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Capital Punishment

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Explodus

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Well, in my Religious Moral Philosophical Studies class we are studying Capital Punishment. Does anyone agree or disagree with it?

There are two fairly strong arguments for keeping it and banning it. For a start, it does not reduce murder or crime rates. There is also the argument that "two wrongs do not make a right", and so killing someone because they have killed someone else or performed a similar crime is, basically, pointless. This is the side of the argument I would agree with. In my opinion, surely we are better to give these criminals lengthy prison sentences in which they can be counselled and given a chance to change, instead of just carting them off to death row where they will wait, sometimes for more than 10 years, knowing they will eventually be excuted and possibly going through the whole appeal process several times.

The other side of the argument, of course, is that the family members of the victims of crimes which are considered enough to warant an execution sentence want "revenge". There is also the argument that a dead killer cannot kill again.

I have made it pretty clear which side I support (not only by stating it >__>). The main reason for this is that I honestly cannot imagine being locked up for years of my life, waiting for the day I am going to be told i will be killed then waiting untill the day I am killed. I really do not care how "humane" the methods of execution are now, with lethal injections and the like. There is no humane way to tell a human you are going to kill them.

What are everyone else's views on this?

PS: First post on the forums. Hi people.
 
I personally think the death penalty is wrong on the simple fact, you might be wrong. The reason Michigan does not have a death penalty is because they hanged the wrong guy back in the 1840's. And the government had the good judgement to realize you could send the wrong person to their death which undermines the very definition of justice.

If you imprison the wrong person, you can let them out with an apology. However, we've yet to bring the dead back to life.

That's my biggest problem with the death penalty.
 
I, personally, am of two minds on this issue. I see two better alternatives to the current system (at least the American system).

1. No capital punishment. At all. Life in prison, extended sentences, but no death penalty. Killing someone does NOT make ANYTHING right, it just adds more wrong. I do not, in its present state, support the death penalty. I don't care WHO it is. Joe Bob McGoober, Osama bin Laden, Hitler, McVeigh...I don't care. It's more fun to put them in a cage and poke them with sticks. Adds humiliation and COMPLETELY diminishes ANY legacy that they might have.

2. My second idea is more fun. I say we have the ULTIMATE three strikes law. If you're convicted of ANY three crimes, you're put to death. To accommodate this new law, we'd cut out a number of the minor laws we have (possession of a small amount of drugs, and other crimes that just clutter up the prisons), but we'd keep most of the crimes in place, with the same punishments. This plan cuts down on overcrowding in prisons, does away with people who are OBVIOUSLY not going to reform (NO ONE will be falsely convicted of THREE crimes), and allows a greater audience to view the deaths, possibly putting an end to some people's future criminal endeavors. And, again...it's just more fun.

Again...I'm of two minds. I've read a lot of stuff that condemns prisons entirely (calling them the tool of the upper class, used to keep the lowest classes in line, which is an understandable statement considering the way the various classes are treated), but that's not the issue. Capitol punishment is something that brings only pain (and a little joy, but mostly pain), and while it does give the victims' families a sense of justice, it doesn't do them any good. It's a way of running away from their problems. If the murderer is still alive, it forces them to face their demons, and can do more good that way. Unless it's a psycho-murderer who does it purely for the feeling of doing it. Then...well...there is no good in either.
 
In an ideal world where nobody ever escaped from prison and there was an unlimited amount of resources, I'd definately be against capital punishment. But, since this is not the ideal world, the main reason I see for jail is for the safety of others (not punishment) and the main reason I see for capital punishment is for conservation of resources and prevention of escape. So I really don't know...
 
Don't they say that with all the appeals it actually costs more to execute someone than to keep them in jail for life?

I disagree with capital punishment for the reasons people already said...it doesn't reduce crime, two wrongs don't make a right, and the justice system isn't perfect so there's always the chance we could be killing the wrong person.
 
(NO ONE will be falsely convicted of THREE crimes)
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No, but you can be rightly convicted of two and falsely convicted of a third, especially since the jury will be more inclined to believe that you're guilty.
 
I agree with capital punishment. People in America should get flogged rather than go to prison. This way, people aren't locked up for petty theft. Nowdays, our prison system is briimming with inmates that love to live there because it's better than being on the streets by far.

Also, I support the death penalty... however the process needs to change BADLY.
 
Ketsuban said:
No, but you can be rightly convicted of two and falsely convicted of a third, especially since the jury will be more inclined to believe that you're guilty.
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Plus it would be kinda stupid to get the death penalty for shoplifting 3 times. Unless it was Brandon, he should totally get the death penalty for all the times he shoplifted and stole.
 
Like I said, certain minor crimes would be dropped. If you're not getting any jail time now, you wouldn't under my new law, and it wouldn't count for the third.

Ketsuban said:
No, but you can be rightly convicted of two and falsely convicted of a third, especially since the jury will be more inclined to believe that you're guilty.
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True, very true. But...if you've done two, then you're already a repeat offender. This plan rids the world of people who just don't learn. No one who's innocent pays the price, just those who don't learn. You see the same thing happening in today's society, it just doesn't guarantee death.
 
I don't believe in it because I don't believe in an afterlife. We should punish criminals in prison, not treat them with lollipops.
 
It is perfectly possible to be wrongly convicted of three different crimes.
 
I support it

I didn't say much in my last message

Last night Chaos decided to have this huge debate with me as to why I support capital punishment. Chaos loves to debate until it is clear to her that her opinion is right XD. Unfortunately, she rarely wins because the kind of people that debate with her are mainly stubborn elitists : ). I'm not an elitist(at least not too bad) or terribly stubborn, but here are some main points:

I actually find it more cruel to keep a person in prison for the rest of their lives rather than to kill them swifty. With most inmates, they just don't die of old age in prison. The older you are, the higher chance you have of being either killed or on parole. How fair is it to keep a person who has killed someone dear to you in prison for 30 years at the very most? In most cases, they will die in prison by their 20th year there. If they go anything beyond that, they get a nice attorney and get an appeal. THEN they get on parole. I believe there is no such thing as a life sentance because well, it just doesn't happen. People either die pretty quickly in prison or they go on parole.

I think that if someone actually killed someone they should have an extensive trial. After this trial, they should get stuck on death row. After spending an additional 3 months on death row(so investigators can truely prove they deserve to die), they should be executed.

Mentally insane people are not above the law. If they have mental problems and this is the reason they kill someone, they will end up killing people again. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CURING A MENTAL ILLNESS. Mental illnesses stay with you for life.

I also support corporal punishment. However, this is a different topic and I'd rather not go into that right now.

Those were the highlights of my arguement...I'm sure most liberal people here will rebuke everything I have to say. But truely, our capital punishment system needs to severely be reformed NOT condemned. We need to fix it and make it work better, then just kill people who kill others(even in the 2nd degree). However, this does not apply to self-defense. If someone has a gun pointed at your or your loved ones and you somehow manage to kill them, you do not deserve to be killed. I do not approve of murderers being allowed to live. They should all die because they are degrading to society and deserve to die because they are terrible people, mental illness or not, and just deserve to have justice brought upon them.

That being said, even though I think all murderers should die themselves, I wish our system would be reformed so MORE murders would die rather than get parole. So everyone who kills in 1st degree would be put to trial and die in a very swift manner. In second degree, there would be an extensive case by case basis.

This is how I think society should be like. This is one aspect to my "utopia".
 
The problem with the "Swift killing" thing is that, if they do kill them almost immediately, there is always a chance of new evidence or whatever to be found proving their innocence, but it is too late beacuse they were already executed.
 
Explodus said:
It is perfectly possible to be wrongly convicted of three different crimes.
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It's possible that a train is going to fly up my ass. If we're talking theoreticals, then I've got a theoretical swamp I want to sell.

MajesticArcanine said:
People either die pretty quickly in prison or they go on parole.
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If they die, then they've lived out the rest of their life in jail. So, they've had what? A life sentence. It's like someone being given 250 years. It's not HOW they die, it's that they DIE. In jail. As for the parole thing...look up the statistics of ANYONE getting paroled off a life sentence. Last I heard, it was VERY, VERY low. Ask Terry Nichols.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CURING A MENTAL ILLNESS. Mental illnesses stay with you for life.
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Eh...I don't entirely agree with that, although I DO feel that people that are put in mental institutions as the result of a criminal act SHOULD have to face stricter guidelines for release than non-criminally insane.

If someone has a gun pointed at your or your loved ones and you somehow manage to kill them, you do not deserve to be killed.
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But there's a problem with that. NUMEROUS people have had the self-defense...defense. Most of the time, you can't prove it WAS self-defense, and sometimes you can alter evidence to make it LOOK like it was self-defense, when it really wasn't.

They should all die because they are degrading to society and deserve to die because they are terrible people, mental illness or not, and just deserve to have justice brought upon them.
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You live in the same world I live in, right? What's worse...living here or death? With the number of idiots I run across and the amount of shit I see on TV...death don't look so bad. I still say that if we're going to keep it...make it fun. Bring back the public displays. Everyone loves a good decapitation. And everyone cheered when they hung Mussolini. Let's do it big. With today's TV, we could make game shows out of them. Now THAT'S punishment.
 
I am just saying. If a person can be convited wrongly of one crime, what makes the chances of them being wrongly convicted twice more any lower? Nothing.

It is not exaclty something I would base the decision of life and death on.
 
It is simple probability:

If you flip a coin, you have a 50% chance of getting heads.
If you flip two coins, you have a 25% chance of them both being heads.
If you flip three coins, you have a 12.5% chance of them all being heads.

When it comes to this, the probability is much lower to begin with, especially with modern advancements in crime fighting technology. But the chances of someone being wrongly commited on three occasions is still much lower than being wrongly commited once.

As for my opinion, I think "two wrongs do not make a right" gets thrown around too much these days. But all capital punishment hopes to succeed in is deterring others from doing the same crime. Apparently, that isn't working.
 
Hrm, except that if you've been convicted of a crime once, people are more inclined to believe you've commited a crime the second time.
 
But the judges who actually make these decisions really should not be. :/
 
Roses Ablaze said:
Hrm, except that if you've been convicted of a crime once, people are more inclined to believe you've commited a crime the second time.
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True. But the odds of two separate juries, or two separate judges, believing someone capable of committing two separate crimes is VERY unlikely. And THREE? That's...honestly, it's impossible. I've NEVER heard of ANYONE being wrongly convicted twice (although I admit it IS certainly possible), let alone THREE times. And, if someone CAN be convicted wrongly three times, the punishment isn't the problem.
 
GrnMarvl13 said:
If they die, then they've lived out the rest of their life in jail. So, they've had what? A life sentence. It's like someone being given 250 years. It's not HOW they die, it's that they DIE. In jail. As for the parole thing...look up the statistics of ANYONE getting paroled off a life sentence. Last I heard, it was VERY, VERY low. Ask Terry Nichols.
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Yeah, I tried to tell her that but she literally refused to believe anything other than that *everyone* eventually gets paroled if they live long enough. I don't know why she thinks that.
 
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