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Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:09 pm
by rustypup
Oldrac the Chitinous wrote:Surely you're not suggesting that we deny people sentenced to die the right to appeal their convictions?
That would be correct - it serves no purpose to keep revisiting a lost cause. I'm not so naive as to think that every conviction is correct - but I do know that >90% of them are. This being the case, designing a system around the minority is a little backward - although it makes for great sound bites and political posturing.

Once judgment is reached, effect it's natural course at the soonest possible moment. A deferred punishment sends entirely the wrong message and diminishes the deterrent effect.
Oldrac the Chitinous wrote:(i)there's one more person dead than there needs to be. (ii)And I'd just as soon not have that blood on my hands.


i) Speaking as a member of the one species on earth not under threat, we are not going to miss the sort of detritus the system is designed to remove. These characters add very little of value and take everything. When we're on the brink of extinction, this statement makes sense. Not before then.

ii) The "blood on my hands" statement, (while wonderfully evocative :D ), is thoroughly misleading.
  • :- There is no blood spilled, other than their victim's.
    :- The number of persons deserving of the death sentence as a proportion of the populace doesn't even raise a blip.
    :- Unless you are personally in a position where you may be called upon to throw the switch, your risk of bloodletting is probably zero.

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:14 pm
by Lethal Interjection
I wouldn't be able to pull the switch. More applicably, I would hate to be on a jury who found someone guilty, only to have them put to death. My take on the situation could easily be flawed, I am not perfect. So even with my 11 fellow jurors, I'm not sure the life of someone should be put in our imperfect hands. Even more so for the judge, who's job it is to sentence, and he doesn't have a bunch of peers to fall back on. The judgment of a small group of people should not determine someone's life or death.
Sahan wrote:Drugs take way too many lives, selling them is a selfless act.
I think that is probably the wrong word...

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:33 pm
by Oldrac the Chitinous
mountainmage wrote:Anyways, I'm for the death penalty. It's one of the few conservative views I have. If you commit heinous crimes you don't deserve to live. If someone in your family was brutally murdered for no reason, you'd change your tune right quick, unless you're the most forgiving person on the planet.
I'm all in favor of giving the family some sense that justice has been done, but you can't go killing people because the victims are howling for blood. At least in the US, too many executions are essentially state-sanctioned revenge killings disguised under the euphemism "closure." We have a justice system to prevent that sort of mob rule, not to enable it.

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:35 pm
by Avalant
Oldrac the Chitinous wrote:We have a justice system to prevent that sort of mob rule, not to enable it.
Yes, but I'm sure you could also find examples where vigilante justice would have done a better job than our justice system.

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:41 pm
by AHMETxRock
Avalant wrote:
Oldrac the Chitinous wrote:We have a justice system to prevent that sort of mob rule, not to enable it.
Yes, but I'm sure you could also find examples where vigilante justice would have done a better job than our justice system.
Like felatio?

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:43 pm
by Edminster
Gee thanks, Ahmet. Now I get to picture vigilante fellatio!

::edit::
holy crap new band name

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:43 pm
by AHMETxRock
Wait till you see the deleted scenes in the watchmen then.

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 6:00 pm
by mountainmage
AHMETxRock wrote:
Avalant wrote:
Oldrac the Chitinous wrote:We have a justice system to prevent that sort of mob rule, not to enable it.
Yes, but I'm sure you could also find examples where vigilante justice would have done a better job than our justice system.
Like felatio?
Really, what were you thinking of when you posted this? Then again, I can imagine the red tape involved in the justice system giving a guy a BJ.

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 6:06 pm
by LordRetard
Lethal Interjection wrote:
Sahan wrote:Drugs take way too many lives, selling them is a selfless act.
I think that is probably the wrong word...
Are you sure? Then again dealers are seedy people.

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 6:29 pm
by mountainmage
Selfless has a good connotation, last time I checked. Like performing a selfless deed for someone = altruism.

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 6:31 pm
by Cirtur
Zombies are pretty selfless if you take self to mean personality.

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 7:23 pm
by smiley_cow
I don't know, I just can't justify the death penalty in my mind. On top of the point I brought up earlier that it is often invoked for crimes other than murder I've never liked the philosophy of an eye for an eye. One crime does not justify another, no matter who does it. People say it's not a crime because it's the justice system, but I think that's bull. Murder is murder, and whether it's committed by an individual or by the state, it's still murder.

I think it's easy to be separated from horrific events and pass judgement on people who have done bad things, but not everyone who has ever received the death penalty has been a cold blooded psychopath who just kills randomly, and those psychopaths usually end up getting insanity anyways. People do extreme things in extreme situations, it doesn't make them evil people, they've just done a bad thing. There's a maximum security penitentiary here in Southern Manitoba near Winnipeg where they house murderers and dug traffickers and the such, and it has a very large aboriginal population, since aboriginals make up the majority of low income families in the cities and they have a lot of social programs such as pow wows and the such held in there to help the prisoners. And so often I talk to people who go in there to work with the prisoners and they're always astounded by how nice, or how gentle they can be. People get it into their heads that mankind is divided between good and evil, but some people just find themselves in situations where they don't feel they have any other choice (I'm talking mostly about gang violence here, since that is how most of them ended up in there. So yeah, bad actions do not necessarily equal bad people.

After looking at these posts I see a lot of people disagree with me, but that's just how I see it.

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 7:28 pm
by AHMETxRock
Murder by proxy, you mean? That sounds right.

I do not trust a jury of my peers. How many of you say, "FUCK YES! JURY DUTY!" (think of a combination between the jugernaut bitch line, arnold schwarzenegger's i'll be back, and pee-wee's hapy voice all at once). Hell, I don't think you'd let me put my hands all over a sandwhich and then still eat it, let alone have me comprehend the legal system.

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 7:31 pm
by Cirtur
You could always argue that we're your peers and get us to be your jury.

Protip: There is a sizable chance that you would fry.

Re: Death Penalty

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 7:31 pm
by astasia
I can't support the death penalty in any case.

There are things that you hear about - violent, serial pedophiles, for example - who make me wish that they no longer existed.

But, I cannot support a government having the legal right to murder its own people. That does not strike me as right.

However, this thread was not intended to be a comment on whether or not you think the death penalty is right or wrong. I think what is interesting about it, is the fact that the concern is not about human lives, but about the cheapest option. (And, yes, I forget who said it, but prevention would be the cheapest option. Instead of spending about $50,000 per person per year for incarceration, let's spend $50,000 per child per year on education.) When you're talking about lives, how can you not feel ashamed if your biggest concern is the finances of killing them?