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Quote:
Originally Posted by personne
What is barbarious is to decide and plan the killing of a human being for reasons of revenge under pretense of doing good to society when the same being could be taken away from it as easily. So don't kill in cold blood and in a premeditated way if you prefer. That leaves out self-defense, certain cases of euthanasia and maybe very few wars (which I'm certainly not sure about, but then that's another govermental thing. A French philosopher once defined war as "Old men deciding upon financial reasons to kill off their young sons", a bit blunt, and not entirely true, but there is much into that, I think.)
The punishment will never fit the crime. And if you believe in conscience and/or in god, how is that worse than letting them rot in jail and spend the rest of their life regretting what they did (or regret being caught) and re-live that scenario every day? Or, should that reasoning be coherent, why not advocate life-long physical torture ? Which I'm sure some people here would think a good idea, seeing what kind of posts I have read on numerous threads. I don't think that is the case as far as you're concerned if it needs to be mentionned.
Taking the life of someone who's taken another's is as fitting as we're likely to get and I have no problem with it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by personne
Strangely, it's like you believe in death penalty to "fit the crime" because it's abhorrent to you to take away a human life so it should be punished the most definitive way possible. I don't believe in death penalty exactly for the same reason. It is abhorrent to take a human life. Especially when you pretend to do it for the good of society.
I don't believe an eye for an eye is strange at all, I certainly don't see keeping alive those with no regard for human life as being good for society.
Quote:
Originally Posted by personne
I don't wish to make you change your mind at all, it's not the way it happens anyway and I have no desire to be a mind controller. But I also wish to express what I think are good reasons for NOT supporting the death penalty. Thanks for your civility.
What do you make of people executed when it was proved later they were innocent ?
I've only supported the death penalty in cases where guilt is proven 100%. Just as an example, some years ago there was a case in Irvington NJ where a gang member wannabe walked up to a stranger on the street and put a bullet in the man's head as an initiation rite. IMO, when someone does something like that to another human being and their guilt is unquestionable, I believe they've forfeited their right to their own life, a God may judge their soul but I believe man has the right to judge their physical actions.
Just as new methods have brought about the exoneration of innocents, they also bring about more reliable methods of determining guilt.
It is about mostly about society's wish for revenge, not even the families' in a certain number of cases.
But then, you can always advocate revenge, I won't agree with you but there are so many things we'll probably not agree about.
What can't be said is this type of things :
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quick Enough
Do it enough time and the word gets out and those thinking about committing a crime MIGHT think twice if they know they could lose theirs.
It shouldn't be said not because it's offending, after all everyone is allowed to their way of thinking, but because it is NOT TRUE. Believe what you want to believe but do it with TRUE data or even with your personal feelings, hopes and fears only but don't invent DATAS or single events that you can't even prove all the implications of.
(if you don't like the site, go search for other ones, I took the first on Google but they all say the same).
And it's only the USA, I'm not even talking about Europe which has a much lower deadly/violent crime rates than you, with death penalty gone for years when not decades.
Now, if you want to keep your head in the sand and be with the likes of China and Saudi Arabia in the top executioners, you're in the land of the free, aren't you?
I've only supported the death penalty in cases where guilt is proven 100%. Just as an example, some years ago there was a case in Irvington NJ where a gang member wannabe walked up to a stranger on the street and put a bullet in the man's head as an initiation rite. IMO, when someone does something like that to another human being and their guilt is unquestionable, I believe they've forfeited their right to their own life, a God may judge their soul but I believe man has the right to judge their physical actions.
Who decides the 100% doubt thing?
If that was so reliable, how come there's been hundreds proven innocents years after their execution?
Those are the people I asked you about... What of the innocent ones?
And a great number of others's cases, there weren't even DNA traces to be tested. And who's to prove that your DNA on a victim's surrounding or body is a proof of guilt? Some times it is, yes, sometimes it's circumstancial.
Please, listen to what I say. I'm not exonerating criminals. I'm just saying (and as you conveniently ignored in my previous posts) that crimes are lowest where death penalty isn't in practise. You can wriggle and want to find that thought "illogical" all you want, it nevertheless proves true. Other means are more efficient to protect society from crime. Period. Unless it's for revenge purely.
The question is "what type of society do you want?".
Why kill someone in cool blood ? Because they themselves did it (and it often wasn't in cold blood, not that it's any excuse) ? Doesn't that lower you down to their level ?
I repeat :
- it doesn't act as a deterrant
- it kills innocent people
- it makes us less of a society to take revenge in the name of collectivity while not solving or trying to solve the problem.
I think the recent controversy over the new execution drug protocol in Ohio's lethal injection is just another example of liberalism backfiring, kinda like "smart growth" forcing development even further out into other counties or states that don't have those laws. Ohio wouldn't have had to "experiment" with this new drug combo if the liberal European countries didn't ban their companies from selling death penalty products to the United States.
Now with all the concerns about suffering of the condemned (never mind that the executed killer didn't show any mercy to the pregnant woman he raped and murdered) and the cost of the death penalty, including the cost of the lethal injection drugs or operating the death chamber (don't know WHY these things cost so much) maybe we should just execute people the old fashioned way, with a simple bullet in the head.
That will be simple, cheap, and instant. Many states have a backlog of executions because of the shortage of execution drugs. I wonder why we can't produce those chemicals ourselves here in the US I yet its liberal pressure too. North Carolina has the death penalty but the medical board there refuses to allow physicians to participate in executions and state law says without a doctor they can't have a lethal injection. (I'll bet my bottom dollar this same medical board is not against banning doctors from performing partial birth abortions).
So to save money and to assuage the fears of the criminal suffering, I think its best we just use the firing squad, and the best option would be the condemned tied to a chair, the executioner presses the pistol in the back of his head and pulls the trigger. Nothing cruel or unusual about that.
And a great number of others's cases, there weren't even DNA traces to be tested. And who's to prove that your DNA on a victim's surrounding or body is a proof of guilt? Some times it is, yes, sometimes it's circumstancial.
Please, listen to what I say. I'm not exonerating criminals. I'm just saying (and as you conveniently ignored in my previous posts) that crimes are lowest where death penalty isn't in practise. You can wriggle and want to find that thought "illogical" all you want, it nevertheless proves true. Other means are more efficient to protect society from crime. Period. Unless it's for revenge purely.
But, is it established the lack of a death penalty is the cause of those low crime rates?
Quote:
Originally Posted by personne
The question is "what type of society do you want?".
Why kill someone in cool blood ? Because they themselves did it (and it often wasn't in cold blood, not that it's any excuse) ? Doesn't that lower you down to their level ?
No, they put themselves at their level. IF our so-called society really valued lives so much, particularly innocent lives, we wouldn't have such a rich history of sending our young off to die in meaningless wars, would we?
Quote:
Originally Posted by personne
I repeat :
- it doesn't act as a deterrant
- it kills innocent people
- it makes us less of a society to take revenge in the name of collectivity while not solving or trying to solve the problem.
As I repeat: Laws don't act as a deterrent either, should we not have them?
And realistically, how can the deterrent value of either be proven? How do you know why someone didn't do something?
When/where have I ever advocated the death penalty except when guilt is unquestionable?
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