170 replies to this topic

[Mr Walker]

Medium Brown, on 06 February 2013 - 10:52 PM, said:

The death penalty for treason is some archaic relic from the Cold War.
It's all spy rings,letter drops and clandestine meetings on park benches avoiding eye contact.
That is my immediate impression of it but I can't see what role it'll play today.

However the death penalty for drugs is a trickier one to explain away.
Yes, drug smugglers are peddlars of death and in a way callous.
But you don't have a choice while your getting murdered but you do when you take drugs.
It's a supply and demand market and if you don't demand you won't get supplied.
It's as simple as that,unless the drug smugglers and pimps are forcing the heroin inside the victims veins.
Then it becomes an ideal candidate to put forward for the death penalty.
But my pacifist nature is stopping me from fully dedicating myself to it.

I've already explained the reasons why I'm lukewarm for the death penalty by killing someone in my first post.
Surely you have heard about Colin Stagg and Barry George's plight.

While i would prefer certainty in sentencing I do not think some mistakes are a good enough reason to stop capital punishment.

It is not true that losing one innocent life makes capital punishment wrong, IF capital punishment also saves many innocent lives who would otherwise be killed by criminals or by the consequences of certain types of crime such as human trafficking and drug distribution. Once we start "going to water" on crime and punishment, we end up with a society in which no one can live safely and those who tend to be criminals more freely follow their tendencies. Fear of consequence deters many many people from breaking the law even if does not deter all of us.

Ps modern espionage may include giving up both miitary secrets but also cyber ones, allowing a country to crash your economic and other systems at will. China has, and uses, a huge espionage network overseas for both industrial advantage, and for cyber warfare.

[spud the mackem]

Just find a rope ,a hoss, and a tree branch, end of story....Oh Clint Eastwood survived ! in "Hang 'em High".but I guess Clint is a bit special.

[Beckys_Mom]

spud the mackem, on 08 February 2013 - 09:51 AM, said:

Just find a rope ,a hoss, and a tree branch, end of story....Oh Clint Eastwood survived ! in "Hang 'em High".but I guess Clint is a bit special.

My daughter takes home books from her school library every Monday and reads them throughout the week to write about them.. One of the books she took home was called - 100 facts about Pirates... It mentioned a real life pirate who was sentenced to death by hanging.. They hung him, and later took him down thinking he was dead... Someone noticed he was still breathing, but they didn't have the heart to hang him a second time, so they let him go.....Darn it, I can't remember his name, and I can't go look it up because she has already left that book back and taken a couple more out since...

[ali smack]

I don't agree with death penalty because for a number of reasons.
They may get the wrong person.
Also it doesn't make sense to say someone should get killed if they've killed someone, when the person killing them has killed more people.

I can understand why people agree with it in the cases of child killers, cannibals, serial killers.
Because there filth who don't deserve to live but problem is if you get wrong people.
I'd rather lock someone up in a jail forever, they suffer more for there crimes because they know they can never get out.
if there killed, they don't really have time to suffer for there crimes.

[Blood_Sacrifice]

Generally against, but not exclusively.

[spud the mackem]

Beckys_Mom, on 08 February 2013 - 10:46 AM, said:

My daughter takes home books from her school library every Monday and reads them throughout the week to write about them.. One of the books she took home was called - 100 facts about Pirates... It mentioned a real life pirate who was sentenced to death by hanging.. They hung him, and later took him down thinking he was dead... Someone noticed he was still breathing, but they didn't have the heart to hang him a second time, so they let him go.....Darn it, I can't remember his name, and I can't go look it up because she has already left that book back and taken a couple more out since...

  Was it Cap't Henry Morgan,one of the most famous Pirates,who was eventually pardoned and lived to an old age.

[glorybebe]

libstaK, on 07 February 2013 - 09:58 AM, said:

Totally agree, give the life serving crim the option, some would take death I think.  As to my own views, I am against, just one innocent put to death is one too many.  We have already had 100's too many and there are parts of the world where death is a summary punishment dished up for ridiculously minor offences or things that should not even warrant being offences.

But, IMO, with new ways of dicovering evidence, this point can be moot.  In cases of serial murderers, serial pedophiles and serial rapists, the evidence is there to prove their guilt.  Kill them.  Don't be cruel and sink to their level by torturing them to death, let people heal by ending their existance.

[libstaK]

glorybebe, on 09 February 2013 - 07:20 AM, said:

But, IMO, with new ways of dicovering evidence, this point can be moot.  In cases of serial murderers, serial pedophiles and serial rapists, the evidence is there to prove their guilt.  Kill them.  Don't be cruel and sink to their level by torturing them to death, let people heal by ending their existance.

Quenching people's thirst for vengeance is not going to heal them, just make them feel better for as long as it takes them to realise they have lowered themselves to his/her level.

[Frank Merton]

libstaK, on 09 February 2013 - 08:03 AM, said:

Quenching people's thirst for vengeance is not going to heal them, just make them feel better for as long as it takes them to realise they have lowered themselves to his/her level.

Maybe you could talk a little more about where the desire for vengeance comes from and how it differs from our desire for justice.

[Mr Walker]

libstaK, on 09 February 2013 - 08:03 AM, said:

Quenching people's thirst for vengeance is not going to heal them, just make them feel better for as long as it takes them to realise they have lowered themselves to his/her level.

I do not consider legal capital punishment/ execution, after a trial within a democratic state, to be anywhere near the "same level" as a person who beats and kills women and children, or murders other people who did nothing to deserve their deaths.

I do not even consider it to be near the same level as raping a woman or child or doing serious harm to other innocent people. There is no "divine" or other right to life. Our lives from conception to old age are held in the hands of the society we live in, and  our continued survival quite rightly depends on our behaviour within our society, not on  any inaliaenable,  or god given, right to life no matter what we do to other people.

As many people here have pointed out, painless execution is a mercy, and far less grievous than the man who continually beats his wife near to death, leaving her, after many years, with every rib and most other bones in her body broken. (And by the way, he was an FBI agent, and got away with it for so long because of the "fellowship" of law enforcemnt officers, and the fear he (like most such men) instilled in his wife if she thought of informing on him..

Edited by Mr Walker, 09 February 2013 - 08:14 AM.

[libstaK]

Mr Walker, on 09 February 2013 - 08:13 AM, said:

I do not consider legal capital punishment/ execution, after a trial within a democratic state, to be anywhere near the "same level" as a person who beats and kills women and children, or murders other people who did nothing to deserve their deaths.

Yet it is the taking of a human life - it is an eye for an eye.  Someone always relishes the moment that life is extinguished, be it the victim's family or members of society who as an example scream "burn Bundy burn" or whoever the latest heinous serial killer at the "gallows" is.  Much of society's views about the death penalty are coloured by vengeance, we can't just cover that up.

Quote

I do not even consider it to be near the same level as raping a woman or child or doing serious harm to other innocent people. There is no "divine" or other right to life. Our lives from conception to old age are held in the hands of the society we live in, and  our continued survival quite rightly depends on our behaviour within our society, not on  any inaliaenable,  or god given, right to life no matter what we do to other people.

No it certainly does not appear that way.  The road to hell is paved with good intentions though, we can always find someone to compare what we are doing and thinking to and say "I am no where near as bad for thinking as I do as that person was for acting as they do".  Doesn't change the fact that we have found within ourselves the justification to take a life in cold blood, even after years of consideration and appeal we as a society turn around and say, nope still want that life to end, there is something inherently wrong with that, many can't quite put their finger on what exactly is wrong, heck often I can't but it grates like fingernails on a blackboard to clinically as a society agree to someone's death when what we are seeking justice for is how wrong it was for that someone to kill someone else.

The many many cases of innocents being put to death, not just in the western world which has robust justice systems, but the world over for what crimes an emotionally charged populace chooses to believe is enough to snuff out another's life over are a pretty strong sign of the slippery slope believing in the death penalty leads to.  People will make the decision to end a life based on how emotionally invested they are by the crime that was done - from the Jury, the Judge and Prosecution onwards - that's what prosecutions do, appeal to people's emotions of abhorrence and hatred to enrage them to the point of believing death is justice.

Quote

As many people here have pointed out, painless execution is a mercy, and far less grievous than the man who continually beats his wife near to death, leaving her, after many years, with every rib and most other bones in her body broken. (And by the way, he was an FBI agent, and got away with it for so long because of the "fellowship" of law enforcemnt officers, and the fear he (like most such men) instilled in his wife if she thought of informing on him..

People do horrible things, blood lust and rage is a common curse in society.  It is proof of how uncivilised as a society we truly are.  Would this FBI agent be the horror he was if he was not enabled by the societal sense of "fellowship" he experienced? Is he a product of what is wrong with society or born "abhorrent" in his mindset?

Is he any less a danger for being locked away for life than for being killed?  Is justice not served when we deny people the liberty to move amongst society to continue their crimes?  The difference is no-one nor society as a whole had to entertain the ending of a life as one of the decisions that they have to then live with in their lives.  I would spare anyone that, even if they are too emotionally charged to realise what it is that they are being spared.

[Beckys_Mom]

spud the mackem, on 08 February 2013 - 10:36 PM, said:

Was it Cap't Henry Morgan,one of the most famous Pirates,who was eventually pardoned and lived to an old age.

It could well have been him, as I said, I can't check it out because Becky has left the book back in school, and taken more books out since...

[Mr Right Wing]

Medium Brown, on 07 February 2013 - 06:20 PM, said:

Your having a giraffe.
You get the death penalty for witchcraft.
How can they justify putting Wiccans in front of a firing squad.
There's nothing at all satanic about what they do but tbh I thnk they are turning a blind eye.
That law if it exists is even more archaic than the treason one.
However on the flip side there is proper devil worshipping going on and black arts being practised.
There's also the imported practice from Africa called Muta.

Btw did you get that five year thing from Bronson's failed rehabilation in prison?

The last British person to be executed for witchcraft, and this may surprise you, was during WW2.

[Mr Right Wing]

Frank Merton, on 08 February 2013 - 08:08 AM, said:

The concept of punishment is inextricably linked with our concept of justice.  Indeed, without punishment it is almost impossible to relieve guilt.

Whether what society does when it puts someone in jail or fines them or executes them is "punishment" is arguable.  If it is deterrence, the difference is indistinguishable.  If it is for rehabilitation, then society doesn't seem to take its responsibility very seriously, probably because efforts at rehabilitation are so universally unsuccessful.  If it is just to take the criminal out of circulation until they grow up, it does seem to work, except that so often the criminal learns to be a criminal while in jail.

I dont believe in prison at all.

Minor Crime - Fine them
Moderate crime or Repeat Offender - Torture but dont leave any lasting damage
Serious crime - Torture to death

Pain is far better at correcting peoples behaviour and punishing them than taking away their freedom. If you burn yourself on the iron you dont touch it again do you?

[Beckys_Mom]

Mr Right Wing, on 09 February 2013 - 11:52 AM, said:

I dont believe in prison at all.

Minor Crime - Fine them
Moderate crime or Repeat Offender - Torture but dont leave any lasting damage
Serious crime - Torture to death

Pain is far better at correcting peoples behaviour and punishing them than taking away their freedom. If you burn yourself on the iron you dont touch it again do you?

And what do you class as moderate crime?