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| Is the death penatly a just law? |
| Yes |
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| No |
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| Total Votes : 20 |
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Iliketofrolic666
laissez faire, laissez aller, laissez passer
Joined: 13 May 2006
Posts: 266
Local time: 2:32 AM
Location: Buffalo, NY
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 Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 9:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Specus_Meretricis wrote: | No. Because if just one innocent person has died on death row (and I have no doubt there has been, considering how many have been freed over DNA evidence), then everything our justice system is suppose to stand for is a sham.
More than anything, I would love to see child-killing monsters suffer and die, but I cannot come to terms with how we sentence anyone to death.
Stop locking up ever guy with a bag of weed in his trunk and make room for these "special" cases to be housed for life. No parole, no visitations, no society. That almost seems more cruel than killing them, and very justified. |
I voted for that it is just, but I just changed my mind. Good point. |
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sjc
P.I.T.A.
Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Posts: 1603
Local time: 3:32 AM
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| Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 9:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Citizen X wrote: | | You made the statement that you think a life sentence is much harsher punishment than execution, implying that you were in favor of the harsher punishment |
I'm for real justice while you're just for revenge.
| Quote: | | Don't try now and pretend that you are some kind of holier than thou humanist. Someone who is looking for vengeful punishment such as you have suggested is surely at least the equivalent to a murderer. |
You don't have a clue of what real justice actually is. Losing one's freedom is a far worse punishment than losing one's life. Just ask the libertarians on here.  But than again they to put money above human life as well.
| Quote: | | Which is why death penalty legislation needs to be reformed. |
It can't be. It has to be done away with. Much of the rest of the Western has learned that fact.
| Quote: | | I wholeheartedly agree! |
That is why capital punishment is immoral in any form.
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sjc
P.I.T.A.
Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Posts: 1603
Local time: 3:32 AM
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| Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 9:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Citizen X wrote: | | I believe this is called an observation. |
A very telling one.
| Quote: | | Do you see any statement made by me suggesting that he was living in a resort? |
Free food and recreation....
| Quote: | | I have simply shown how he continued to live his life, and the victim has not. |
No, your attitude was much more than that. That being in prison is just kind of perk.
| Quote: | | Apparently you know nothing about death row in the State of Indiana. All death row inmates are kept in isolation. Are you 2 years old, throwing out "fool"? I had no idea I was debating an infant. |
You were talking to yourself. Let me know when you decide to do otherwise.
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America is not worth the effort anymore. RIP. It was suicide. |
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sjc
P.I.T.A.
Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Posts: 1603
Local time: 3:32 AM
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| Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 9:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Specus_Meretricis wrote: | | No. You attempting to debate SJC, which in Canada will earn you the death penalty. Or at least make you giggle a lot. |
Here's a toonie..... You're worth at least that much for the "service" you're offering... You really must be masochistic. Or is that sadistic as well?
Canada doesn't have the death penalty. 
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America is not worth the effort anymore. RIP. It was suicide. |
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Eyedunno
The Great JuJu at the Bottom of the Sea
Joined: 13 Aug 2005
Posts: 3713
Local time: 5:32 PM
Location: Cin City, OH!
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| Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 10:20 pm Post subject: |
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I believe it's just (and, for the record, whether or not it's a deterrent is totally irrelevant to whether or not it's just) when applied to somebody who has, beyond a shadow of a doubt, killed with malice of forethought. However, I'm opposed to capital punishment because I don't want the state to have the power to kill subdued prisoners. The practical objections to the death penalty (difficulty of being 100% certain, the high cost when combined with a proper appeals process, racism, etc.) also apply, but principles come before pragmatism for me, which is why I support legalizing PCP, heroin, and crystal meth along with pot, even though I think pot is mostly harmless, and those others are far from harmless.
I make an exception when high-ranking government officials have committed grievous infringements on civil liberties. In their capacity as high-ranking government officials, I feel that the limitations on the government that exist to protect the people no longer apply. What I mean by the section in italics is that if a president or prime minister shoots his wife, he should be locked up for a very long time (as here he's acted outside his official capacity). But if he orders the killing of striking union members, kill the bastard, and torture him first, for all I care.
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Specus_Meretricis
Peddler of Bombast
Joined: 08 Mar 2007
Posts: 2754
Local time: 3:32 AM
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 12:03 am Post subject: |
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| sjc wrote: | | Specus_Meretricis wrote: | | No. You attempting to debate SJC, which in Canada will earn you the death penalty. Or at least make you giggle a lot. |
Here's a toonie..... You're worth at least that much for the "service" you're offering... You really must be masochistic. Or is that sadistic as well?
Canada doesn't have the death penalty. |
Well we would call it "death penalty". You would call it "talking to SJC about anything". It really is just our rough translation. |
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Nimitz
Guest
Local time: 5:32 PM
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 1:02 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Look what Gandhi did just by ignoring that sort of thinking. |
Gandi got his ass shot and killed too. Didn't do him much good did it?!
Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him ....
A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis. |
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Friend
thinking
Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 796
Local time: 5:32 PM
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 1:27 am Post subject: |
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| sjc wrote: | | Friend wrote: | | People Mengele treated, and reasons for which he treated people are altogether different from what I'm proposing. |
Irrelevant. Experimentation on involuntary human subjects can never be morally justified no matter the reason. |
I disagree. Human subjects who've no remorse in killing innocent people, relinquish rights as a human beings. Murdering criminals become a further burden on the populace by making the populace fund a secure lifelong lifestyle. Such action only further injures the same society such murderous people inflict harm upon. The results of medical research on murderous people could potentially act as fair reparation upon all people.
| sjc wrote: | | Quote: | | In practical matters, if you're talking about achieving a fair sense of justice to the society these inmates harmed, it is many orders more humane to the practical benefit of everyone, what I'm proposing. |
He too believed that his work was for the betterment of humanity. |
But his rationale for his actions were not justified. I'm not advocating experimentation on people who've done nothing to deserve it. I have no sympathy for mass murderers, or other such sociopaths who never thought twice about doing what they were doing. This includes people like Mengele, or other Nazis who helped foment the holocaust.
| sjc wrote: | | Quote: | | If someone makes efforts to kill without any sense of remorse, then such a person has demonstrated that he/she has no care to be respected equally. |
Irrelevant. To act like them is to be no different than they. One has to take the higher moral ground. |
And I'm not advocating that we act like them by undeservedly taking the lives of people who've not harmed anyone. To stop sociopathic people from causing further damage upon the society they seek to destroy, by using them to the benefit of society, is taking the most justified moral ground.
| sjc wrote: | | Quote: | | Submitting death row inmates into medical research practice also serves a higher level of justice than that of merely killing them in display of those such criminals harmed. |
What if they are later found innocent? It has happened far too many times that an innocent person has been excuted, especially if one happens to also be a minority. It still violates human rights. |
I agree that such happenings are always to be avoided. This is why I think the research donation option should only be practiced on subjects for whom there is incontrovertible evidence of criminal wrongdoing, where there is no doubt whatsoever that such a person is guilty.
| sjc wrote: | | Have you forgotten your humanity? Do you condone measuring a person's worth? |
No, I have not forgotten my humanity, but I do think that such a term can be a sanctimonious nebulous concept. I don't support the death penalty as it now stands, but I also don't support the notion of victims care-taking their monstrous assailants<- such activity is as inhumanely preposterous as it gets. People do have a worth, and those who indiscriminately murder innocent people don't respect that worth, but medical research reparations at least offer some recompensation for what is otherwise a ludicrous loss.
| sjc wrote: | | Where would such thinking end for those who don't "measure up"? |
The real question is how to bring dignified justice to those people killed by remorseless murdering assailants. The answer: donate the assailants to medical science.
| FlatEarth1024 wrote: | | This is incorrect, because even where the death penalty is dispensed in the US, it is done with the caveat that it not involve "Cruel and unusual punishment". Spraying oven cleaner into the eyes of the condemned, while perhaps on some level more emotionally comforting than bunny rabbits, or injecting them with experiments drugs, industrial agents or biological weapons agents for any reason definitely meets the cruel and unusual criteria. |
This notion of destroying someone without use of cruel, and unusual punishment is a hypocritical farcical notion. Killing in itself is a cruel, and unusual act, but it still doesn't stop criminal monstrous assailants from killing people who didn't deserve it. There is no getting around the fact that the death penalty as it now stands is a waste for everyone involved, and the life imprisonment solution is an unnecessary burden, beyond the pale to society. The medical research alternative at least results in restorative benefits for damage done, and doesn't present a nonconsequential lifestyle to guilty monsters who get away with murder by living a comfortably financed prison sentence.
Last edited by Friend on Thu Apr 19, 2007 2:03 am; edited 1 time in total |
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cheapsuprise
disgraced, in exile.
Joined: 25 Apr 2004
Posts: 7217
Local time: 11:32 PM
Location: Next door.
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 1:59 am Post subject: |
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| sjc wrote: |
Is that what you believe, Dr. Mengele? |
Your certainly asking for it.
| sjc wrote: | | The last execution in Canada was when an innocent man was hung. |
Louis Riel?
| sjc wrote: | | After this was found out there was a nation wide vote on whether to keep the death penalty or not. The overwhelming result was to do away with it. That's the power of a democracy over a republic. |
Bullshit.
It was two guys, and they were both guilty, AND the movement to end capital punishment was well underway and expected to prevail before they were executed-- AND it was a vote in parlement NOT a referendum. The only referendum on this issue to my knowledge was suggested as necessary by the REFORM PARTY, to re-instate it. There's your democracy for you.
source: http://www.npb-cnlc.gc.ca/about/part5_e.htm
| Code: | In 1962, the government had to make a decision about the fate of Ronald Turpin, who had shot a police officer; Arthur Lucas, who had killed a pimp and a prostitute; and Gary Alexander McCarkell, who had raped and killed two small children. Lucas and Turpin kept their date with the hangman on December 19; McCarkell, for some reason, was reprieved.
These were the last hangings in Canada-they did not go well. Turpin died instantly, but Lucas had too much rope for his weight; he was partially decapitated.
From April 1963 to December 1972, the Pearson and Trudeau governments commuted all sentences of death. In 1967, the Criminal Code was amended to provide for the death penalty only if the victim was a prison guard or a police officer.
On July 14, 1976, legislation was passed to abolish capital punishment altogether and transfer the Royal Prerogative of Mercy to the National Parole Board. With the rejection of the "ultimate sanction," the importance of clemency diminished. |
So there you have it. The child killer was spared. Mengele killed a few children to btw.
| sjc wrote: |
You don't have a clue of what real justice actually is. Losing one's freedom is a far worse punishment than losing one's life. Just ask the libertarians on here. But than again they to put money above human life as well.
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See, that's why you get picked on around here. When you try to be ironic you just end up embarrassing yourself, IE you place freedom above life in one breath, and in the next you assert that others wrongly place the importance of money over life, which is an ironic straw-man.
I'm against legalising the killing of another person, and I disagree with you. I can do this because I actualy understand my own principles. You can't even be trusted to express your own principles consistently in the same paragraph.
_________________
"-- Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than
feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to
be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it
is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be
dispensed with."-- Niccolò Machiavelli |
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Eyedunno
The Great JuJu at the Bottom of the Sea
Joined: 13 Aug 2005
Posts: 3713
Local time: 5:32 PM
Location: Cin City, OH!
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 2:12 am Post subject: |
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| Friend wrote: | | sjc wrote: | | Friend wrote: | | People Mengele treated, and reasons for which he treated people are altogether different from what I'm proposing. |
Irrelevant. Experimentation on involuntary human subjects can never be morally justified no matter the reason. |
I disagree. Human subjects who've no remorse in killing other people, relinquish rights as a human beings. Murdering criminals become a further burden on the populace by making the populace fund a secure lifelong lifestyle. |
This is true, but elsewhere in your post, you advocate a very high standard of proof, and this is similarly costly. In the U.S., it's actually more costly on average, and innocent people have STILL slipped through the cracks and been executed. I agree with your initial statement that in killing, they relinquish their rights, and I have no problem whatsoever with someone on the scene killing them. Where I have a problem is in trusting the government with the power to administer that type of justice. Looking at China, Iran, and North Korea, then seeing cases in the U.S. where police have extracted confessions through patently unjust means (not to mention Japan, where 98-99% of arrests result in a conviction  ) makes it all crystal clear to me that the death penalty cannot be justified in a world where corrupt, power-hungry people seek political office and jobs on police forces (which by no means implies that everybody in power has these proclivities).
Check out this episode of This American Life; it's very sobering:
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=210
| Quote: | After a decade in which DNA evidence has freed over 100 people nationwide, it's become clear that DNA evidence isn't just proving wrongdoing by criminals, it's proving wrongdoing by police and prosecutors. In this show, we look at what DNA has revealed to us: how police get innocent people to confess to crimes they didn't commit and how they get witnesses to pin crimes on innocent people. There have always been suspicions that these kinds of things take place. With DNA, there's finally irrefutable proof.
Prologue.
Host Ira Glass surveys the effects DNA has had on the criminal justice landscape. He talks with Huy Dao, at the Innocence Project, where they are waist-deep in 2,000 letters from prisoners claiming DNA can prove them innocent. Charlotte Word at Cellmark Diagnostics, the largest and oldest private DNA forensics lab in the country, explains how their caseload is expanding into all sorts of new areas like insurance claims and medical malpractice suits. John Stanton, a detective in Arlington, Texas, recently opened up over 49 old unsolved cases, to see if DNA might be successful where old methods weren't. One case he reopened: the very first case he went on himself as a young crime scene officer in 1985. And finally, Chicago Tribune investigative reporter Maurice Possley explains that DNA has shed so much doubt on the criminal justice system in Illinois that now prosecutors and judges are reopening questionable cases that don't even have DNA evidence. (6 minutes)
Act One. Hawks and Rabbits.
This is the story of some teenagers who were wrongfully convicted of murder and served 15 years in prison. DNA set them free, then convicted the two men who really did the crime. Shane DuBow reports on how the police framed them with the crime in the first place, and what it's like to be in prison when you know you're innocent. (37 minutes)
Act Two. Snitch.
The story of how common and perfectly legal police interrogation procedures, procedures without violence or torture, were able to get an average fourteen-year-old suburban kid to confess to murdering his own sister ... even though DNA evidence later proved that he hadn't done the crime. (12 minutes) |
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hillbillyatheist
Administrator
Joined: 29 Jun 2004
Posts: 15938
Local time: 2:32 AM
Location: Denver Colorado.
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 2:20 am Post subject: |
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| Nimitz wrote: | | Quote: | | Look what Gandhi did just by ignoring that sort of thinking. |
Gandi got his ass shot and killed too. Didn't do him much good did it?!
Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him ....
A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis. |
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Friend
thinking
Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 796
Local time: 5:32 PM
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 2:53 am Post subject: |
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| Eyedunno wrote: | | This is true, but elsewhere in your post, you advocate a very high standard of proof, and this is similarly costly. In the U.S., it's actually more costly on average, and innocent people have STILL slipped through the cracks and been executed. I agree with your initial statement that in killing, they relinquish their rights, and I have no problem whatsoever with someone on the scene killing them. Where I have a problem is in trusting the government with the power to administer that type of justice. Looking at China, Iran, and North Korea, then seeing cases in the U.S. where police have extracted confessions through patently unjust means (not to mention Japan, where 98-99% of arrests result in a conviction ) makes it all crystal clear to me that the death penalty cannot be justified in a world where corrupt, power-hungry people seek political office and jobs on police forces (which by no means implies that everybody in power has these proclivities). |
By all means if DNA evidence helps to clear up the case, then I'm for it, however, even though I agree that corrupt government regimes run an injust form of law, I don't think vigilantism is any more just. Corruption, and incorrect justice killings I think are more apt to happen on an individual scale where any average frustrated uneducated Joe finds it easy to shoot another through oversimplified associated baseless accusations. If there is to be justice, I think it must be done in an organized open system where we all consistently check it to make sure it is justice. If new technologies cost more, but help to better clarify whether people are guilty or not, it's worth the price. Honest justice is worth the price; it adds value to the system when people know they're living under fair law. China, and mostly North Korea are joke systems, and I'd have no problem with them collapsing in on themselves due to corruption. Just as the Soviet Union collapsed, China is transitioning into a free market state, and North Korea is slowly further atrophying as we speak. In a system where we are all part of the same ecology, it is the responsibility of everyone of us to work together in a way that's most just to everyone involved, to ensure no one individual, or certain group of individuals abuses beyond their rights. Even though it is within our nature to be potentially corrupt, it is also within our nature to not be potentially corrupt, but this is helped along by the assurance that others check on us to make sure we don't overstep our boundaries, and these boundaries are a continuous dialogue. |
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kmisho
Stochastic
Joined: 05 Dec 2005
Posts: 4603
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Location: Richmond, Virginia USA
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 9:39 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Do you give respect to every individual you meet, or does someone have to earn your respect? |
This is relevant. I personally extend a basic level of respect unless I am given a reason to retract it. I don't start with zero and add onto it. I start with 100 and subtract if necessary.
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K Michau
Now this religion happens to prevail/Until by that one it is overthrown/Because men dare not live with men alone/But always with another fairy tale.
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You deny the existence of 999 alleged Gods. I merely deny one more - yours.
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CET
The Spiritual Atheist
Joined: 02 Apr 2003
Posts: 12816
Local time: 11:32 PM
Location: SoCal, USA
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:18 am Post subject: Re: Death Penalty: Just or Unjust? |
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| hillbillyatheist wrote: | | not_a_theist wrote: | | CET wrote: | | An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. |
Actually an eye for an eye makes the world full of one eyed people. |
thats a cute hippy saying, it kind of reminds me of "you can't hug with nuclear arms" |
Yep, Mahatma Ghandi was a real hippy. He fought a revolution with non-violence and won.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a real hippy. He fought a civil rights movement with non-violence and won.
While I'm not crazy about "hippies", we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water either.
| hillbillyatheist wrote: | anyway I am all for revenge. I think of it like a debt. if you do me a favor, I ow you one in return. if you cause me harm, I owe you some harm in return.
if you punch me in the nose, I will punch you in the nose. seems only fair to me. |
Revenge is not constructive, it is destructive. Nothing good comes out of revenge. Just take a good look at the middle-east.
_________________
Namaste,
CET 
The Spiritual Atheist
"Much of the suffering in the world comes from the delusion that we are separate from one another." - Gautama Buddha
"Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music." - George Carlin |
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hillbillyatheist
Administrator
Joined: 29 Jun 2004
Posts: 15938
Local time: 2:32 AM
Location: Denver Colorado.
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| Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:51 am Post subject: Re: Death Penalty: Just or Unjust? |
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| CET wrote: | | hillbillyatheist wrote: | | not_a_theist wrote: | | CET wrote: | | An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. |
Actually an eye for an eye makes the world full of one eyed people. |
thats a cute hippy saying, it kind of reminds me of "you can't hug with nuclear arms" |
Yep, Mahatma Ghandi was a real hippy. He fought a revolution with non-violence and won.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a real hippy. He fought a civil rights movement with non-violence and won.
While I'm not crazy about "hippies", we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water either. |
who says i am throwing the baby out with the bath water?
seriously though Ghandi used non violence and won, but during WWII we used violence and crushed the fascists. we can't just rule out violence here. tell me, would you use Ghandi's philosophy with regard to rapists and pedophiles? (I have read your posts where you say if you even meet one you'd kill em, so I bt your answer is no.
| Quote: | | hillbillyatheist wrote: | anyway I am all for revenge. I think of it like a debt. if you do me a favor, I ow you one in return. if you cause me harm, I owe you some harm in return.
if you punch me in the nose, I will punch you in the nose. seems only fair to me. |
Revenge is not constructive, it is destructive. Nothing good comes out of revenge. Just take a good look at the middle-east. |
that's an extreme. if you punch me in the nose I am gonna punch you back, not declare jihad and kill you, all your family and friends and neighbors. |
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