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Originally Posted by GDwarf
I'm opposed to it.
Death should really only be an alternative if there is no other way. (Say the guy's got a gun and the police need to arrest him, I'm fine with them shooting him in that case, provided that he is likely to kill someone else.)
There are a few reasons for this. First off, you can never be certain that someone did, in fact, commit a crime. You can be well over 99% sure, but that's not the same thing. (If, let's say, 1 000 people are killed every decade, all of whom you are 99% sure are guilty that's still 100 innocent people killed. Fun.)
Secondly, it doesn't seem to have any measurable effect on crime. Countries that had the death penalty and got rid of it didn't have a sudden rise (or, admittedly, fall) in crime rates. Why? Because criminals assume they won't be caught. They don't do a cost-benefit analysis before they kill someone in anger.
Thirdly, the point of laws is to keep society running smoothly, that's it. Killing people doesn't make it run any more smoothly than putting them in jail does.
Finally, according to pro-death penalty people in past threads people tend to spend 25 years on death row before they're killed. Which means that they cost more (need to have a much more thorough investigation before you can give the death penalty) than simply having people in for life.
...So, it apparently has no benefits, gives the law far too much power, is morally questionable, and can kill innocent people.
What, exactly, is the upside?
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Well, four arguments I have to your post. Firstly that you say we can't be sure the person committed the crime in question. Usually mass-murderers will either confess to it, or there's overwhelming evidence to prove it's them. The death penalty would have to be a discretionary punishment, not "you have committed X crime, therefore I sentence you to death". Only in particular circumstances at the judge's discretion. Also, this still applies for imprisonment. If a person is put away for life, they still may not have committed the crime, and instead they spend their whole life insisting that they're innocent. The Birmingham Six spent 16 years in prison before their convictions were quashed, and the Bridgewater Three spent 18 years in prison before new evidence came to light. They used to be the Bridgewater Four, one of them died while in prison. Couldn't handle it.
They were convicted in days where evidence-gathering techniques weren't very advanced, and there weren't any measures in place to prevent the police from using brutal techniques to obtain a confession. Nowadays we're much more likely to find decent evidence.
Secondly you say most people spend far too much time on death row anyway. That, I reckon, is partially because the death penalty in America is a case of "you have committed X crime, therefore I sentence you to death", and so there's more than the system can handle needing to be executed. Plus repeated appeals, but that's fair enough. In the long run, killing someone after 25 years is still cheaper than keeping them in for 40 or 50, also.
Thirdly, as Fox stated, the prison system here is bollocks. A lot of the time people can get away with a crime without imprisonment (though not in the serious cases as far as I'm aware, rapists getting out after six months? I'd like to see some evidence for that), because judges and magistrates are pretty much specifically instructed to consider alternate punishments to prison. It seems in many cases that beauracracy and cutting costs has overriden the priority of justice.
Lastly you say that the death penalty doesn't work as a deterrent. I for one think it may in some cases, but since I have no evidence for this and you probably do, I won't argue that. But I don't think the death penalty should be a deterrent anyway. It's a punishment, and a measure taken to prevent a serious criminal from committing further offences.
You say there's no upside, but since you claim the death penalty doesn't really have an effect anyway, where's the downside? (In light of what I've said, and disregarding the possibility of an innocent being executed).
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Originally Posted by Fox McCloud
What you're saying in this is: Let's COMPLETELY remove the factors that surround the crime this man committed and the parties involved. Let's ignore the fact there was someone INNOCENT being abused and raped and unjustly wronged and imprisoned for 24 years? We should forget all this and merely equate the locking up factor?
Are you equating someone who is innocent to someone who has committed a heinous crime?
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I see what you're saying, but imprisonment is, after all, the equivalent of a crime committed by the state. You can't deny that. I in no way say she deserved what she got, I was simply making an argument against the person I was quoting who had made a similar argument against the death penalty (that since murder is a crime, the state has no right to commit it). If execution is state murder, then imprisonment is state kidnapping.
If he had just killed the girl instead of imprisoning her, what would be your view? Should he die? Or, by saying he deserves to live, are you equating someone who has committed a heinous crime to someone who is innocent?
EDIT: Clearly you're pro-death penalty but by criticizing what I was saying you seemed not to be, hence why I wrote that.
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The costs of keeping someone alive is a secondary point. By going against a BASIC human value of killing an innocent life, you have forfeited your right to be treated or expecting to be treated as a normal human being. I seriously don't understand why it is the victim's taxpaying relatives/loved ones who are forced to pay to keep the killer alive.
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You seem to be agreeing with me, but it's written in such a way that you disagree with me. Are you saying that the punishment factor is the important point, and not the ones I'm listing?
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You most definitely speak through the eyes of an observer. Why don't we change the scenario a little. How many members of your family and loved ones must a person kill before you would feel they deserve to be killed? Because from what I understand, the word "several" means three or more. So in your case, for a person to kill your mother AND father would still not suffice for them to be considered worthy of death.
Why don't we all stop thinking about this issue from an observer's standpoint, and think about it in terms of the people we love and hold dear to our heart if they were murdered?
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If my dad got into a fight after a night out, and got killed, and the other guy shows remorse, I know I'm only speaking about a hypothetical situation but provided he hasn't done it multiple times and probably wouldn't do it again, I don't think I'd be baying for his blood. I wouldn't forgive him, I don't pretend to be a saint. Besides, this would probably be a case of voluntary manslaughter by virtue of provocation rather than murder, which admittedly might set me going, but I probably wouldn't be after his life for it.
If someone had been planning for weeks, then suddenly brutalized a member of my family, then sure. If there's proof to say he'd been planning it for weeks, then surely there'd be enough proof to confirm that he's the one who did it. And surely he should therefore be punished for this malicious act.
However I'm a utilitarian, and so I personally believe that only people who may be a future danger to others should be executed. I'm not so much a retributionist because there is no way we can actually equate the punishment to the crime they've committed. That'd just make us as bad as them. Someone who's demented enough to pre-meditate a crime weeks in advance for a perceived slight (since my parents have wronged no one), and shows no remorse whatsoever, is clearly a danger to society, and so we have a duty to deal with them. Perhaps, if the death penalty would be implemented as a blanket punishment for murder (which I disagree with since it should only be at the judge's discretion), we could have a system whereby a person who shows remorse (perhaps get some psychologists in to evaluate this) would be spared the death penalty. Repeat murderers would probably not be given this mercy, since if you showed remorse for killing you wouldn't have done it again, quite simply.