Thread: Capital Punishment

Please understanding the following state are my opinion based on facts and reasoning.


Please feel to share your feelings and counter my statements but don't waste your time calling names...




Capital Punishment seems to be possibly the most barbaric and extreme form of torture there is. I am sure in the future this will be illegal in most places around the world. Especially by the time we are a type 1 civilization.

The whole point of punishment is that the person will reform and be a better human in the future.


If you kill that person, that person will never have a chance at becoming a better person in the future. It is ended forever.

I understanding if someone will never have good intentions they should be in jail for a long time, but killing them is no better in any way.

Extradite them if that's what you want.


Let me know why you think capital punishment should be allowed and why it shouldn't please provide evidence

I think you meant to say exile them instead of extradite them, but whatever.

I am opposed to capital punishment but not for the reason you give. I oppose it because mistakes are made and people sometimes are executed for crimes they did not commit.

I am not a big fan of the concept of punishment as a form of correction either and view incarceration or execution as a method of removing an offender from society. When you count the cost of trials and appeals, plus the difficulty of getting a jury to convict on a death sentence, incarceration actually turns out to be cheaper than executions are in my country.

I oppose CP (capital punishment).

• Here's one people miss: If a criminal knows he'll be executed for a crime, he's more likely to go out in a blaze of glory on the street rather than being arrested, tried, convicted, and executed. And this leads to more deaths.
• As Dan said, what if they convicted/executed the wrong person?
• As an example, CP encourages citizens to kill persons they cannot tolerate.
• As we see in the news recently, CP can be botched.
• CP is also cruel and unusual punishment to us.
• The SCOTUS has ruled that CP is so obscene that the general public must not be allowed a view of it.
• The premise is absolutely ridiculous that the prisoner must be conscious when executed, as if they'll learn a lesson from it.

Just a comment that "to execute" someone is a euphemism (ie, a nice word) for "to execute the death sentence upon someone".

Originally Posted by ScienceNoob

The whole point of punishment is that the person will reform and be a better human in the future.

I disagree with this part. Punishment is intended to deter others from committing a crime. Then it is reasonable to suppose that a greater punishment should be a better deterrent. If you don't think punishment deters crime, then why do we have laws at all? A law without a penalty is merely a suggestion.

Originally Posted by ScienceNoob

Ple


Capital Punishment seems to be possibly the most barbaric and extreme form of torture there is.

I don't agree with capital punishment either, but there are more terrible punishments.
One could physically torture a prisoner, over a period, and then execute the individual. I'm sure that goes on in certain parts of the world!

Justice must be dealt out when someone does a crime that society says is wrong. When people say punishment I really believe that it is justice that is being done for acts that criminals do.

Ask yourself if someone murdered your children, wife or other family members and they tortured them for days before murdering them would you not want justice for their killings? Then ask would you want to put them into prison which costs the taxpayers allot of money to maintain for the rest of their lives which includes medical help , food and warm/cool place to live. I'd prefer that the criminal get justice by executing them after all court appeals have been done.

Originally Posted by cosmictraveler

Justice must be dealt out when someone does a crime that society says is wrong. When people say punishment I really believe that it is justice that is being done for acts that criminals do.
Ask yourself if someone murdered your children, wife or other family members and they tortured them for days before murdering them would you not want justice for their killings? Then ask would you want to put them into prison which costs the taxpayers allot of money to maintain for the rest of their lives which includes medical help , food and warm/cool place to live. I'd prefer that the criminal get justice by executing them after all court appeals have been done.

I think the word you should be using is 'revenge' and not 'justice'.
Justice and revenge are not the same.
What you described in that post is revenge, not justice.

I think the word you should be using is 'revenge' and not 'justice'.
Justice and revenge are not the same.
What you described in that post is revenge, not justice.

: the process or result of using laws to fairly judge and punish crimes and criminals

Originally Posted by cosmictraveler

I think the word you should be using is 'revenge' and not 'justice'.
Justice and revenge are not the same.
What you described in that post is revenge, not justice.

: the process or result of using laws to fairly judge and punish crimes and criminals

Also from Merriam Webster:

"Full Definition of JUSTICE:
the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments."

"Ask yourself if someone murdered your children, wife or other family members and they tortured them for days before murdering them would you not want justice for their killings?"
Revenge: the action of hurting or harming someone in return for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands.

Revenge is personal; justice is not.
You are talking about revenge and not justice.

Again I ask if your entire family was tortured for days then murdered would you want justice ? The justice would be, to me, a trial, then appeals and finally death to those who did this horrendous crime. If you do not think that justice is death to those who perpetrated the crime then that's your opinion and you have the right to have that opinion.

Originally Posted by cosmictraveler

Again I ask if your entire family was tortured for days then murdered would you want justice ? The justice would be, to me, a trial, then appeals and finally death to those who did this horrendous crime. If you do not think that justice is death to those who perpetrated the crime then that's your opinion and you have the right to have that opinion.

And a personal opinion is personal.

Revenge is personal; justice is not.
You are talking about revenge and not justice.

Eh, there are things worse than being executed. One would be living the rest of your life stuck in a facility where (A) You are surrounded by violent criminals. (B) There is a real possibility of being assaulted/raped/murdered by other inmates. (C) Communication with all those in the world that ever meant anything to you will be very limited. (D)Whatever you do, your works, writings, troubles, knowledge, etc. will never be used or acknowledged by the outside world, and that the remainder of your monotonous fearful life will be mostly, if not fractally, meaningless.

Originally Posted by ScienceNoob

Extradite them if that's what you want.

Oh yeah.
Abrogate your responsibilities and make them someone else's problem.

It's nice to be able to make your mistakes go away, and the justice system is rife with this ability.

Consider a gross injustice recently uncovered — two innocent mentally-challenged half-brothers spent 30 years in prison for raping and murdering an 11-year-old. If they had been executed instead (a likely punishment for raping/murdering an 11-yo), there would have been much less impetus to test the DNA sample, and they stood a good chance of never having their names cleared (the only remaining purpose after their execution). Furthermore, the real criminal was allowed to remain in society and continue committing such crimes or worse. In this case, the real criminal was in prison for committing a similar crime although the article did not state whether it happened before or after the above crime.

When a defense attorney fails to do this or that, the defendant goes away to prison. You also never hear of defense attorneys refunding their pay when an appeals court overturns a conviction due to attorney error (because it simply never happens). The defendant with an overturned conviction is obliged (along with relatives and friends) to scrape together more money to pay for a new defense attorney.

When authorities don't turn over exculpatory evidence to defense attorneys, don't have DNA analyzers, don't properly maintain — or discard — DNA evidence, coerce defendants to "confess", invent evidence, etc, the defendant may well be executed because someone in authority would be much more likely to risk wrongdoing for very ugly crimes (ie, they wouldn't take the risk to convict someone of jaywalking, but they might for rape/murder of an 11-yo). And there's much less impetus to investigate the case to clear the defendant's name. If, instead, the defendant received life in prison, then there's a much greater impetus to seek justice.

It's nice to make your mistakes go away.

Consider a gross injustice recently uncovered — two innocent mentally-challenged half-brothers spent 30 years in prison for raping and murdering an 11-year-old. If they had been executed instead (a likely punishment for raping/murdering an 11-yo)

You know its reporting like this that gets me very aggravated because no other facts were given to us about those men and the rape. What if the mother saw them , what if the neighbor saw them wouldn't eye witnesses be more valuable? So little facts were printed other than they were found innocent by means of DNA. Let us know all of the facts so that we can decide for ourselves what was the truth in this case and what was made up. I seem to be the only one wanting ALL of the facts as to when this crime happened not just now with DNA.

I despise the media and the way it reports on news.

I'm sorry to say that eye witness testimony is some of the most flawed. If the witness knew the defendant, then that's strong testimony, but the idea that a witness could pick a stranger out of a mug shot book or a line up has been shown to be skeptical.

Well, besides, the DNA pointed to a guy they had incarcerated for a similar crime. DNA is rather strong evidence.

There's more reasons than just reform. There's also discouraging people from committing the crime and giving solace to the victims. I believe in capital punishment in the most extreme cases. There are some people whose continued existence makes the world a worse place and they should be tried and executed. Heinous serial killers, horrible despots, the worst war criminals, etc. However, I think it should be something that is rarely employed and only in such extreme circumstances.

Originally Posted by SowZ37

There's more reasons than just reform. There's also discouraging people from committing the crime and giving solace to the victims. I believe in capital punishment in the most extreme cases. There are some people whose continued existence makes the world a worse place and they should be tried and executed. Heinous serial killers, horrible despots, the worst war criminals, etc. However, I think it should be something that is rarely employed and only in such extreme circumstances.

If it is revenge you want and if you want to show a strong deterrence for future crimes why not bring back public torture instead of simple discreet painless executions?

Revenge is a personnel thing so that when a person goes to trial it is no longer your revenge but is being judged by others with no affiliation to the criminal or you. So you can't say that someone wants revenge if they can't have a say in the matter but only a jury can.

Surely anyone who has committed a crime worthy of consideration as capital crime should spend a very long time in prison having to face upto to what they've done and to understand that their incarceration is a result of their own actions. Surely execution just prevents offenders from having to face up to their crimes or ever becoming rehabilitated.

But also there is the other issue about what gives us or the state the right or responsibility to take the lives of any of it's citizens. Prison shouldn't be about retribution or revenge and there is a case to be made about it being a purpose for rehabilitation thus trying to eventually make people better human beings, rather hard to make that same case about capital punishment though.

Every state or type of ideology that we really disaprove of or reject or find morally objectionable is usually based on the way they treat their own citizens and indeed often their attitudes to the citizens of others, for any of us to be truely better than these people we our selves need to set a higher moral standard in the way we approach our own citizens, even those who have committed the worst and most abhorrent crimes we still need to treat these people with the dignity of human beings, this means no violence or torture and not killing them.

We should put our societies worst offenders in prison for the protection of others and so that they understand and learn from their crimes, we shouldn't kill them to make ourselves feel better because it doesn't work and it damages all of us for allowing it to happen, only when we can all actually understand this can we grow and develop socially and morally.

The point is "killing people is wrong" and we have a choice of whether or not to do it, simply put we should choose not to, we shouldn't execute murders because as Ghandi said "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind."

I used to support capital punishment, however, after researching it I came to be against it in most cases. As has been mentioned above it is actually more expensive for the taxpayers in the US to sentence someone to death than it is to sentence to life in prison. As a taxpayer I would rather have my money going elsewhere than into repeat appeals and special treatment for a prisoner. Death sentence prisoners are not kept with the general population and are monitored more closely than other inmates. This coupled with the fact that a person can sit on death row for decades before being executed means that taxpayers are paying more. In 2008, California reported that it spent $90,000 a year per death row inmate to house them. In general from what I've seen from other states, death row inmates cost about twice the amount of money per year that it takes to house a life sentence inmate. This to me is more than enough justification to end Capital Punishment in the US.

As for the whole point of prison being to rehabilitate criminals, that is only part of it. It's purpose is to protect civilians from the dregs and scum of our society. Some criminals are never going to re-offend once released, some may re-offend once or twice then stop, and others are incapable of ever becoming functioning members of society. As my Psychology professor put it "Some people just have faulty wiring and there is nothing that anyone can do to fix it." Whether they were born that way or it resulted from damage sustained during their lives, some people cannot become contributing functional members of society.

Originally Posted by cosmictraveler

Again I ask if your entire family was tortured for days then murdered would you want justice ? The justice would be, to me, a trial, then appeals and finally death to those who did this horrendous crime. If you do not think that justice is death to those who perpetrated the crime then that's your opinion and you have the right to have that opinion.

Given the opportunity I should visit on the murderer and extended and painful death. That is revenge. I should then submit to trial and sentence in court. That's justice.

The first action, while understandable, is unacceptable in a civilised society. If it is unacceptable for me as an individual, I certainly don't want society carrying it out on my behalf. That does nothing for me and taints my society.

Our justice system is a mess... I'm totally against capital punishment. I don't agree with a system, in which the "justice system" gives itself the right to terminate someone's life legally.

If murder is wrong, its should always be wrong. Unless in a critical situation, in which lethal self defense is the only option to preserve your own life.

Its ridiculous... if a death row inmate tries to kill himself (lets say poison) within even the last few minutes of his life before being put down. They will rush him to the hospital, give him medical attention and go as far as reviving if need be.. Only to kill him or her systematically upon release.

Originally Posted by AndresKiani

Our justice system is a mess... I'm totally against capital punishment. I don't agree with a system, in which the "justice system" gives itself the right to terminate someone's life legally.

If murder is wrong, its should always be wrong. Unless in a critical situation, in which lethal self defense is the only option to preserve your own life.

Murder is defined within the law. As such capital punishment is not murder. I presume from your statement that you would be opposed to any military operation, even a defensive one, that involved killing hostile combatants?

Its ridiculous... if a death row inmate tries to kill himself (lets say poison) within even the last few minutes of his life before being put down. They will rush him to the hospital, give him medical attention and go as far as reviving if need be.. Only to kill him or her systematically upon release.

That is not an argument against capital punishment. It is an argument against how it is implemented in some places.

Originally Posted by John Galt

Originally Posted by AndresKiani

Our justice system is a mess... I'm totally against capital punishment. I don't agree with a system, in which the "justice system" gives itself the right to terminate someone's life legally.

If murder is wrong, its should always be wrong. Unless in a critical situation, in which lethal self defense is the only option to preserve your own life.

Murder is defined within the law. As such capital punishment is not murder. I presume from your statement that you would be opposed to any military operation, even a defensive one, that involved killing hostile combatants?

Its ridiculous... if a death row inmate tries to kill himself (lets say poison) within even the last few minutes of his life before being put down. They will rush him to the hospital, give him medical attention and go as far as reviving if need be.. Only to kill him or her systematically upon release.

That is not an argument against capital punishment. It is an argument against how it is implemented in some places.

(Not being rude.. I definitely respect you )
Yes I'm very clear that murder is defined under law, this is a "duh" moment. Murder is morally wrong and should always be wrong. This is why I don't agree with capital punishment. In certain situations our justice system gives itself the right to murder someone SMH.

Lets back track on what murder is, since this conversation has gone there..

If you purposefully intend to kill someone, and you succeed; I say that's murder. Furthermore, you can kill someone but not murder them, for example.. If you are in a mutual car accident with no purpose in "murdering" someone. We can say you "killed" that person, however you did not murder that person.

The only act of murder that should be condoned by our society is the case in which its self defense. Were you purposefully kill someone to preserve your own life.

That is not an argument against capital punishment. It is an argument against how it is implemented in some places.

My quote:

Its ridiculous... if a death row inmate tries to kill himself (lets say poison) within even the last few minutes of his life before being put down. They will rush him to the hospital, give him medical attention and go as far as reviving if need be.. Only to kill him or her systematically upon release.

I wasn't necessarily making an argument here, just giving my opinion on how ridiculous the whole ordeal is. If a death row inmate attempts to kill himself a few minutes before he is scheduled to die. Then! why do we even try to revive him or her, to me its just wasting tax payer dollars just so we can rip the person of all of his choices and rights, and kill him the way we want at the exact moment we want.

What does that say about our moral centered society?

Too many death row people are innocent people, in general it's estimated that of all convicts are least 4% innocent, in the early '00 a Texas crime lab researcher was found guilty in frauding with evidence, thus have send loads of innocent people to jail and death row, by that the Texas governor pardoned IRRC least 33 death row mates.

Originally Posted by ScienceNoob

Capital Punishment seems to be possibly the most barbaric and extreme form of torture there is.

I realize I hold a minority view, but I simply cannot agree. To me, life imprisonment is the most extreme form of torture there is. To force someone to live out a natural lifespan, with no freedom, crappy living conditions, no chance to accomplish anything and no hope for improvement. I would much rather be dead. In my opinion, shooting someone is far more humane than forcing them to spend a lifetime in prison.

Originally Posted by danhanegan

In my opinion, shooting someone is far more humane than forcing them to spend a lifetime in prison.

Which is a small part of why I advocate against capital punishment. To be crude: "Let the F***er suffer" is my thoughts. Let them live another 30 or 40 years to reflect and be miserable. Even if they never feel sorry for their crime at least they get to spend lots of time being bored miserable. Killing them is a mercy that they don't deserve.