He did bad. Let's kill him.

Recently I've been watching a whole bunch of murder investigation shows. You know, the type where you are shown how a murder case was most likely dropped, and then later on solved. Not really the best thing to watch if you dislike being depressed and sickened, but it gets you thinking about the condition of the human race.

I'm not going to, however, tell you all about how the human race is self destructive to the point of extinction. No, not today. Actually, it was something much smaller, if you will, that caught my attention while watching these television shows. It was the sentences for the multiple criminals. The most popular and recurring, it would seem, is the death penalty.

Now, I'm not going to argue the innocence of people who commit heinous and unspeakable acts, but the death penalty really seems to me like a hypocritical excuse to end the lives of people that society doesn't want walking among people who are supposedly innocent. Innocent, bah. No one even knows what it means to be innocent anymore, anyway.

Now, let's say, solely for example, that a random man goes out and kills another man in a crowd in an attempt to draw attention solely to be on television. Obviously, he doesn't not have good reason, and his act cannot be forgiven. The man killed another living being due to his own twisted way of thinking.

Now, personally, I believe that someone who takes life without good reason should be imprisoned for eternity. Throw him in jail. But who the hell gave anyone the authority to takes this man's life? Wasn't this punishment given because he took life? How can anyone kill this man for killing another?! In this particular case, by destroying what you seek to destroy, you become what you seek to destroy.

If this man was attacking someone, and needed to be stopped, then it would be only logical to somehow keep him from harming others. But if he's in a large white room, waiting for lethal injection, who the hell is he going to hurt? Even if he has no remorse for his actions, and he does not feel sorry for those he has hurt, why should that give anyone else reason to do the same to him? If I go up and poke someone in the eye, it doesn't mean that their retaliating by poking me back is justified.

The death penalty is unjust, and a way of dealing with problematic figures easily that actually only goes to show that we would rather calm the masses by disposing of our problems, rather than handling them like mature people.

Personally, I consider the death penalty to be a treat for criminals who've done the most awful of crimes. There's many other ways to make them pay. I myself like the idea of mental pressure until they crack, but of course, it should keep going for them.

But alas, money sometimes becomes the reason why we can't have that

If this is only for mods, sorry, but I agree with you Aerixeth. And good phrase thingy too.

The death penalty is quite unjust I agree. If you don't want for people to kill then why would you kill?? makes no sense to me either. The human race is only contradicting itself....as usual. :rolleyes:

I never did agree with the death penalty, and I never will. This is the exact same situation with the leader of the Crip's gang. The governator (yes I called him governator) didn't hesitate to sentence him to death for supposedly killing six people. When he confirmed this, I was furious. I mean this guy, Stanley 'Tookie' Williams, wrote a plethora of anti-gang books and even had his own program to help prevent young people from joining gangs. Yet many people still believed he had to die. When I asked some of my friends why, their response was "Because he killed other people", but does that justify him getting the death penalty? This world is full of hypocrits, and people contradicting themself, it sickens me to know that people like that exist.

-TFS

It depends on which person you are in the situation. If I was the victim's relative or friend, then hell yea I would want that murderous sucker to die, without question! But other than that, I am against the death penalty. There is no justification to kill another human being, no matter what immoral acts they committed. No matter how painless they make the executions to make it "less inhumane." Yes, some criminals deserve to be punished, but how much?

All these killers have their reasons to kill someone, even the ones that say "I just felt like it." Most of the people on death row are the ones who have had bad childhoods, the ones who were possibly abused, had equally bad parents, or were abandoned. Something in them, that hasn't really left, must have caused them to hurt another person.

Some murderers are mentally disabled or too young to have a competely developed brain ( i mean the juveniles). Now they definetly don't deserve to be executed. They lack the proper reasoning to fully understand what they are doing is wrong.

But what could we do, there's only so much prison space to make them stay in life imprisonment. There's too many killers too....

While I do think sometimes the highest and most powerful crime is death, but I only think that way when I am emotional and irrational.

The problem with the death penalty is that it is so final, and well, mistakes have been made within the law, innocent people put to death, and that is absolutly not forgivable. another problem within this system is that it costs the state more money to kill a man than to keep him in confinment for life (strange I know).

Hmm, the death penalty.... the morals of this could be debated forever. If someone kills, should they too be killed? Yes, if I was close to their victim, I would want to make sure that they never did that to anybody else ever again, and I'd want the killer to burn in hell for all eternity. But I would actually prefer that the killer would rot in jail for a long time before he burnt in hell.

Remember: an eye for an eye will leave the world blind. I am against the death penalty because I believe that if you are telling someone it's wrong to murder/rape/whatever causes the death penalty (I'm not sure of the specifics because we don't have the death penalty in Australia) you don't contradict yourself and then kill them! Condemning someone to death... isn't that just being as bad and morally unjust as them? The death penalty doesn't serve any purpose other than to dispose of the walking scum of the earth that the law doesn't want to deal with anymore.

But also: what if new evidence turns up years from now and someone else is convicted? The person that has been sent to death is actually innocent? I know that is only in very rare cases, but it could happen. If they're just sentenced to a prison term, years of their life may have been wasted, but at least they have a chance to get some of their life back.

Life imprisonment is a much more suitable punishment for these criminals. They then have to face being condemned to a life behind bars in a jail with the most vicious of criminals that likely will turn against them, depending on the crimes committed. Death is a way out of that for them.

And who are we to judge who should live and who should die when we are trying to punish someone else who took that same decision upon themself?

I'm totally against the death penalty. We tell everyone not to kill, yet it's okay if we do it to a bad person. It makes no sense. I would rather the person rot in jail for the rest of his life than be killed. It doesn't make sense. If we want to stop a man from doing more harm, lock him up. Killing doesn't do any good. If, years later, he was somehow found innocent, they could'nt do anything. I hate the death penalty.

It is rather strange. They kill someone, we kill them. Should we follow the rest of Hammarabi's Code too? Including tht if you are rich, you only have to pay money?
But also, I think that we should kill anyone... but too bad we can't act like we're going to kill them to get them psyched out, then not... but that's against the law (cruel and unusual punishment)

It does make sense, they only put you into jail if you can get well again. Jail is a rehab to shape you into a model citizen, but if too blood thirsty, what's the point. They can't let more innocent people possibly lose their lives.

Originally Posted by DarKnite'92

It does make sense, they only put you into jail if you can get well again. Jail is a rehab to shape you into a model citizen, but if too blood thirsty, what's the point. They can't let more innocent people possibly lose their lives.

Put themin solitary confinement for life. It would work.

Any person that kills a man that used premeditation should defiantly be put to death. If someone plans out the death of another person, and kills them in cold blood, that man does not deserve to live. That person took the life of another. Why should that person deserve to live? Some people don't care whether or not they spend the rest of their life in jail. Their main goal sometimes is just kill the other person for revenge, knowing that they could just get away with it and living in jail might be worth it to them. But because we have the death penalties, the murderer might think twice before he/she goes off and starts killing people. Let's say a bomb goes off in a big building, killing thousands of people. And the police find him, and have good evidence that the guy they caught was the one who set the bomb. Does that man not deserve to die because he killed thousands of other people He should without thought, be put to death.

But death penalties usually happen that come up with hard evidence that a person killed another person (sorry I couldn't put my post into better context, but I'm a little tired).

Originally Posted by Obsequious Eye

Put themin solitary confinement for life. It would work.

It does cost more to feed someone for life than to kill them, though I do agree with you. It's like they always say, two wrongs don't make a right. It's like the authorities have some kind of amnesty. They can kill people without any consequences. We don't have the right to take human life just because they took someone else's.

They could always feed the murderers with random trash from the back alley to save money.

Originally Posted by Dark Link

Let's say a bomb goes off in a big building, killing thousands of people. And the police find him, and have good evidence that the guy they caught was the one who set the bomb. Does that man not deserve to die because he killed thousands of other people?

Absolutely. He deserves to die, but he shouldn't be killed. Just because he deserves to die does mean we have the right to put him to death. It's not a matter of this man or woman's innocence, it's a matter of our right to do with this person as we see fit. He goes out and kills thousands. Fine, but that doesn't give any other individual the right to judge him and decide that his life ends because of his actions. The whole point of punishing him is because he took life, so how does further taking life make it right?

There's no way taking a man's life for taking life can be justified, yet it's still done. It just goes to show how people like abusing power that, if they so choose to do with it as they obviously do, they should not possess. Life cannot be given to those who have lost it by taking life from another, so by killing a criminal you are merely shrinking to a level below the criminal in question, because you are doing it, knowing that instead, you could be making things better.

Originally Posted by Aerixeth

Absolutely. He deserves to die, but he shouldn't be killed. Just because he deserves to die does mean we have the right to put him to death. It's not a matter of this man or woman's innocence, it's a matter of our right to do with this person as we see fit. He goes out and kills thousands. Fine, but that doesn't give any other individual the right to judge him and decide that his life ends because of his actions. The whole point of punishing him is because he took life, so how does further taking life make it right?

There's no way taking a man's life for taking life can be justified, yet it's still done. It just goes to show how people like abusing power that, if they so choose to do with it as they obviously do, they should not possess. Life cannot be given to those who have lost it by taking life from another, so by killing a criminal you are merely shrinking to a level below the criminal in question, because you are doing it, knowing that instead, you could be making things better.

Whaddya know? Aex and I agree on something. I could go deep into a religious explanation for why I believe the death penalty is fundamentally flawed, but I'll keep that part of my explanation brief. All humans are imperfect; our judgement is inherently flawed because we sin. Morality has been deadened over the centuries--if ever it was prevalent to begin with--and so we have no right to judge others by their sin. That judgement belongs to God, and God alone, who can see what the heart is instead of what the body has done.

Now for the moral part. Let's say that a good friend of yours is suffering greatly from severe emotional trauma. Now let's say that this trauma drives him temporarily insane, and he does something absolutely horrible. When he comes to his senses, he feels terrible for it, but he's already on the witness stand being sentenced to capital punishment. How can this be right? He took a life, yes. But if he repents and never does it again, why in God's name would you want him dead? It's called vengeance, and it's morally wrong. Man has dominated man to his injury; one seeks to undo a wrong by comitting an even greater wrong. It's common and often thought of as "fighting for what is right", but it sickens me. Retribution does not belong to us as human beings.

This is why I always stay out of politics. My voice means nothing to these power-hungry, money-mongering politicians, and I really couldn't care less. I am assured through faith in Jehovah that, very soon, all of this world's governments will be crumbled by His divine kingdom. Death is no obstacle for Him, and so I do not fear what these politicians can do to me or others. They are only damning themselves.