Score one against barbarism

[Embar Angylwrath]

You're right Kulaf. After re-reading your posts, I don't see that you are or are not supporting the death penalty. My apologies for assuming you do.

Let me toss these questions out to you though.

Is it a morally responsible act to take the life of another human based on unsupported conjecture?

Does the burden of justification for the death penalty fall upon those who support the death penalty?

If so, has that burden of justification been met?

If the burden of justification hasn't been met, are we morally obligated to suspend or abolish the death penalty until such time a sound justification can be made?

[Partha]

Depends on your burden of justification.

I don't attempt to justify it by quoting some 'deterrent effect'. I can't empirically prove that.

I don't attempt to justify it using Old Testament morality. That's nonsense.

I attempt to justify it by saying that 100% of the time, it keeps the criminal from ever injuring or killing another living being. Period.

Yes, I agree that the system, as it stands now, is imperfect. I'd prefer to keep refining the system to eliminate as far as humanly possible the errors that kill innocent people. And I've repeatedly stated that if you can come up with a way to do the same thing the death penalty does without needing to kill them, I'll support it 100%. However, too many people want to scrap it WITHOUT doing the reform work that needs to be done to MAKE the current nonlethal system as reliable as the death penalty is.

[Kulaf]

You're right Kulaf. After re-reading your posts, I don't see that you are or are not supporting the death penalty. My apologies for assuming you do.

Let me toss these questions out to you though.

Is it a morally responsible act to take the life of another human based on unsupported conjecture?

Does the burden of justification for the death penalty fall upon those who support the death penalty?

If so, has that burden of justification been met?

If the burden of justification hasn't been met, are we morally obligated to suspend or abolish the death penalty until such time a sound justification can be made?

First let me start by saying that I think that I am directing these responses in a fashion to the issue of the death penalty with all assumptions that implies.

By its very definition conjecture cannot be supported. Conjecture is the lack of complete information. So therefore we need to come to some agreement on just how much information we need to support a sentance of death for a crime. If you are asking if I think the "reasonable doubt" standard is sufficient in death penaly cases then my answer would be yes.

The only justification for the death penalty that needs to be made is whether it is cruel or unusual as referenced in the Constitution. Since there were many crimes for which you could be executed during the time of the framers of the Constitution I do not believe that they considered death for a crime to be cruel and or unusual.

Yes I believe it has been met.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Kulaf -

Is apparent I wasn't clear in my questions. I meant for those issues to be framed around the whole concept of capital punishment, not its actual implementation.

So let me rephrase the first question, and then take whatever answer you give for as the context for the othr two.

The rephrased question is: Is it a morally responsible act to support the death penalty if serious questions remain as to the death penalty's effectiveness as a deterrent?

[Partha]

As he slides right on by......

[Kulaf]

"The rephrased question is: Is it a morally responsible act to support the death penalty if serious questions remain as to the death penalty's effectiveness as a deterrent?"

I guess that would depend on whether or not you consider the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterent to be of importance. I've always been of a mind that certain crimes should be punished by death.....whether or not they deter someone else from comitting the same crime is not material to me.

It's been my experience that most peoples morals are a mish mash of conflicting values. This is mostly due to people not sitting down and actually evaluating the many positions that they take on given subjects.

Some people are anti death penalty yet pro choice. Others are pro death penalty and anti-abortion. Most are against suicide but if faced with comitting canibalism to forestall death readily claim they would allow themselves to die rather than try to live.

I hope that answers the question.

[Narith]

Narith,

Do you think a criminal is just going to continue being a criminal once they're released from prison? And if so, why not just kill all criminals? Or keep them permantly jailed since, to you, they're just going to commit another crime.

If you're justifying your use of the death penalty based on some recidivism precentage, can you show me where you're getting the information that leads you to beleive that murderers have a higher recidivism rate than other criminals?

See... I think many of you that are pro-death penalty are rationalizing its use by using a lot of unsubstantiated assumptions.

You assume murderers are more prone to recidivism. Prove it.

You assume that murderers are of greater threat to inmates than other criminals. Prove it.

You assume that the death penalty has a deterrent factor. Prove it.

And why don't I have to prove the opposite? Because your support of the death penalty requires you to make a substantial case for its use, since it results in the taking of a human life. The burden is on you to rigorously and honestly support your moral position.

I've seen nothing in this thread to support your positions other than unsubstantiated opinion that the death penalty is a deterrent, or that it offers some substantial protective measure for society that can't be achieved in any other fashion. Requests for links and stats to back up your positions have been met with silence.

If you can't justify your position with fact, your argument is nothing more than speculation, and because of the nature of the topic, its morally bankrupt as well. If you're going to support the taking of a human life, you better damn well have your facts straight.

To this point, none of you even know what the facts really are. Until you do, how can you morally support the death penalty?

No, I have stated previously that some criminals can be rehabilitated, it is when you get to the more violent spectrum of crimes that the chances become less and less likely until finally you reach the crimes so violent and heinous they land thier perpetratiors (sp?) on death row. Those are the animals that I do not believe ever will be rehabilitated.

Life in prison does not mean life in prison, it means a few decades at best. I do not believe the death penalty is right because of it's deterant factor, I believe it is needed because it keeps those animals off the street for life, and not a life sentance life I mean for thier entire life. It has a two part effect, first it punishes them for the crime(s) they commited and rightly deserve punishment for, second prevents future crimes such as these from b eing prevented and causing future victims from being created by ridding society of these monsters.

I do not believe there are any hard facts or evidence showing how many murders in prisons were caused by other inmates and who they were and what they were placed in there to begin with, most murders that happen in a prison are never completly solved to my knowledge. Probably the only way you will come to some semblence of a statistic would be to look at how many people were put in prison on murder charges, watch over the next 10 to 20 years from each individual sentence and see if the average number of prisioner deaths has risen from the average before they were there, which for the sake of an arguement I am not investing that much study into so have at it if you want to find out.

Personally I think you are the one with the skewed morals for wanting to allow future victims to be created by allowing these creatures back on the street that should have been put to death. I argue that by removing these creatures from society for crimes they have already commited by a punishment that is well deserved, that it will save lives, you argue that you are willing to sacrifice those lives in order to save the life of a creature that has long ago given up it's humanity...

[Narith]

Oh and one last thing to weigh on your concious Embar.... How many future victims both in and out of the prison system are you willing to sentence to death by allowing these creatures to live? By removing the death penalty and allowing these monsters to live you are sentencing several others to death... How very morally bankrupt of you to do so.

[Relbeek Einre]

Personally I think you are the one with the skewed morals for wanting to allow future victims to be created by allowing these creatures back on the street that should have been put to death.

Hail, a False Dichotomy.

No, I have stated previously that some criminals can be rehabilitated, it is when you get to the more violent spectrum of crimes that the chances become less and less likely until finally you reach the crimes so violent and heinous they land thier perpetratiors (sp?) on death row. Those are the animals that I do not believe ever will be rehabilitated.

That's your belief. Back it up with evidence.

Life in prison does not mean life in prison, it means a few decades at best.

No, at best it means life in prison. There are some states that don't do life without parole or the death penalty (Minnesota is one of them), but those states can compensate for that by simply sentencing consecutively for multiple crimes to ensure that the sentence will extend beyond the inmate's lifespan. Since in Minnesota parole eligibility is 2/3rds of a sentence, or 20 years for a life sentence, Minnesotan courts for a multiple murderer will simply make the sentences served consecutively for, say, a double murder (40 years in prison minimum), or a murder + kidnapping + sexual assault (50 years), et cetera.

A group of college students exonerated nine people on Illinois' death row simply by looking into their case files. With a failure rate that appalling, do you really trust the government with the death penalty?

And are you willing to be the one they execute wrongfully?

[Aabe]

Personally I think you are the one with the skewed morals for wanting to allow future victims to be created by allowing these creatures back on the street that should have been put to death.

Hail, a False Dichotomy.

No, I have stated previously that some criminals can be rehabilitated, it is when you get to the more violent spectrum of crimes that the chances become less and less likely until finally you reach the crimes so violent and heinous they land thier perpetratiors (sp?) on death row. Those are the animals that I do not believe ever will be rehabilitated.

That's your belief. Back it up with evidence.

Life in prison does not mean life in prison, it means a few decades at best.

No, at best it means life in prison. There are some states that don't do life without parole or the death penalty (Minnesota is one of them), but those states can compensate for that by simply sentencing consecutively for multiple crimes to ensure that the sentence will extend beyond the inmate's lifespan. Since in Minnesota parole eligibility is 2/3rds of a sentence, or 20 years for a life sentence, Minnesotan courts for a multiple murderer will simply make the sentences served consecutively for, say, a double murder (40 years in prison minimum), or a murder + kidnapping + sexual assault (50 years), et cetera.

A group of college students exonerated nine people on Illinois' death row simply by looking into their case files. With a failure rate that appalling, do you really trust the government with the death penalty?

And are you willing to be the one they execute wrongfully?

Interesting finding nine like that. It would be interesting to know more about the exonorations.

How many cases did they examine to find nine?

Does exonorate mean absolutely not guilty or a loop hole or not enough to honestly hold a conviction? I seriously dont know my law well enough.

Where the exonorated guilty of previous violent crimes?

Did the exonorated commit any further murders?

None of these questions has bearing on the validity of the exonorations, just information that would be interesting to know.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Oh and one last thing to weigh on your concious Embar.... How many future victims both in and out of the prison system are you willing to sentence to death by allowing these creatures to live? By removing the death penalty and allowing these monsters to live you are sentencing several others to death... How very morally bankrupt of you to do so.

I think you actually don't understand the illogic behind your statement. There is no certainty of a "future victim". Allowing the "monsters" to live does not necesaarily equate to a sentence of death for others.

Look at states with no death penalty. Does every person with a life sentence there go on to kill opthers? No.

Can you explain to me Narith, how those states seem to be able to prevent further killings by otherwise death penalty candidates?

[Aabe]

Oh and one last thing to weigh on your concious Embar.... How many future victims both in and out of the prison system are you willing to sentence to death by allowing these creatures to live? By removing the death penalty and allowing these monsters to live you are sentencing several others to death... How very morally bankrupt of you to do so.

I think you actually don't understand the illogic behind your statement. There is no certainty of a "future victim". Allowing the "monsters" to live does not necesaarily equate to a sentence of death for others.

Look at states with no death penalty. Does every person with a life sentence there go on to kill opthers? No.

Can you explain to me Narith, how those states seem to be able to prevent further killings by otherwise death penalty candidates?

If he is counting deterence it does make sense.

[Aabe]

Jesus Aabe.. you're entire argument for the support of the death penalty is "It exists, therefore it must be good". That's incredibly irresponsible, don't you think??

It was labled as a deterent for other people not to commit murder for thousands of years. No my entire argment is I don't know and it is purported to have positive effect on society that has existed for a VERY long time. (You know one of the ways you prove things.) You want me to jump to an unknown, unproven, not time tested. No Embar I am not the one with the weak arguement.

Slavery was around for a long time (and in some places it still is), therefore it must be good?

Slavery has come and gone. It is not a constant over thousands of years.

Not allowing women to vote was around for a long time (and still is in certain places), therefore it must be good??

You are thinking too short term. Women have and have not had the right to vote over the milienia. They currently do.

When women did not have the right to vote or slavery was in force, what labels was put on it that was to protect the common man? None that I know of. But you look at the death penalty it was claimed to be a protection for the common citizen.

Don't you think you owe it to yourself (and society) to give this a little more thought than basing you support on such a sophmoric argument of "status quo = good"?

And none of you have yet to provide any.. ANY... reliable statisitcal evidence that the death penalty does what you claim it does. All of you that support it are just pulling speculation and hyperbole out your asses and claiming it as proof. Can't you do any better than that?

Maybe to make you feel better about your comments here on my posts I should just say "HANG EM ALL AND LET GAWD SORT EM OUT!"

You have provided me no reliable evidence to support your stand. If the death penalty really does work as a deterence and I back the death penalty ban, perhaps I would kill ten times more than are saved, perhaps I kill a lot more. (through possible removed deterence) Am I on higher moral ground when I support the ban and cause an order of magnitude or more to die than I save. Is that really the higher ground? Is that really the moral way? Is that really the high minded superior arguement?

I guess that would make me feel real good. Everytime I read an article about some child tortured and killed or women raped and killed. I wonder, hmm maybe the death penalty would have deterred it, maybe not. But boy I sure had the moral ground. (Even though I didn't have the proof enough to convince myself.)

Then what do I tell myself when 10yrs down the road someone does a decent study and find out "well shucks" the death penalty was a "darned good deterence" and "them old folks that created and proved it throught the ages really did know what the tarnation they wuz a talkin about", what the heck, I guess ya gotta break a few eggs to make an omlet.

You are a complete moron if you don't think I havn't thought long and hard about this and don't reconsider it every time I read articles on it.

[Beestyall]

A group of college students exonerated nine people on Illinois' death row simply by looking into their case files. With a failure rate that appalling, do you really trust the government with the death penalty?

At least a decade after the initial convictions? That's slightly misleading Beek.

To be fair, it was 13 of 167. Four of the 13 had sentences pardoned to life (without parole on some). That's 8% wrongfully sentenced or charged. That is unacceptably high rate, I will agree with you there.

[Narith]

Oh and one last thing to weigh on your concious Embar.... How many future victims both in and out of the prison system are you willing to sentence to death by allowing these creatures to live? By removing the death penalty and allowing these monsters to live you are sentencing several others to death... How very morally bankrupt of you to do so.

I think you actually don't understand the illogic behind your statement. There is no certainty of a "future victim". Allowing the "monsters" to live does not necesaarily equate to a sentence of death for others.

Look at states with no death penalty. Does every person with a life sentence there go on to kill opthers? No.

Can you explain to me Narith, how those states seem to be able to prevent further killings by otherwise death penalty candidates?

Ah I see now how you live with this on your conciousness, you ignore it's exsistance. Counting lives saved through deterence and lives saved by keeping these monsters off the streets for the rest of thier lives so they can not create more victims. You simply ignore the fact that it happens *shrug* I understand now.

And Beek, yes it is my opinion that the more violent the crime the less likely for rehabilitation... Would you feel safe with a child rapist and murder living next door to you and your children as long as they served thier 20 or 25 year prison sentence? Or a serial killer that was paroled after 20 years? You are saying you would feel perfectly safe with them next door to you because you believe they were rehabilitated?

Also as far as I knew a 20 year sentence meant possibility of parole after 7 years, now that isn't a 2/3 rule, maybe it is state based or maybe it is crime based? Please explain how that works? Also if a life sentence can be paroled after 2/3 of the sentence served unless a life sentence is considered 30 years it sounds like 1/3 or even 1/4.

[Saevrok]

The answer to america's crime problem is gladiatorial games. Killers rapists and molesters get tossed in a big sandy pit with sharp weapons and they get to duke it out, last man standing gets life in a very nicely decorated maximum security cell.

The knowledge that killing someone isnt just gonna get you three square meals a day but instead a very sharp spatha rammed into your stomach will deter all but the meanest motherfuckers out there.

[Saevrok]

Oh and beeker, if some dude just decides one day he is gonna walk into the quickie mart and vaporize the entire place with a chain gun for no good reason then chances are, he wont have a problem doing it again, look at serial killers these are people who will continue to do it long after so called rehabilitation. Jeffory dahmer perhaps? How about the green river killer?

Now, on the other hand I am not a advocate of sentancing teenagers to life or death simply because they do have a chance, in 20 or 30 years.

[Aabe]

Sorry, this is a bit off topic. I have heard from several people associated with prisons, that at around age 45-50 there is like a hormonal change or something not obvious that kind of takes the aggresion out many career criminals.

The indication was that there was hope after that age for many people that actually get out of prison to stay straight enough to stay out of prision.

It would be interesting to see a thread on the 3 strikes and you are out till age 45 and then you get one more strike. Often thought about this, but havn't seem much in the papers or on TV about it. Seems like a decent alternative to 3 strikes if there is any truth to the fact of an abnormally high rate of people after that age going straight.

[Saevrok]

I still think swords and sand are the way to go.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Ah I see now how you live with this on your conciousness, you ignore it's exsistance. Counting lives saved through deterence and lives saved by keeping these monsters off the streets for the rest of thier lives so they can not create more victims. You simply ignore the fact that it happens *shrug* I understand now.

Narith - What's your measuring tool for "counting lives saved by deterrence"? Especially given the fact that no one knows if the death penalty has a measurable effect on deterrence?

Got some info you're privy to that lays it all out? Got some statisitcs that shows conclusive proof that the death penalty saves lives?

And again, I'll ask you, since you dodged it the first time... How do states without the death penalty manage to save "future victims"? If what you say is true, that the death penalty saves lives, you should be able to show me some concrete proof that you're more likely to be murdered in a state without capital punishment than you are in a state with capital punishment.

Can you do that? Will you try?