Debate Now Should Capital punishment be allowed?

[Jarlaxle]

Our Death Penalty system is seriously flawed and absolutely needs to me gutted and started over. But here's one point I believe is irrefutable:

The recent high school shooter could have been found guilty immediately after his confession, and executed by a guillotine placed on the courthouse lawn within 3 days, with cameras rolling for all to see.

Then the President of the United States faces the cameras and says, "If you use a weapon and take a life in a crime, you will lose your head within a week."

I submit these types of monstrous crimes would shrink to near zero.

Until then, we reap precisely what we tolerate - and you can bet the house we'll all be treated to more of the same, before this year is even over. Count on it.

How many innocent people are you willing to kill to sate your blood lust?

 

[Jarlaxle]

I will cease believing in the death penalty the same day somebody shows me a convicted and executed criminal who returns from the dead to kill again.

How many innocent people are you willing to kill to sate your blood lust? Give me a number.

 

[evenflow1969]

Capital Punishment: something present in American culture but not really talked about.

I am curious to see what you all think about capital punishment/ the death penalty. Now I know this is a long post but I think it is important for people to understand what the death penalty is. Your patience in reading this is greatly appreciated.

I personally find that the death penalty is excessively flawed to be used. Facts and statistics have shown a real problem in how we execute people. For reference here is a list of things that I found:


> The Cornell law school states that the Supreme Court Of The United States (SCOTUS) has ruled that punishment must fit crime. The only offense punishable by death is murder. Rape by itself is not a death sentence. SCOTUS has also ruled that the death penalty must be decided on by a unanimous jury vote.

> There have been many Supreme Court cases involving the Death penalty. As shown in a [UR=[URL='https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/19/us/death-penalty-fast-facts/index.html']Death Penalty Fast Facts - CNN[/URL]] CNN article. [/URL]

> The most recent challenge comes in the fact that many pharmaceutical companies block the use of their drugs.

> This has led to states finding alternative methods of execution drugs. One drug in particular, according to the New York Times is Midazolam, a powerful sedative.

> The use of this drug, according that CNN timeline and The Death Penalty Information Center(DPIC) , has resulted in botched executions in Ohio, Oklahoma, Arizona and Arkansas.

> There have been a total of 1,459 executions in the US since 1977. Before 1977 there was a ten year moratorium on the death penalty.

> DPIC fact sheet reports that in North Carolina it costs $2.16 million more to execute someone rather than impose a natural life sentence. In Texas, it costs three times as much. In Florida $51 million is spent every year to execute someone.

> There have been 161 exonerations of inmates on death row.


The pro-death penalty arguments consist of one of the following.

> It’s a deterrent

> It saves money/resources

> It’s justice

All three of these have serious flaws.

To start, it is not a deterrent. According to DPIC the South accounts for 80% of executions in the US. The region that executes the second most amount of people is the Midwest, followed by the West, and lastly the Northeast. DPIC shows from FBI’s 2016 Uniform Crime Report that the South has the highest homicide rate, followed by the Midwest, West, and the Northeast brings up the end.

It is also argued that killing people saves money. However, the stats shown above shows that capital punishment is far more expensive than putting someone in prision for the rest of their life.

The last argument is that it is justice. While there is an argument here, I still disagree with it. The idea of
“a life for a life” is very barbaric. Capital punishment is the only time we see this retaliatory type of punishment too. Grand Theft Auto is not punished by someone stealing the defendants car, arson is not punished by burning their house down. I find that capital punishment is less about justice, and more about vengeance.

You also have to consider that there have been many people exonerated from death row. A quick YouTube search for “Death row exonerations” will show many instances of innocent people almost being killed for a crime they never committed.

Even if someone is guilty, there have been many instances of botched executions. DPIC states that lethal injection, the method primarily used today, has the highest percentage of error. Even as recent as February of this year, Doyle Hamm was not executed by Alabama due to the fact the state could not find a vein to use in the injection. Hamm states that the failed attempt was very painful. That same issue was brought up to the courts before his attempted execution.

Some people will argue that it does not matter if they feel pain. They still did something horrific and we should not have any sympathy for them. While many of the crimes that land people on death row are indeed horrific, it does not mean they can be tortured to death. The eight-amendment specifically forbids the use cruel and unusual punishment. This is extended to the retaliatory type of punishment being described here.

Given all of this, I think the death penalty is excessively flawed and too broken to be used in the way it is. The only real argument for is that is vengeance, but even that is flawed and barbaric.

However I also try to see the other side of the story. Playing devil’s advocate for moment here are some things to consider:

> What if a prisoner volunteers to be executed?

> What if a prisoner is sent to prison for murder and then kills someone while incarcerated?

> What if there is irrefutable evidence, such as video tape or something else that makes otherwise it impossible to refute that a certain individual killed someone.

> What about extreme cases like the Oklahoma city bomber(who was executed), the Charleston shooter, the Parkland shooter or the Boston bomber?

> Some states are bringing in nitrogen hypoxia, a technique that is used often in euthanasia and is painless.

As you can see there are questions or scenarios that are even a gray area to me. That is why I am curious to see what everyone's thoughts are on this.

The cost of dealing with all of the appeals and it does not realy seem to deter any one makes me think it is not worth it. Also there is the fact that if there was a mistake made as to who the perp was it is kind of hard to reverse the ruling when the guy or girl is already dead.

 

[Esmeralda]

Capital punishment should be a deterrent to crimes such as murder, so yes: It should be instituted.

Many states have also adopted a pre-emptive form of capital punishment with their so-called "Castle Doctrine" or "Deadly Force" laws, allowing legally-armed citizens to use deadly force if necessary to protect their own lives or the lives of their family.

Studies have shown that capital punishment is not a deterrent to crimes, not murder, not any crime. Criminals don't care. They are stupid. They think they won't get caught.

It is a deterrent if you take them out of this world. Nobody has ever come back from the other side, to commit another crime, now have they?

Not a single criminal that I know of.

Deterrent means to prevent. To deter, keep from happening. Once the murder has been committed, it is impossible to prevent it from happening. Putting the murderer in prison for life will keep it from being repeated. As far as deterring future murderers, the death penalty doesn't do it. Stats show that murderers are not likely to take the death penalty into account before committing murder.

Another factor is putting to death innocent people. It has been done before and is bound to happen again. As a decent society, we should not take the chance of putting innocent people to death.

This guy was serving a life sentence for murder, the state where he's incarcerated has no death penalty.

Christopher Scarver - Wikipedia

while incarcerated, he beat 2 other men to death.

The states reaction?

2 more life sentences.

That he killed two inmates while in prison is a problem for the prison officials: they need to control prisoners. It is another issue. That he he killed two more people while in prison proves that the possibility of the death senteance is not a deterrent, as I have said. That he did not get the death penalty given the situation (I assume the murders were witnessed by others and there was zero doubt of his guilt), that is an issue of whether or not to have the death sentence. I would say take this person out of the general prison population, as other prisoners are not safe when he is around. Put him in solitary until he dies. That's worse punishment than death for most people.

 

[longknife]

I will cease believing in the death penalty the same day somebody shows me a convicted and executed criminal who returns from the dead to kill again.

How many innocent people are you willing to kill to sate your blood lust? Give me a number.

Broken Record

 

[Jarlaxle]

I will cease believing in the death penalty the same day somebody shows me a convicted and executed criminal who returns from the dead to kill again.

How many innocent people are you willing to kill to sate your blood lust? Give me a number.

Broken Record

In other words: you are not willing to answer.

 

[Patric Paramedic]

Joe B said this:

"who won at the end of the day.. Hint, it wasn't the South Koreans!!!!"

The 'end of the day' was America's embarrassment. Not South Korea's. You can't put that failure on anybody else.The Korean soldiers understood their Asian enemy far, far better the U.S. did.

"guillotines didn't deter French Revolutionaries . . . "

One can hardly compare America's street punk mentality to the fortitude of the French Revolutionaries.

"If Capital Punishment really where a deterrent, why do DP states have higher murder rates than non-DP states, and why do other industrialized nations (Almost all of whom have abandoned the DP) have lower murder rates than we do?"

My point exactly. The existing DP scares nobody. But carried out effectively, it damned well could.

 

[JoeB131]

The 'end of the day' was America's embarrassment. Not South Korea's. You can't put that failure on anybody else.The Korean soldiers understood their Asian enemy far, far better the U.S. did.

The failure was trying to impose a government on these people that they didn't want. The minute we pulled out, the Saigon regime was gone in a matter of months.

One can hardly compare America's street punk mentality to the fortitude of the French Revolutionaries.

Why not? Frankly, the main reason why these kids are so nihlistic is that they don't think they have much of a future in this racist society.

That makes them more dangerous than the French Revolutionaries, not less.

My point exactly. The existing DP scares nobody. But carried out effectively, it damned well could.

You avoided the question..

The question is not whether or not the DP is effective compared to an imaginary version where people are murdered with even less due process.

The question is, why do states that have no death penalty have a lower murder rate than states that do?

Why do countries that have no death penalty have a much, much, much lower murder rate than the US.

The DP is not a deterrent, because murderers are either crazy, acting in the heat of the moment, or think they are too clever to get caught.

 

[usmbguest5318]

For individuals who can only handle a nutshell: I don't cotton to implementations of the death penalty.

Some people will argue that it does not matter if they feel pain. They still did something horrific and we should not have any sympathy for them.

Obviously the specific normative conclusion at which anyone may arrive isn't something I, we, society in general can stipulate or refute at the level of one's holding such a stance for the decision derives from one moral limits, not from one's sobriety. That it to say, one's assertions that X be the line demarcating the areas for which one, we, society can grant sympathy and those for which none shall be accorded is a matter of feeling not thinking.

I assert that one's forbearance of any punitive action's consequences and one's denial of sympathy has to do with the extent to which one is principally rational, and to some extent, principled at all. One cannot credibly accept that "assertive killing," killing extra-defensively, is wrong and at the same time assert that our jurisprudence contain provisions that sanction exactly that. To do so is to animate the legitimacy of a criminal's identical conclusion that sympathy for the rights of others, be it to life, property, speech, movement, etc., is unwarranted and therefore deny his/her victim one or several consequences of that right.

It's worth noting too that one also cannot declare assertive killing wrong and, counter that assertive killing is not wrong when sanctioned by tribunal processes on behalf of society at large. Society at large consists of individuals; thus society's condoning the aforementioned incongruous philosophy merely reflects the existential irrationality within the society in question. Argumentum ad populum does not hold water. Neither, for that matter does the majority's tyranny.

Capital punishment is the only time we see this retaliatory type of punishment too. Grand Theft Auto is not punished by someone stealing the defendants car, arson is not punished by burning their house down. I find that capital punishment is less about justice, and more about vengeance.

Your remarks along this line go directly to the verisimilitude of scrupulously rational thought and deeds. While some societies ascribe to the "eye for an eye" model of jurisprudence, and doing so is their choice, ours does not....except, as is the case with capital punishment, when it does, which, of course, is the very definition of what it means to be unprincipled. Indeed, careful observers will note the convenient morality/ethicality of many of capital punishment's most ardent advocates [1] who at once maintain the U.S.' Christian foundation and ignore Jesus' instruction:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
-- Matthew 5:38-42​

Overwhelmingly, the Christian world has abjured the death penalty.

​

If one wants to live in a society inured to in-kind retributional recourse, fine, but there are nations that have it; one should, if that be a priority, live in one of them, but don't try to make a country one considers to be based on Christian values to befoul what it means to live by Christian values. After all, Christ's position on the matter is quite clear and unequivocal.

Before ending this part of my response, let me be clear. I'm referring here to the notion of killing, which be it execution or murder, is nonetheless killing, and killing is what I object to and clearly what Jesus too declared opprobrious. I'm not asserting the state, society, by executing criminals is engaging in murderous homicide. That said, to the extent one deems killing immoral, one must acknowledge that having the state perform killings necessarily contributes to the moral debasement of the society that via capital punishment propels individuals into a new estate, the estate of deadness.

Moreover, morality aside, the debasement is further implicit, indeed made manifest, in the higher incidence of murder subsequent to states adoption of a death penalty. Why increase a society's coarseness by being a willing participant in the coarse behavior, thus providing some measure of approbation to crude asinity among the citizenry.

Now, one may say that one is okay with foisting that debasement on the general character of the society in which one lives, and to the extent one acknowledges that doing so is inconsistent with principles to which one ostensibly and otherwise ascribes, well, what am I to say to that. I'm no position and have no will to deny one's right to disaggregate one's own coherence, nor am I given to deny one's prerogative to calumny regarding one's fidelity to being principled.

Note:

1. Naturally, this part of my remarks won't apply to folk who don't maintain that the U.S. is a Christian or Christianity-based nation. I wonder how many USMB members would argue that the U.S. is founded on Christian values also support the death penalty.
   • The United States IS a Christian Nation
     
   • The U.S. NOT founded upon Christianity
     
   • Is America A Christian Nation?
     
   • The Christian Foundation of the United States:
     
   • Search Results for Query: united states based on christian values

stats shown above shows that capital punishment is far more expensive than putting someone in prison for the rest of their life.

The cost-benefit argument is spuriously sophistic, regardless of whether it's used to support or oppose capital punishment. It does because cost efficiency and effectiveness is not why any criminal statute exists. We don't, for instance, outlaw treason, sedition, homicide, theft or speeding because it's less expensive than allowing them. We outlaw such things because allowing them condones chaos and calamity, thereby denuding the orderly operation and existence of a society and its members.

The pro-death penalty arguments consist of one of the following.

1. It’s a deterrent
2. It saves money/resources
3. It’s justice

I'll take your word for it that those be the concepts that found some folks' stance on the death penalty; however, the latter two are absurd lines of argument. The OP addresses an element of the cost-benefit argument's speciousness; but disregards the general absurdity of that argument, and I've already covered convenient conscience: societies don't implement and enforce criminal statutes because they are cost efficient. As for the justice argument, well, what is and isn't justice is whatever anyone in a position to exact justice deems it to be.

With regard to the deterrent argument, I have a few thoughts to share:

• The deterrent effect of anything's criminality, in large part, depends on a would-be offender's being concerned with society's qualitative perceptions of his/her behavior and, in turn, of himself or herself.
• Whatever deterrent impact a statute/penalty may have depends not only on the penalty's severity but also on its swiftness and surety of occurence. Obviously, most of society's most egregious felons undertake their endeavors thinking they somehow will evade detection and/or apprehension, so clearly they are not convinced of the surety of suffering whatever be the penalty for their deed(s).
  
  In addition to the accused's hubris, other factors contribute to the lack of either swiftness or surety of a death sentence's execution. (no pun)
  
  • The protracted nature of the appeals process is one cause. Now, I don't oppose a convicted felon's right to appeal. I just think appeals submitted by death sentenced convicts should be moved to the front of the line and processed with alacrity. When one has several grounds on which one can base an appeal to a death sentence and each one takes several years to a lustrum to process, well, abrogated is a key element of the deterrent effect of that penalty.
  • Often enough prosecutors are willing to accept an offender's plea to a lesser crime, one that doesn't carry the death penalty. In an environment in which that happens and is a very real possibility in all but the most "cut and dried" cases, the death penalty is of little general benefit as a deterrent.
    
    Quite simply one cannot presume that a would-be heinous actor will rationalize that spending the remainder of their days incarcerated is as undesirable as is dying very shortly after being apprehended and convicted, yet that is tacitly an assumption of plea bargaining. For a death penalty to have any hope of being as dissuasively effective as it possibly can be, it must be the only sentencing option for individuals convicted of whatever be deemed capital crimes. Put another way, it can't be merely a threat.
• By definition, criminals are individuals for whom whatever be the penalty(s) is not deterrent enough. Inasmuch as we cannot establish the nature and extent of others' belligerence prior to their acting criminally, attempting to quantifiably auger the likely deterrent impact of a given penalty, including the death penalty, is an exercise in futility. The relevant cost-benefit calculus for any prohibitive statute consists of the sum of costs the perpetrator must incur prior, during and after whatever be their considered criminal act.