Amfliflier wrote:Actually Confictura, I believe they kill people with a lethal injection, not a bullet. Just letting you know. And I didn't mean that you were automatically against it because of the family member, it was just an example.
I'm not that familiar with methods of execution but I'm pretty sure firing squads were popular at some time or another, there's also the electric chair, which last time I checked was NOT a lethal injection.
AuroraOrodel wrote:Kamas wrote:
Capital Punishment is unconstitutional, inefficient, and remains in my mind, the epitome of hypocrisy. But, it's not an issue that can be resolved from the opinion of outsiders. It up to the people living within a place with capital punishment to determine if they wish to keep it or not. The death sentence itself is an age-old argument.
Can you cite Supreme Court rulings or Constitutional passages that state capital punishment is unconstitutional, or is this a statement of opinion?The questions you can ask yourself is say, is execution by state just as immoral as the killing of a private citizen? Does it deter from crimes to be committed? Does it punish criminals for their actions?
I don't know what a private citizen is, but you and I clearly operate under different sets of morality. If someone is guilty of really awful heinous stuff (not just murder, but serial rape/torture/mutilation for example) I, personally, would have no moral qualms about sending said person to their very painful death. Crimes of this nature are often committed out of some sort of psychosis and those who commit them are unlikely to be deterred by much of anything. By executing someone convicted of such crimes, honestly convicted with no doubt in anyone's mind, the guilty party is got rid of.In my opinion, the hypocrisy that is the death sentence should A. Be abolished B. The mindset of this law to be applied to all other forms of justice.
You murder a murderer. Alright, sure. So therefore you would steal x amount from a thief, beat up a abuser, rape a rapist, burn down the home of an arsonist. Then it's fair, you've done back to them as they have to society. So to remove a dangerous individual from society through their death, by giving them a taste of their own medicine. What would you do with the rapist, the arsonist, the abuser once they've had theirs? Send them back into society, when you have no doubt they'll commit the crime again? Course not. You put them in jail.
Or, since they'll have already been punished, instead of tossing them in prison to fester and become part of prison culture, you honestly rehabilitate them. Besides, sending them back into society when we have no doubt they'll commit the crime again is exactly what we do now with the criminals you mentioned. I happen to think forcing a thief to pay back the amount stolen would be smart...Does jail not remove a threat from society? Is the purpose of law rehabilitation rather then destruction?
You have a very rosy opinion of the prison system. Rehab programs are the first to be cut under economic strain. Prisons right now (in the US anyway) are grossly over crowded and underfunded, so much so that prisons are becoming privatized, and being private means there is little to no action take to protect or rehabilitate prisoners. Prisoners aren't rehabilitated, they are simply chucked in and chucked out because that's the way the criminal-industrial system profits. The current US prison system is not set up to rehabilitate prisoners or put an end to crime, it's set up to ideally support the revenue the states earn from crime.Murder is a mortal sin, the taking of a life is never ever justifiable. But, if you get down to the nitty-gritty, isn't the doctor that administers the poison into a criminal's veins, or the person who pulls the switch for the electrical chair, just as much of a murderer? Murderers kill for their own justified reasons, which in all cases are false. But then those people involved in the death of this criminal, their justifiable reason is justice? Getting rid of a threat?
Mortal sin is a value judgment that not everyone holds to. The doctors who perform the executions are enacting the wishes of political bodies beyond themselves, political bodies which, according to our laws, have the social power to make this order. Their justifiable reason is we, the community, have deemed the accused's actions to be so heinous and irredeemable that he/she can no longer persist among society in any fashion. The execution is provoked by the guilty party's actions and justified by the judge and jury who made the conviction. Murder, as has been previously stated, is the taking of a life without provocation, unlawful, and premeditated. Execution is provoked (as has been explained) and lawful, and committed without malice.Aurora, you may say it is removing a threat from society. Yes. It is. As that person will never come back to harm another being. But is that justifiable? Isn't it the same if someone in a community went out with a hand gun and shot another person and claimed they were a threat to their family so it had to be done. They'll still go to jail, they'll still be murderers themselves despite this same reasoning. The killing of anyone is wrong, irrelevant of their reasoning or whether it's done by a person or a person working for the state.
And in a court of law, that person would be sent to jail, but would most likely not be given a death sentence. He would be punished even if he had removed a legitimate threat because there are other, legal avenues of dealing with the situation. You continue to see this issue in stark black and white, as if any crime which involves a murder or death is automatically a death row case. It is not. Every case is dependent on the situation and particulars of that case! It is always, always subjective.
Having the backing of the law, which is a social contract whereby the community of the governed gives power to the elected bodies, makes all the difference in the justification of taking a life. By our own legal code, the situation you present here and a death row execution are not the same thing. As I said before, you and I operate under different moralities, and in mine killing off a dangerous crazy bugger who has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to be a dangerous crazy bugger is morally acceptable.Not only this but the methods we use are known to go wrong. Becoming inhumane very quickly. Jimmy Lee Gray (1983) was put to death in the gas chamber. Eight minutes later, the gas was not killing him and Gray was still alive banging his head against a steel pipe.
Joseph Tafero, the electric chair, he remained alive for six minutes and as flames began shooting out of his head.
John Wayne Gacy was still alive for 18 minutes after he was given a lethal injection. Potassium chloride is inserted with three times the medical dosage. The process is difficult and a ridiculous amount of things could and have gone wrong. Even administering the drug too quickly stops the heart before the brain stops working, leading to seizure like reaction for several minutes and immense burning pain before the inmate subdues.
We kill beloved pets by lethal injection, why not detested criminals? Besides, if the person did something horrible enough to incur a death sentence, why should they get a peaceful death? Their victims sure didn't. This may be a harsh view, but its a view that exists.And that leads to the point that, what in the world do we do if they're innocent?
In the past 4 years, 17 people that were on death row were exonerated due to DNA evidence. Combined these people spent a combined 207 years in prison out of which 187 of them were on death row. And if you think about it, only 29 people were executed in 2010. These are people that were cleared before their sentence, who knows how many innocent men and women have been executed for crimes they haven't committed. What do you do then, how can you give them back their life, how can you take away the hurt you gave the families in the death of their loved one, how can you cure the emotional distress they endured in all the trails and the money they paid. What do you do then? Say oops and continue as is?
The past is the past, and we can't change what was done in it. We can only learn from it. Situations like this are the reason I think death sentences are given in haste, but it doesn't make me think the practice should be nationally abolished. A death sentence should be for the absolute worst of the worst, those clinically beyond rehabilitation who have no remorse for the crimes they willfully committed. And yes, I believe the judge and jury, informed by the testimony of licensed professionals, have the right to decide if the accused belongs in that category. Our laws and legal system give them that right.Capital punishment is ineffective. 29 people in 2010 were executed in the United States. As of 2008, 3,263 criminals were awaiting execution in the United States.
It's complex, expensive (far more so then life in jail.), and time-consuming appeals procedures mandated in some jurisdictions. The condemned spend years before the execution actually happens, the longest serving recently executed inmate served 33 years on death row before being executed in 2008. Not only that, a quarter of the deaths that occur on death row are from natural causes.
So make them wait to be killed, but they die in the waiting line? Why pay more when they could just rot until they died in regular, less expensive prison?
Which to me begs the question: why? Why is the process so long? I keep seeing the history of the lengthy process, but no clear reasons why it can take upwards of 30 years. The slowness of it is caused by exhausting every possible avenue to ensure guilt. Add to that, why do they need special prisons at all? What's the justification for separate housing?Death row itself violates just as many constitutional agreements as the criminal themselves did. Not only through the taking away of a person's (despite their actions) right to life. But sitting in a cell, awaiting your death is a form of mental cruelty and torture on a basis. Torture is in violation of many constitutional agreements, as well as the U.D.H.R you regard so causally. The mental illness that often inflicts those waiting on death row is called the death row phenomena which can then grow into death row syndrome. Inflicting further mental pressure on these criminals is in itself unconstitutional and the process could lead to claims of insanity, which is very possible, to which death row will be rendered even more useless. Because they drove all the wackos conscience of their actions crazy, therefore in law have to send them to jail.
This, however, we are in agreement on. If a man is convicted and sentenced to death in 1960, why why WHY wait until 2010 to carry out the sentence? If there is even any doubt in a case, if appeals are ongoing, there is no reason to place the accused in a special "death row" prison or to confine them according to a different timetable. Let them exist in normal prison while the lawyers deal with each other.
Yet on the flip side, if a murderer on death row is guilty and knows it, has been convicted, and yet keeps choosing to prolong the appeals, as is his/her right, whose responsibility is that, really? It's still being debated:(from 2009)
In the capital case, Thompson v. McNeil, No. 08-7369, two justices said the delay in executing William L. Thompson, convicted of a participating in the gruesome torture and murder of a woman in 1976, warranted attention from the court.
Justice John Paul Stevens, who has been increasingly vocal about his discomfort with the death penalty generally, said that Mr. Thompson’s confinement in “especially severe conditions” and two near-death experiences as executions were stayed at the last minute were dehumanizing.
“Executing defendants after such long delays is unacceptably cruel,” Justice Stevens wrote.
Justice Breyer added that Mr. Thompson’s accomplice may have been more culpable but did not receive the death penalty. At a resentencing hearing, a jury that heard evidence on this point recommended, 7 to 5, that Mr. Thompson be sentenced to death.
Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed with his two colleagues. Justice Thomas set out the details of the crime in vivid detail and said that Mr. Thompson, who had twice pleaded guilty, was the source of the delays and so should not be their beneficiary.
“It is the crime — and not the punishment imposed by the jury or the delay in petitioner’s execution — that was ‘unacceptably cruel,’ ” Justice Thomas wrote.
I read up on the oldest man to die on death row, and his is a very interesting story. He led a life of crime, was in and out of prison constantly, and was given ample, ample opportunity to change his life: he chose not to. He chose to be a criminal, he chose to fatally shoot people when he, an experienced criminal, could easily have shot to wound. The crime that got him the death sentence (a murder during a robbery; not his first murder) was committed when he was 62. Personally, even given his con-man, armed robbery, escaping from prison record, I don't believe a death sentence was justified, and after a certain point there's no point to keeping a death row inmate on death row. His story has been used to rile people up about the inhumanity of capital punishment because of his age and poor health when he died. However...look at the man's life. His last crime was at 62 after a lifetime of imprisonment. How many chances to change did he get? He could have chosen to redeem himself at any time, but instead he continued as an armed robber and murderer. I'm not bringing this up to prove that he "deserved" his sentence, because I've already stated that I don't believe he did. I'm bringing this up to show that sometimes prison isn't effective. And to pose a question: At what point does it stop being the legal system's responsibility to "fix" criminals and start being the criminal's responsibility to fix themselves?
As many of the examples make abundantly clear, criminal trials are never cut and dry, never black and white. Would it be more humane to keep our especially depraved killers in death row-like conditions for life, being driven slowly insane? Or should everyone be tossed into the same prison, irregardless of their crime? If you're going to advocate for ending one method of dealing with the most heinous criminals, what do you suggest in its place?
Damnit Aurora, I can't fall in love at such a young age! stop being so awesome and having my exact points of views!
Honestly, if we were to go with the "Eye-for-Eye" method then it should go like this.
I killed x amount of people with a rusty cheese grater and a LOT of time on my hands.
I can
A: Live the rest of my life in prison and towards the end of my years I get a death as painful as my victims'.
B: Accept a death as horrible as my victims'
Because, like someone said. Potassium Chloride can cause seizure like deaths right? Well what about the "Respectful Psychopaths" who killed their victims after giving them an injection that made it so they wouldn't feel a thing? so that his victims had a "Peaceful" death? Should his repsect not be repaid? I agree that he must be "Put-Down" for the sake of the community, but should we kill him like a feral beast through inhumane methods? or with the same peace and respect that he gave his victims?
Gender: