A Clockwork Orange, Brave New World and 1984 - not really a happy place to be) we have to consider more humane approaches; certainly solitary isn\'t particularly humane but it\'s more humane than killing someone (and isn\'t an easy way out) and offers a bigger deterrent on the face of it - losing your freedom is going to be a very bitter pill to swallow.

This is a minefield of a subject and I don\'t want to go much further into it. It\'s been interesting thinking about it though.
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Well written, but I think we just disagree. I do not think that taking a life either in self defence or execution makes the person who was in that position a worse person. Not everyone can take a life, but some people I think can detach themselves enough from the actual act of what they are doing/have done and focus on the reason they made those actions.

Judges who have to take people\'s kids away from parents, cops who\'ve had to deal with the immediate aftermath of some of these heinous acts and so on must have built some sort of mechanism to cope with situations that hopefully you and I will never have to deal with first hand. So I don\'t think it\'s an accurate assesment to claim that any who takes a life will then in turn become just as affected as one who commits murder in the first place.

As for the human\'s suck stuff. C\'mon, is it really that bad. I go no further than this thread on a touchy issue to cite that there are some people who can disagree on a subject as touchy and empasioned as capital punishment and do it all with civility and respect on the INTERNET, which is the one single place I find the most absurd behavior as the interent is all based on anonymity and consequence free yelling matches. Human\'s aint that bad amigo. Buck up!
 
Dragonsreach

Dragonsreach

Super Moderator
Staff member
Originally posted by Bill
Yeah, don\'t diss my species! lol
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Which is?

Originally posted by ScottRadom
So I don\'t think it\'s an accurate assesment to claim that any who takes a life will then in turn become just as affected as one who commits murder in the first place.
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I\'m sorry but that\'s not a statement I can agree with.
Taking a life is NO easy matter and although thankfully I do not speak from direct experience I do know how it affected my Godfather.
He suffered nightmares and depression for most of his life what we would now diagnose as Post Traumatic Stress Related Disorder. However as a National Serviceman fighting in the jungles of Malaysia in the 1950\'s he was expected to \"Just get on with it!\".
Even as a \"condoned/expected action\" in a military situation it left a heavy burden on him.
 
S

ScottRadom

Shogun of Saskatchewan
So I don\'t think it\'s an accurate assesment to claim that any who takes a life will then in turn become just as affected as one who commits murder in the first place.
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I\'m sorry but that\'s not a statement I can agree with.
Taking a life is NO easy matter and although thankfully I do not speak from direct experience I do know how it affected my Godfather.
He suffered nightmares and depression for most of his life what we would now diagnose as Post Traumatic Stress Related Disorder. However as a National Serviceman fighting in the jungles of Malaysia in the 1950\'s he was expected to \"Just get on with it!\".
Even as a \"condoned/expected action\" in a military situation it left a heavy burden on him.

[/quote]

Hey, no doubt killing is a big deal. We all have our examples, and like yourself I am thankful every day I have had nothing even near the experiences inflicted upon others, especially those from previous generations who during times of war usually had no real choice but to take up arms and become part of terrible times.

My family is German. I am first generation Canadian (Proud of it, eh!) but my opa found himself at the age of 16 with a rifle in his hands and he has taken lives. I can\'t crawl into his head obviously andf I can\'t lie and say he was completely unaffected by it but he certainly was able to put it past himself and overcome the memories.

But the examples we speak of are both about people who were in wartime situations. The people our relatives killed, or saw killed, were people likely quite like themselves. People who under different circumstances may have been good friends. That situation and the \"what if\'s\" can easily lead a man into dark territory.

The issue at hand is all about capital punishment. Death as a consequence to actions so vile that we would consider executing the individual as a penalty.

I would hate to think you or I would have to find ourselves facing each other with rifle sights, I wouldn\'t want to live with the fact that I hade to make a choice between myself and someone else who probably wished they were anywhere else in the world then where they are at that moment.

What of executing people that we can all agree are not cabable of humanity? Someone like Saddam Hussein (Extreme examples are best!)? I don\'t think it would be many a sleepless night knowing I had pulled the lever or the trigger or whatever for someone like that.

All interesting talk, and I wish we could get together and get drunk and come up with a solution to this issue once and for all. You know, real life changing type discussion:beer:

Still impressed with the tone and temperment on these boards (so long as nobody mentions GW!).
 
wiccanpony

wiccanpony

Official Freak Bar Witch
:duh: it’s the weekend, I’m bored and this place needed a touch of silly.....am I making light of the thread....why yes...... on the topic, I’ll agree to disagree.


drinks :beer::beer::beer:
 
E

evil tendencies

Cake or Death?
Originally posted by wiccanpony
:duh: it’s the weekend, I’m bored and this place needed a touch of silly.....am I making light of the thread....why yes...... on the topic, I’ll agree to disagree.


drinks :beer::beer::beer:
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I\'ll drink to that. I like painting, and thinking of death this way definitely puts me off my muse.
 
wiccanpony

wiccanpony

Official Freak Bar Witch
Originally posted by evil tendencies
Originally posted by wiccanpony
:duh: it’s the weekend, I’m bored and this place needed a touch of silly.....am I making light of the thread....why yes...... on the topic, I’ll agree to disagree.


drinks :beer::beer::beer:
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I\'ll drink to that. I like painting, and thinking of death this way definitely puts me off my muse.
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:eek: you notty boy, but I must say your muse is very pretty;)lol
 
P

Prophet

New member
I vote no, unequivocably. It\'s very simple really.

1. The death penalty is not a deterrent. Murder rates per capita are actually higher in death penalty states. There is no conclusive evidence that the death penalty has any deterrent effect at all.

2. Innocent people do get executed. In the last 35 years, 130 death row inmates in the US have been found innocent. At least 40 people who were executed were later determined to be innocent. The number is probably significantly higher, but investigating proof of innocence for someone who has already been executed isn\'t exactly a high priority for the state.

3. The system is flawed. \"Justice\" is often determined by who can afford the best attorney. I don\'t have the exact references available, but I took a business law class a few years ago and we ended up on the death penalty for some reason. In many areas black potential jurors were dismissed at significantly higher rates when there was a black defendant (I think Philadelphia and Georgia were two of the areas we looked at). The combination of a black defendant and a white victim also resulted in a significantly greater chance of a death sentence than any other combination. That ain\'t justice.

4. Executing someone in the US costs $2-$5 million per case. Life imprisonment costs less than $1 million. That money would be much better spent on things that do actually deter crime, such as more law enforcement officers, drug rehab programs, etc, etc.

Look at this list of deathrow inmates in Texas:
http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/offendersondrow.htm

300 people at an estimated cost of 2.3 million per case. You\'d think that extra $400 million might actually do some good if it was spent on law enforcement instead.

So essentially it doesn\'t deter crime, innocent people do get executed, the death penalty is not equally applied, and with the expense it may actually increase crime compared to the opportunity cost of investing that same money in law enforcement. That\'s a big no from me from a strictly pragmatic point of view.

http://www.law.columbia.edu/law_school/communications/reports/summer06/capitalpunish

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/

http://www.quixote.org/ej/grip/reasonabledoubt/index.html

http://www.fnsa.org/v1n1/dieter1.html
 
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