Capital punishment

Sickness is not the same as being perfectly healthy and being lead to the gurney so they can strap a needle into your arm and kill you. Most people have the fear of life in their face come the day.

 

no, you are right, it is not, but the result is the same... AND what horrors are we committing if that is an innocent person we are killing? i don't know the statistics but, whatever they are, one innocent person having to go through that ordeal is one too many...

 

That's why the death penalty should only be applied in the most solid of cases.

It was in the news about a month ago that Texas did in fact probably execute an innocent man a few years ago.

But then again is anyone surprised Texas would execute an innocent person?

 

Yes.

So many people think the death penalty should be abolished because of the innocents lost.
I feel that there should be a separate set of rules for when the death penalty is applicable, or a separate review board for death penalty sentencing.

It just shouldn't be handled so black and white.

 

I think that "no capital punishment" has never been given its fair shake. It's always death, and there are always more murderers and rapists. So, instead, for a change, we might try no death penalty, and maybe that will actually reduce the problem somehow.

 

i totally get where you are coming from but, what ever rational and sane argument is posited in favour of capital punishment, the fact that i believe what i believe in regard to what happens to us after physical death, i just can't agree with you... we will have to agree to disagree...

on a lighter note... we could get joe public to pay to torture them to the point of death but then resuscitate their sorry asses... that would more than pay for their incarceration... (victims get a free pass)... everyones happy!!! arty:

sorry... sick sense of humour :leaving:

 

I don't think it's reduced the problem much in most cases.
There are some statistics that show it has reduced it some - but mostly never with statistics is the full picture shown.
My theory has always been that those countries are in a more liberal/optimistic attitude at the time, which both lowers the amounts of violent crime, and lowers the want for a death penalty.

I really don't expect that to work in America, currently.

Really, I think the best way to lower the violent crime in America would be to legalize drugs.
Most of America's murders are gang related (according to the FBI). Most of America's gang crime is drug related - most of America's gangs are funded by the black market of drugs. A strong amount of America's drug users are hardened by run ins with the law. And an even higher amount lose their respect for the law.

As far as rape - I think the main problem there is America's social attitude towards males, and objectionist view of females.
In America's common thought, males are seen as generally being assholes, liars, hedonistic, sexuality-based, violent, angry, etc. etc. This merely alienates young men, makes them insecure, and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, by telling them they should solve their problems with anger and violence.
Women are thought of as being objects of desire in many cultures of America - especially male based cultures like hip-hop. This leads the alienated men to objectionize (I might have just made that word) the women fully - and see women who don't put out as being teases and the root of their problem.

This horrible battle of the sexes that our own views seem to cause, leads to the second (or is it third - I know relationships and money are two and three) most common cause of murder as well.

 

Criminals commit murder in the knowledge that they may be put to death as a result. It doesn't seem to stop them and most inmates in that position don't seem to really care whether they live or die. I am guessing that if they have such little respect for the lives of others so as to take it, they probably have little respect for their own.

 

Not really, almost anyone commits any crime with the idea they won't be caught(and for murder too since heat of the moment/crimes of passion murders normally can't be eligible for death penalty) so it doesn't really apply.

 

They can be eligible for the death penalty and they are. What determines someone's fate is the persuasiveness/skill of the lawyers or lack thereof, emotions of a random selection of people (jury) and often shady statistics and evidence. And what of that evidence/testimony is admissable? Courts attempt to be black and white about cases because they have to be. It's called justice, plain and simple and there's no room for 'judgement calls'. But you combine that with the lack of logic of a jury and the luck of the draw where investigations are concerned... the two cannot be reconciled.

Most of us probably think that if we presided over a prosecution we would make the right decision on someone's fate/punishment but that's simply not the way it works and we would all have different perspectives of justice. As it stands, the justice system is unjust. How do we correct that?

 

Abso-bloody-lutely!!!! :cheers2:

 

This is false and shows a pretty unpragmatic view of the justice system. The death penalty can only be applied in murder in the 1st degree cases when it's clear that the murder was pre-meditated and malicious

 

I notice that you began this thread on September 11.

I think the death penalty is a deterrent in some cases. The important part of the previous sentence is "I think". Thinking is precisely what a murderer may not be doing. That is why most jurisdictions have laws distinguishing pre-meditated murder from other varieties and providing death for pre-meditation cases.

Capital punishment may be justified as an act of revenge or an act to protect others (including inmates and guards) from future murders. In pre-meditation cases it may be a deterrent to some people.

Lethal injection would seem to be a preferred method, but a bullet to the brain is fairly humane, as is hanging (long drop). Gas, firing squad (shots to the torso), electrocution and hanging (short drop) are cruel. Studies should be performed to ensure that a particular lethal injection procedure chosen is the most humane available.

I myself have undergone general anaesthesia using sodium pentothal. The doctor injected me and told me to count backward from 99. I got to about 95 and then woke up (with no apparent time lapse) in a recovery ward feeling extremely groggy. There was zero discomfort. In capital punishment there would just be no wake-up, given the follow-up with pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride.

A pentobarbital (nembutal) overdose is commonly used to euthanize animals. I was present when my cancerous German Shepherd was euthanized in 2001. The dog just fainted immediately on injection and didn't wake up. There was no evident discomfort. Pentobarbital is used for physician assisted suicide in Oregon and Netherlands, and for executions in China.

 

And the prospect of death certainly didn't deter those guys.

 

i think victim/victims family should be the judge in a sence. the case goes and is judged by a real judge, but in the end the family/victim chooses the fate of the murderer (if guilty). i also think care should be taken down a few notches, health care for a death row immate? wtf lol. care should be a bare minimum for normal inmates and basicly none for deathrow inmates/life sentence, its expensive and their not deserving of any kind of decency. (thinking back, this should all only count on if it was a voilent crime e.g some one was hurt phisicly)

 

I have always had a problem with this concept. Sometimes grey really is black. Obviously, there's a difference between purely accidental homicide and cold-blooded murder, but what about something like a drunk driver wiping out your entire family? No, the person most likely didn't intentionally set out to kill anyone, but any reasonable person knows of the dangers of drunk driving. Or what if the person wasn't drunk, but driving 100 mph on a residential street? Same idea.

To me, premeditation is irrelevant in these cases. Those people are killers. They are murderers.

Very true. But the purpose of capital punishment isn't solely deterrence. It's also retribution. An eye for an eye. In the most heinous of cases, I for one cannot argue against it.

I do not believe that Timothy McVey, just to give one obvious example, deserved to continue drawing breath in this world. But that presents the obvious problem of deciding which cases are the "most heinous". Which is why we have a court system, to make that decision.

But as Maccabyrd points out, this puts the decision into the hands of jurors, who are after all human beings and therefore fallable. It also leaves you dependent on the competence of prosecutors and prone to slick-talking defense attorneys (if you happen to have been murdered by an ex-football star, for instance).

There will probably never be a perfect solution to this dilemma. So-called capital cases will always fall along a continuum on the "heinous scale". As a practical matter, the best we can do is equip the court system with every safeguard we can think of.

My semi-facetious solution to the entire problem is to come up with the perfect lie detector. Develop some sort of machine that can correctly detect if a person is lying 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of the time. Is this even possible? Who knows? But it would revolutionize the legal system, that's for sure.

And by the way, it would also solve the problem of long lines at airport security checkpoints.

 

I just don't agree with capital punishment. I don't think the State has any right to take life away- to me (As a Brit) one of things that seperates us from places like China and Iran is that we don't have capital punishment.

Capital punishment has shown to be a very long and costly preceedure anyway- often being more expensive then life imprisonment. On top of this, I personally would find life imprisonment a lot more scary then capital punishment, and I am all for decreasing the living standards of particualrly 'bad' criminals. No reason why tax payers should be paying for a guy to sit in a cosy cell with 3 hot meals and a TV. To me, living in a small dingy little cell with just 1 (Or possibly no) hot meal and no TV or anything for the rest of my life would be a much bigger punishment then death

Also, with capital punishment there is always the possibility a person is innocent. For example, last year here in Britain a guy was released after 28 years as he was found innocent of something that, in the US, he would have been executed for. The possibility of a miscarrage of justice is just too great.

Some people probably do deserve to die, but I just don't think the state should have the power to decide or take away a life. I am very happy Britain doesn't have the death penalty, and I have got to say I am surprised that a country like the US which is supposed to be the pinnacle of Western Civilisation still has it.

 

The Canadian killer Paul Bernardo has an 8' X 4' cell. (Source: http://www.insideprison.com/Kingston-Penitentiary.asp).
I don't know if he has TV or not. He's a protective custody lifer, because he wouldn't live half an hour in general population. Aside from an hour a day in the yard, that's his life from now on. You think that's cosy? Also, the system wouldn't allow him physician assisted suicide if he asked for it.

 

^^Well that will do. Basically, a better and more humane alternative to death- but still a severe punishment

 

Of course I don't agree with capital punishment. Never have and never will