Death Penalty ok?

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Asinis

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Back in 2005 nine Australians aged between 18 and 28 decided that it would be a great idea to TRY to smuggle around $4 million dollars worth of Heroin out of Bali and into Australia... and they got caught in Bali, a country that punishes convicted drug smugglers with either life in prison or death by firing squad. It was announced within the last couple of days that the two ringleaders would be executed before the end of this month.

Personally i think the death penalty is a bit harsh in this case, and the main question I want to ask is... If at all, when is the death penalty ok? If so, for what crime should someone be sentenced to death?

I live in a country that has no Death Penalty, the concept is Alien to me and I dont know whether to tackle this question with cold logic or emotion. I suppose its also subjective, i could easily denounce the death penalty from my comfortable room, where I can see its barbarism. On the other hand, if my Wife or sister was raped and murdered I'd be baying for blood and I know I would.
 
I don't think the death penalty should exist, because it's irreversible. There have been plenty of cases where people sentenced to death have been proven innocent after their sentence.

Edit: And you should probably start labeling these threads as debates or discussions.
 
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Doesn't solve anything.
Torture however...

Keep it brief.
 
Death penalty thread, eh? :worms:

Anyway, I'm generally pretty far on the liberal side of the political spectrum, but this is one area where I strongly deviate from what most liberals believe. I wholeheartedly support the death penalty, but only for certain crimes. Drug smuggling is not one of them. The crimes that should be punished with death are those that show that the person is an extreme danger to others and is not fit to ever return to society. Throwing someone in a cell forever is just stupid. If you're going to say "nope, you're done, you don't get to be part of society any more" you should just go all the way and kill them.

That said, I have a fairly short list of crimes which I think should be punished by death, and they all come with the caveat that such sentences should only be handed out once extremely strict burdens of proof are met by the prosecution that leaves no doubt in the mind of those deciding the verdict; in jury systems this should only be on the table if every single jury found the person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, for example. First off is premeditated murder, because if you willfully murder someone then you're clearly a danger to others and should be put down. Premeditated attempted murder should also be punished with death, because even if they don't succeed the fact remains that they planned and set out to kill someone, so they lose their right to live with the civilized people. Similarly, conspiracy to commit murder (such as hiring a hit man) should also get a death sentence. Rape should also be a capital crime, because if you're willing to do that to another person with all the horrible psychological trauma it causes then you've proven yourself far too dangerous to society to remain alive. Child molestation goes on this list as well, for similar reasons as rape. Oh, and treason I suppose, because treason is always on the list for places with capital punishment.

That's it, six items. Three of them are for doing or attempting the worst kinds of murder, two are for doing monstrous damage to another person, and the last is the old standby. I can't think of anything else for which I would support a death penalty. Drug smuggling doesn't deserve it, in my opinion. Bali is a little ridiculous.
 
Where it is absolutely obvious that someone committed something as egregious as murder, with absolutely irrevocable evidence displaying their guilt? (ex: A literal bus filled with witnesses or video camera footage or et cetera.) Eliminate them. Note, however, my key words: Only when evidence is absolutely irrefutable.

They threw away their right to exist when they took away someone else's right to exist. I don't want my tax money going to pay for them to eat and sleep for the rest of their lives in prison. I don't care how horrible that prison is, just kill them and spend my tax money on people who are actually redeemable, like petty thieves. I'm also of the opinion that repeat offenders for rapists, especially where it involves children, should result in the death penalty: If they repeatedly commit the same vile act, they are not fit to be living in society and so for the benefit of society they should be removed before they can inevitable commit the same crime again.

Execution for drug running is too extreme though. The punishment has to fit the crime, death for murder makes sense. Death for getting high?... Uh... Not really.
 
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Where is that Gandalf quote....

Ah, here we go.
Ahem

"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

I feel like that covers my side pretty nicely so I'ma ollie outie.
 
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I pretty much agree with your choices there Jorick.

Imagine this if you will.... in a theoretical nation if convicted of Murder, Rape or pedophilia your life becomes automatically forfeit and you instantly become the property (With no legal rights as a human being) of your government. Once your life is forfeit your government has the right to sell you to medical companies and research facilities for clinical testing instead of killing innocent animals. Whats the point in killing Death Row inmates if we can use them to save a couple of monkeys?
 
I pretty much agree with your choices there Jorick.

Imagine this if you will.... in a theoretical nation if convicted of Murder, Rape or pedophilia your life automatically forfeit and you instantly become the property (With no legal rights as a human being) of your government. Once your life is forfeit your government has the right to sell you to medical companies and research facilities for clinical testing instead of killing innocent animals. Whats the point in killing Death Row inmates if we can use them to save a couple of monkeys?
That's essentially the death penalty either way, though research purposes are strictly more useful, it's also less humane a way to die.

Still. It works, and I'd support it for death row inmates. Maybe give them the choice of either execution or clinical trial lab rat.

I'm just waiting for this thread to explode. No offense but this is kind of a boiling topic. :ferret:
 
I pretty much agree with your choices there Jorick.

Imagine this if you will.... in a theoretical nation if convicted of Murder, Rape or pedophilia your life becomes automatically forfeit and you instantly become the property (With no legal rights as a human being) of your government. Once your life is forfeit your government has the right to sell you to medical companies and research facilities for clinical testing instead of killing innocent animals. Whats the point in killing Death Row inmates if we can use them to save a couple of monkeys?

Oh my goodness
 
Ok its a little controversial, but I'd rather see a rapist tested with various strains of flesh eating viruses than a dog. Its inhuman to test drugs and new surgery techniques on a convicted murder but its A ok to do whatever we want to animals
 
Ok its a little controversial, but I'd rather see a rapist tested with various strains of flesh eating viruses than a dog. Its inhuman to test drugs and new surgery techniques on a convicted murder but its A ok to do whatever we want to animals
Because animals aren't people and there's necessary evils for the greater good of mankind, but I'd honestly say this is stretching into some really sketchy philosophically morally complex shit. So maybe keep it to one extremely controversial topic at a time, no? :ferret:
 
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I find the prospect of the state regulating the right to life abhorrent. The government should not be able to decide that I deserve to die.
 
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The only people I think deserve the death sentence are serial killers, mass murderers, rapists, child molesters and pedophiles, because those acts are unforgivable and therefore they deserve a permanent fate.
 
I pretty much agree with your choices there Jorick.

Imagine this if you will.... in a theoretical nation if convicted of Murder, Rape or pedophilia your life becomes automatically forfeit and you instantly become the property (With no legal rights as a human being) of your government. Once your life is forfeit your government has the right to sell you to medical companies and research facilities for clinical testing instead of killing innocent animals. Whats the point in killing Death Row inmates if we can use them to save a couple of monkeys?

Death penalty isn't about revenge or justice. Its about removing dangerous entities from society. Forcing a convict to become property is not only silly, but also irrelevant to why we do what we do.
 
Death penalty does seem to be a harsh punishment for smuggling drugs, but I believe it should exist. Our society suffers from these horrible delusions that every human being is redeemable and it often leads to bizarre situations where criminals are essentially treated better than their victims. This is wrong. Murderers - those premeditated and murdered in cold blood - do not deserve second chances. Child molesters, rapists, perpetrators of war crimes and terrorists also don't deserve them; those aren't people who just 'screwed up' or 'made some mistakes'. They're thoroughly fucked up and there's a chance they will repeat their crimes once released. Isn't it a logical conclusion to remove them from society if they obviously can not work within it via actively harming innocents?

Of course, death penalty should only be applied if there's an irreversible evidence against the criminal. That's obviously hard to achieve, but yeah.
 
I pretty much agree with your choices there Jorick.

Imagine this if you will.... in a theoretical nation if convicted of Murder, Rape or pedophilia your life becomes automatically forfeit and you instantly become the property (With no legal rights as a human being) of your government. Once your life is forfeit your government has the right to sell you to medical companies and research facilities for clinical testing instead of killing innocent animals. Whats the point in killing Death Row inmates if we can use them to save a couple of monkeys?
Dude, no. There's a huge difference between deciding someone is too dangerous to remain among the living and torturing/experimenting on them. One is punishment for a crime, the other is wholly ethically and morally wrong. Maybe offer the choice, as Brovo said, but the default execution method should be quick and efficient. A couple bullets to the head would do nicely, but lethal injection is fine too.
I'm strongly against it in all cases. A life sentence without parole is a much less barbaric alternative, also cheaper to the taxpayer.

There's many reasons against it.
All the relative cost analysis things I can find look only at the direct cost of the court proceedings, not the total cost of incarceration. If you take into account the money it costs to keep a person incarcerated for a year things get less clear. Say it costs about $40,000 per year (which is a slightly low figure, from what I've seen in brief research I just did) to keep an adult male incarcerated, which includes everything from food and clothing to utilities and medical treatment and paying prison staff. Let's say it costs $600,000 more to do a death penalty trial than one seeking just life in prison (some states say it's as low as a ~200k difference, some as high as about a million, so I split the difference and went high with it). Given those rough figures, if someone serving life in prison gets thrown in jail on the same date as a guy on death row, then death row guy gets executed and life sentence guy lives 15 more years, the costs have balanced out. If life sentence guy lives longer than that, his case and punishment have cost more than the death sentence.

However, the cost argument is never really a good one for either side to use. Administering justice is worth the expense to those who feel these people deserve death, and life is priceless to most folks who oppose the death penalty so it seems kind of awkward to be arguing over cash values. It's just never a good time for either side. This ought to be a question of what is right, not what is cheapest. The cheapest solution to crime is to summarily execute all suspected criminals with a single bullet (less than a dollar each!) and not even bothering with anything like a trial. Let's just avoid the money angle and stick to morals and philosophy, eh? :P
 
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Did you mean to mark this as a debate? I figure it's probably a good idea to know if it's one or not before people start debating, which they will regardless with a topic like this.
 
Back in 2005 nine Australians aged between 18 and 28 decided that it would be a great idea to TRY to smuggle around $4 million dollars worth of Heroin out of Bali and into Australia... and they got caught in Bali, a country that punishes convicted drug smugglers with either life in prison or death by firing squad. It was announced within the last couple of days that the two ringleaders would be executed before the end of this month.

Personally i think the death penalty is a bit harsh in this case, and the main question I want to ask is... If at all, when is the death penalty ok? If so, for what crime should someone be sentenced to death?

I live in a country that has no Death Penalty, the concept is Alien to me and I dont know whether to tackle this question with cold logic or emotion. I suppose its also subjective, i could easily denounce the death penalty from my comfortable room, where I can see its barbarism. On the other hand, if my Wife or sister was raped and murdered I'd be baying for blood and I know I would.
We're talking about a country that has always been noted for their lack of human rights. In this case, the punishment doesn't fit the crime. But I do believe in the need for the Death Penalty. Where it's warranted.
 
If someone commits a serious enough crime and the evidence is irrefutable, I think the death pentality is grand.

That said, I strongly believe in rehabilitation of criminals and there's a huge difference between someone who murders in a drunken stupour compared to say Timothy McVeigh who plotted and executed a high profile terrorist attack that claimed dozens of lives.

If somebody is beyond redemption and what they did eliminates all doubt that they are too dangerous to be allowed free again, I'm for it. Pretty much everything else, I think imprisonment is a much more humane and preferable solution. As mentioned before, it is irreversible and there's been several instances of people having their names cleared after years in jail. Clearly, those are people you wouldn't want to wrongly convict, let alone execute.

But yeah, most criminals I think can be returned to society if they're given rehabilitation programs and basically treated like human beings. If someone's behind bars for years and is treated like an animal with no real preparation or incentive to try to reintegrate in society, they're very likely to reoffend, and maybe even something worse than what they went into jail for in the first place.

Remember, the incarceration is the punishment for crimes, not treating humans like scumbags. And a lot of people in jail simply made a mistake. It's easy to lose sight of that.
 
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