Poll of the Day: Old Sparky
- Thread starter alyster
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RoboMonkey
Active member
no no no no no no no
RoboMonkey
Active member
Honestly, yeah. It might not be better for the prisoner, but that doesn't mean we have the right to take his/her life. And before anyone even gets into the whole "there are already too many prisoners" debate, let's just realize that on July 1, 2015 there were only 2,984 prisoners on death row, while we have close to maybe 2 million people in prison, give or take (there were 1,518,559 in 2008, I'm just guessing it's more plus I rounded up). Let's not even start to play a numbers game here.
So yes. Simple answer is that yes, it is better for humanity but no, it would not be better for the prisoner. Because let's face it, dying is a lot better than spending your remaining life in prison. That's not even an argument though, unless you're somehow on the side of prisoner's rights to euthanasia. Morally it is definitely better not to kill him/her. No matter what religion you are. Regardless of what happened in the past, if equality exists in this world, no one human being has the right to decide for the life of another. Even if that person killed someone else. Now let's just hope this doesn't become an abortion debate.
alyster
Well-known member
This man killed 77 people and injured over 300. He got 21 years in prison. That's 3 months and 1 week for every death.
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if you kill someone, or molest an child or something of that nature, death should definitely ensue. if death is the resulting factor of such crimes, people may not do them as often. prisons don't care about rehabilitation, so you have these murderers and molestors and rapists walking free in a matter of years, unrehabilitated, and they go and do the same exact thing. there are certain crimes you shouldn't have second chances for. you can find a previously convicted child molestor walking free and ruining another childs life almost every single day in America. at some point some thing has to be done.
Rin
Oathkeeper
That's a poor way of putting it. He only forfeits the right to live because someone said so. In some other batch of morals, a murderer may still have the right to live. Their life is still taken by the people who determines that they forfeited it.
I do believe in the Golden Rule - treat people the same way they treat others. So if someone takes a life, they probably don't value life very much.
But that puts rapists in an odd situation. Should they be raped back? Castrated?
I think most countries don't have death penalty for rape. But I heard USA prisons actually put child rapists and former police in a special cell, because they'll get killed/tortured by other prisoners otherwise.
I was waiting for someone to say this, but my biggest opposition to capital punishment is that the justice system can be mistaken. Someone can be convicted of murder, and 5 years later, evidence comes out that they're innocent.
RoboMonkey
Active member
This, the justice system isn't perfect it's ran by humans after all, so mistakes are bound to be made. (Around 4% mistakes on death row)
Additionally the death penalty tends to cost a lot more. We spend on the court cases because it demands a higher degree of certainty for the conviction & more appeals to try to give that evidence a chance to come up. Then we spend more maintaining them & then executing them in the millions more. (total is around 300m dollars per death row execution).
Right & the ethical claim that government has the right to decide who lives or who dies, isn't something I am pretty confident about.
So yea generally speaking opposed to it & here have a video arguing against it far better than I could.
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Robert E Lee
Well-known member
All you have convinced me is that ethics makes shit cost too much, I shall now want firing squads back and make shit cheaper. Hell lets bring back public executions and blood sports, lets make some real money.
I tend to oppose the death penalty on moral grounds anyway, but the overwhelming deal breaker for me is how many cases where the justice system has been wrong and people were exonerated after years or even decades in prison, or after they have been executed.
For a specific example of what I believe to be a wrongful execution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham
For a specific example of what I believe to be a wrongful execution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham
Augustus Caesar
Current HPoT and Retired HPoW
Hard choice, should only be used for extreme crimes like War crimes or massacres
Big Brother
Active member
I oppose capital punishment both on moral and rational grounds. It doesn't make sense to punish murderers by committing murder, nor should it be morally acceptable to do so.
A few years ago a rather gruesome massacre happened in my country, more than 60 adolescents were shot and killed, and many others injured (including people I know personally). In spite of this, I remain opposed to capital punishment. The perpetrator was given the maximum penalty of 21 years in prison (actually 10 years with the possibility of extension as long as the perpetrator is deemed a danger to society), and I believe this was the right course of action.
Capital punishment accomplishes nothing but debasement and the end of another life.
A few years ago a rather gruesome massacre happened in my country, more than 60 adolescents were shot and killed, and many others injured (including people I know personally). In spite of this, I remain opposed to capital punishment. The perpetrator was given the maximum penalty of 21 years in prison (actually 10 years with the possibility of extension as long as the perpetrator is deemed a danger to society), and I believe this was the right course of action.
Capital punishment accomplishes nothing but debasement and the end of another life.
So he kills 60 people...and all he has to do is play nice for ten years and be deemed not a threat anymore and he can just do it again?
Big Brother
Active member
They have perfectly qualified psychologists evaluating his psyche, I sincerely doubt he'd be able to trick them. Even if he was released, the authorities would keep a very close watch on him and his doings, and they could always arrest him again. Who knows, maybe he will be successfully rehabilitated.
Yeah but that is risky to say MAYBE he will be rehabilitated. Even if he doesnt trick them, twenty one years is still very short compared to the amount of years he took away from those people, probably babies growing up without mothers or fathers which can really effect a person negatively. Not to mention any pyschological damage done to the kids if they were old enough to comprehend. And if he is released the police may be able to monitor him, but they cant follow him around all day everyday, and when they are following him that is taking away from other crimes that the police could be out there stopping...10-21 years is way too little of a sentence for mass murder...an 18 year old could mass murder, do the max, be out by the time he is 39, do it again and still be out again by the time he was 60?
Big Brother
Active member
You're not thinking rationally and you're thinking in terms suitable for your own country, not mine. There's no risk in incarcerating a person until he's rehabilitated (or not), and how many years he took away from those people is irrelevant. The years he took cannot be repaid by taking the rest of his.
You also overestimate the resources required to watch a person's doings. You don't need to actually follow people physically around the world (which is pretty old-fashioned), monitoring bank statements, telephone calls, other digital communication, etc. could be more than enough. A police force that doesn't have the capability to monitor dangerous individuals is no police force at all.
The vast majority of people who are incarcerated in my country are rehabilitated, and rarely commit crimes again. However, if he was to serve the maximum sentence of 21 years, and he was still considered to be a danger to society, the authorities are fully within their rights to further extend or renew the sentence. I find it hard to believe that you really think that if a prisoner is considered to be a danger to society, they would just let him go. You probably know better.
The possibility of an individual committing new crimes is not adequate justification for murder, by that logic, every prisoner should be summarily executed simply because they might commit another crime.
You would have us sink to the perpetrator's level, and do to him what he did to others. Murder is considered to be a wrong act, a punishable offense, and you would have us commit the same wrong act, the same punishable offense, to punish the original offense. This is completely illogical, barbaric and uncivilized. Such a notion belongs in ages past, and subscribing to such a notion would be nothing but moral debasement and is the result of emotionally fueled bloodlust.
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