Death Penalty - News, Thoughts, Info

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Organicbutch

I'm totally for the Death Penalty although I think it's an easy way out for the person that committed the crimes. People that hurt kids and shit get off too easy for me with the death penalty.

So you don't have a problem with torture?

Cheers
Aj

[Ebon]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

So you don't have a problem with torture?

Cheers
Aj

No not at all. For people that hurt children.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Organicbutch

No not at all. For people that hurt children.

Hmmm...what about rape? Should rapists be tortured? What about murderers? What about terrorists? What about people who don't molest children but, say, beat them? Break shovel handles around their ass or make them walk into a hospital on a broken leg?

Can you describe to me how what you are describing is justice and not simply revenge?

Cheers
Aj

[Ebon]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Hmmm...what about rape? Should rapists be tortured? What about murderers? What about terrorists? What about people who don't molest children but, say, beat them? Break shovel handles around their ass or make them walk into a hospital on a broken leg?

Can you describe to me how what you are describing is justice and not simply revenge?

Cheers
Aj

I didn't describe anything you did. But people that molest children should feel pain. I have no sympathy for them at all.

In the case of murder it depends.
I think male rapists should have their genitals cut off.
Someone beating their children is a different story.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Organicbutch

I didn't describe anything you did. But people that molest children should feel pain. I have no sympathy for them at all.

In the case of murder it depends.
I think male rapists should have their genitals cut off.
Someone beating their children is a different story.

Have I expressed sympathy for them? No. This isn't about sympathy, this isn't about them, this is about US. This is about what kind of society we choose to be.

Pardon me for saying so, but I think torture is barbaric. I think that prisons that are no better than medieval dungeons are barbaric. I think that trial by ordeal is barbaric. I think that vendetta is barbaric. I think that any society that does not torture is a better society, a more humane society, a society less likely to turn in on itself and start doing gratuitously horrible things to itself.

People think that my opposition to the death penalty has something to do with sympathy or softness on crime. That isn't it at all. While I like individual members of our species and while I am quite impressed with what our species can do when we put our minds to it, I'm very realistic about our species and we are NOT a nice species. We aren't as nasty and horrible as we could be, but we are nowhere near a pacific or fair-minded species. To me, torture and execution, the pursuit of revenge instead of justice, is in keeping with our nature. But as Kate Hepburn says so memorably in The African Queen, 'Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to rise above'. We do not and cannot have a perfect justice system, so in the absence of such, I think we should be as realistic about who we are--as a species and as a culture--and if we do that, I am drawn to the conclusion that putting the execution and torture in the hands of our species is always, at its very best, a risky venture. Putting it in the hands of our culture which seems to be positively drunk with blood-lust (there are enough murders *per year* in the United States to constitute a respectable death toll in low-intensity guerilla war) seems to me to be asking for trouble.

When torture stopped being part of law enforcement (until recently, that is) we became a better culture, a more civilized culture, more deserving of thinking of ourselves as a great nation. When we reach a point when we care more about justice than we do vengeance and when we, as a culture, tread carefully around the death penalty, recognizing what a solemn responsibility it is to execute another, then not only will be an even better culture we will be even more right to consider ourselves a great nation. Just as the only people who truly can be trusted with high and powerful office are those who don't want it, I think that the only cultures that can be trusted with execution are those that don't want to execute people. The United States *wants* to. We want vengeance. We want our pound of flesh. Whatever that is, it isn't justice.

Cheers
Aj

[Gemme]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Have I expressed sympathy for them? No. This isn't about sympathy, this isn't about them, this is about US. This is about what kind of society we choose to be.

Pardon me for saying so, but I think torture is barbaric. I think that prisons that are no better than medieval dungeons are barbaric. I think that trial by ordeal is barbaric. I think that vendetta is barbaric. I think that any society that does not torture is a better society, a more humane society, a society less likely to turn in on itself and start doing gratuitously horrible things to itself.

People think that my opposition to the death penalty has something to do with sympathy or softness on crime. That isn't it at all. While I like individual members of our species and while I am quite impressed with what our species can do when we put our minds to it, I'm very realistic about our species and we are NOT a nice species. We aren't as nasty and horrible as we could be, but we are nowhere near a pacific or fair-minded species. To me, torture and execution, the pursuit of revenge instead of justice, is in keeping with our nature. But as Kate Hepburn says so memorably in The African Queen, 'Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to rise above'. We do not and cannot have a perfect justice system, so in the absence of such, I think we should be as realistic about who we are--as a species and as a culture--and if we do that, I am drawn to the conclusion that putting the execution and torture in the hands of our species is always, at its very best, a risky venture. Putting it in the hands of our culture which seems to be positively drunk with blood-lust (there are enough murders *per year* in the United States to constitute a respectable death toll in low-intensity guerilla war) seems to me to be asking for trouble.

When torture stopped being part of law enforcement (until recently, that is) we became a better culture, a more civilized culture, more deserving of thinking of ourselves as a great nation. When we reach a point when we care more about justice than we do vengeance and when we, as a culture, tread carefully around the death penalty, recognizing what a solemn responsibility it is to execute another, then not only will be an even better culture we will be even more right to consider ourselves a great nation. Just as the only people who truly can be trusted with high and powerful office are those who don't want it, I think that the only cultures that can be trusted with execution are those that don't want to execute people. The United States *wants* to. We want vengeance. We want our pound of flesh. Whatever that is, it isn't justice.

Cheers
Aj

So what do you suggest? Locking the criminals up until they die? I'm genuinely curious what would be acceptable punishment for someone that has raped a child or murdered an innocent man because he took too long to serve him beer (going back to Nat's thread) or beat a woman to the point that she's now a vegetable and has very little, if any at all, brain function?

I hear what is unacceptable but what would be a better option?

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Gemme

So what do you suggest? Locking the criminals up until they die? I'm genuinly curious what would be acceptable punishment for someone that has raped a child or murdered an innocent man because he took too long to serve him beer (going back to Nat's thread) or beat a woman to the point that she's now a vegetable and has very little, if any at all, brain function?

I hear what is unacceptable but what would be a better option?

Yes, lock them up someplace where they will never again walk free. Keep them in a room where there is enough room for them stand up and lay down. Let their remaining years be a monotonous cycle of getting up, back breaking work, and food that sustains, and let the only thing they have to look forward to is the surety that the next day will contain only the same. Let this place be somewhere from which there is no possibility of escape.* Let them know that barring actual acquittal, they will never again be free and they will die in this prison, alone, nothing more than a number and an entry in a database. Let them know all of that.

You can only kill someone once. If you imprison them, however, you do that for every miserable and monotonous day that they live. Prison does not have to be medieval dungeon filled with the screams of the tortured to be a horrible place. You can create a prison that is filled with such sheer mind-numbing monotony, devoid of creativity in any form, that anyone who had to live in that environment, day after day, year after year, would come in short order to pray for death. If after a time, they wish to kill themselves either you let them or if you really believe that they should truly suffer, then medically intervene, going to whatever heroic efforts you think appropriate, to keep them alive. Let them live with whatever scars they leave themselves, but do not let them die. When, in the fullness of time, their body starts to break down their fate can be decided one of two ways. If, say, they have cancer let the disease take its course. Most forms of cancer, at the end-game, are horrible ways to go. If, on the other hand, they have a heart attack and, again, their suffering is something you relish revive them. Do not fix their heart, but do not let them die. So, for instance, if we are talking about someone who is arrested in their thirties they may be looking at another thirty, forty, possibly fifty years in prison. They have longed for death as the only possible surcease of the soul-killing, mind-numbing, unchanging, routine of monotony. And now, after decades of waiting they finally think that their meeting with Death has finally come and their one means of escape has opened up to them and you snatch it away.

You know what the most devious part of this is? You cannot even give them something to hate. This prison does not go out of its way to make the inmates lives miserable. No one is tortured, not in any conventional sense of the term. But they are cut off from the things that make us human. They need no books or exercise. They need no facilitation of their religion. They need no visitors, no contact with the outside world except their lawyers if some new evidence comes to light. The guards in this prison would, as far as possible, be removed from them so that the prisoners do not even have that contact. There are no recreation facilities, no sports. No art. No music. No games. No cards. No cigarettes. If it is not absolutely required to maintain metabolic functions at a nominal capacity, it is forbidden. I am not talking about an evil place, I am talking about a place that is it to be absolutely and completely impersonal. They will never again feel anything like human warmth.

The prison I am talking about is like exile but without even the hope that you could find another tribe.

If someone does something inhuman, let them live out the rest of their days under conditions that are as far removed from human as is possible. If it were ever possible to completely automate the place so that there need not be human guards *inside* the facility (while still being outside to prevent anyone from escaping) all the better.

Whatever you might want to say about me, having sympathy for the worst of criminals is not it.

*(If lifting out of the gravity well ever becomes inexpensive, I would suggest putting prisons on the moon. There is no possibility of escape, any attempt would bring the absolute certainty of death one way or another--where can you run? )

Cheers
Aj

[Ebon]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Have I expressed sympathy for them? No. This isn't about sympathy, this isn't about them, this is about US. This is about what kind of society we choose to be.

Pardon me for saying so, but I think torture is barbaric. I think that prisons that are no better than medieval dungeons are barbaric. I think that trial by ordeal is barbaric. I think that vendetta is barbaric. I think that any society that does not torture is a better society, a more humane society, a society less likely to turn in on itself and start doing gratuitously horrible things to itself.

People think that my opposition to the death penalty has something to do with sympathy or softness on crime. That isn't it at all. While I like individual members of our species and while I am quite impressed with what our species can do when we put our minds to it, I'm very realistic about our species and we are NOT a nice species. We aren't as nasty and horrible as we could be, but we are nowhere near a pacific or fair-minded species. To me, torture and execution, the pursuit of revenge instead of justice, is in keeping with our nature. But as Kate Hepburn says so memorably in The African Queen, 'Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to rise above'. We do not and cannot have a perfect justice system, so in the absence of such, I think we should be as realistic about who we are--as a species and as a culture--and if we do that, I am drawn to the conclusion that putting the execution and torture in the hands of our species is always, at its very best, a risky venture. Putting it in the hands of our culture which seems to be positively drunk with blood-lust (there are enough murders *per year* in the United States to constitute a respectable death toll in low-intensity guerilla war) seems to me to be asking for trouble.

When torture stopped being part of law enforcement (until recently, that is) we became a better culture, a more civilized culture, more deserving of thinking of ourselves as a great nation. When we reach a point when we care more about justice than we do vengeance and when we, as a culture, tread carefully around the death penalty, recognizing what a solemn responsibility it is to execute another, then not only will be an even better culture we will be even more right to consider ourselves a great nation. Just as the only people who truly can be trusted with high and powerful office are those who don't want it, I think that the only cultures that can be trusted with execution are those that don't want to execute people. The United States *wants* to. We want vengeance. We want our pound of flesh. Whatever that is, it isn't justice.

Cheers
Aj

There are certain situation's where people should rise above I totally agree with that. I think that revenge can also be justice. Especially if somebody does something horrific and doesn't feel any remorse from it. They obviously don't understand the difference between right and wrong. They forgot to pick up their conscience on the way to birth. People that don't want to forgive themselves in order to get forgiveness.

Terrorists are different because I think most of them are made up to scare the general public into giving away their freedoms when really they are defending their land or homes. I'm sure Native Americans were considered terrorists at some point in time.

What justice is to you and justice is to me are different. Let's agree to disagree.

The Barbarian

[ravfem]

i remember debating the death penalty in college. We did a lot of research, read about people, almost always black, who had been put on death row and later found to be innocent.

More recently (cause i'm old like that), they actually have tv programs showing inside prisons, and interviews with the inmates, some of who are on death row. Definitely makes them more human and less killing machines...usually.

There are no easy, clean answers. There never have been and there never will be. Prison and the threat of being put to death doesn't deter the mind of someone who is mentally unwell. Nothing deters that sort of mind.

Prison, which is supposed to be for punishment and rehabilitation, is rarely ever successful. Recidivism rates and overcrowding prove that.

Personally, if someone has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be a child molester, i am so ok with the death penalty. Also for people with diagnosed sociopathic personality disorder who have killed and will continue to kill....again, i am ok with them dying.

The proof has to be solid. Not circumstantial, not even "just" the words of the person molested. But solid, viable proof. If the proof is lacking, no death.

Like Gemme mentioned, once i know for a fact someone has done something like this, i no longer look at them with any sort of compassion...i grow "cold" quickly.

Is it right? Is it moral? Is it my decision? *shrug*

It's just my opinion.

i wonder what the alternative is? What would be better? Obviously, America has some messed up legal systems, laws and ways.

What are some viable alternatives for the mentally insane who rape and kill? Hole them up in institutions for the rest of their lives? We don't want to give more money to help our brothers & sisters who are out of work and starving, living on the street....we're prepared to give more money for more institutions?

And then there is the whole argument regarding the "quality of life" in our institutions....so to improve that, it takes more money. That we don't want to give.

What is the answer?

[dykeumentary]

Well since the conversation has turned to "what do you suggest?" I suggest that stop killing people until our civilized society has figured out a rational and compassionate response to violent criminials. And I suggest we divert the entire war budget to solving this problem.

[Gemme]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

*snip* I'm not talking about a case where someone *actually* committed the crime, I'm talking about a case where someone *didn't* commit the crime but are executed none-the-less.

Cheers
Aj

I was referencing situations in which the person, regardless of color, gender, or religion, has been proven guilty.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Gemme

I was referencing situations in which the person, regardless of color, gender, or religion, has been proven guilty.

Issues of whether the United States exhibits the cultural maturity to actually exercise the death penalty to the side, my concern is not that we will execute the right people, it's that we will execute the wrong people. No one who is not convicted of a crime faces the death penalty, the problem is that in about a third of those cases it turns out the wrong person was convicted. As inconvenient as those cases are for proponents of the death penalty they should concern us and my view of the death penalty is seen through the lens of wrongful conviction and disparate treatment.

When we don't abstract this out but place it in the context of the real world, what we are talking about is a legal system that, left to its own devices, will kill black at up to four times the rate of white men holding every other relevant factor constant. When THAT is corrected and a black man is no more likely to receive the death penalty than a white man, I might be persuadable but at present, given the reality of the American criminal justice system as it is and not as we might like it to be I know that what we are talking about is a system that will fall most heavily on black and Hispanic men.

Cheers
Aj

[Naneegirl]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Issues of whether the United States exhibits the cultural maturity to actually exercise the death penalty to the side, my concern is not that we will execute the right people, it's that we will execute the wrong people. No one who is not convicted of a crime faces the death penalty, the problem is that in about a third of those cases it turns out the wrong person was convicted. As inconvenient as those cases are for proponents of the death penalty they should concern us and my view of the death penalty is seen through the lens of wrongful conviction and disparate treatment.

When we don't abstract this out but place it in the context of the real world, what we are talking about is a legal system that, left to its own devices, will kill black at up to four times the rate of white men holding every other relevant factor constant. When THAT is corrected and a black man is no more likely to receive the death penalty than a white man, I might be persuadable but at present, given the reality of the American criminal justice system as it is and not as we might like it to be I know that what we are talking about is a system that will fall most heavily on black and Hispanic men.

Cheers
Aj

It will also fall a lot more on men, in general, versus women correct?