Capital punishment

I support the death penalty. I do wish they'd kill by sedating the criminal and then taking his/her organs which are then donated, that way society can benefit from their punishment. So, the methods as of now don't have my suport.

"I do wish they'd kill by sedating the criminal and then taking his/her organs which are then donated" - Land Of Gold

Alternatively, we could keep them alive and take their blood instead. That way if said "criminal" turns out to be innocent, they have a chance of living to see their name cleared.

Kill them. Accept the fact that no process is without error, that there will BE innocent deaths, and go on. Accept it, like we do other deaths. We let you drive. We know that most of the time, you'll be a good, careful driver, and we accept the fact that sometimes, you'll make a mistake, or you'll get drunk, or stoned, or too damn tired, and you'll kill someone. Maybe yourself, maybe a car full of Mom and the kids. Accept it. We let hospitals run, knowing that the docs do the best they can, knowing that the docs will make mistakes and that people WILL die for those mistakes. We know there will be fires and people will die. We choose to go on heating our homes and business, even though this means that a small number of people will burn to death. As a group we have accepted the fact that "shit happens". People die every day who deserve to live. Nothing will change that. Some crimes we choose to punish by death, knowing that there will be errors, and some will die who shouldn't. We are only human, the place where the rising ape meets the falling angel. Nothing we do is perfect. Accept it.

That has nothing to do with capital punishment. and it does have a perfect solution. No capital punishment, no innocent people are killed. How fucking simple.

Except that housing them for all of their life is probably (I don't know for sure on that one) more expensive, and definitely less humane.

The endless appeals process is more expensive then just letting them sit in jail and where does humane come into the equation? Innocent people have a chance to bet let free and the guilty get to rot. I can't think of a better system.

edited 8th Jan '11 5:25:48 AM by thatguythere47

Wait, can't people make more appeals if they aren't set to die? Also, humane is the reason we are going for modern punishments instead of say, hanging. Also, the innocents have the exact same likelyhood of being released as the guilty, and their appeals cost just as much.

edited 8th Jan '11 5:31:16 AM by LandOfGold

What if keeping the criminal alive only makes things worse? Even the CCC (CCC 2267a) doesn't outright disdain capital punishment.

Wait a second, I see that capital punishment is useful. But I don't see how a criminal being alive and in jail can make anything worse.

If he's more of a threat alive than dead, what would you do if you had to decide on the penalty?

He's not much of a threat in maximum security.

There are crimes for which execution is most just punishment.

Having said that, I think that capital punishment is utterly wrong and should not be used. Judicial system is far from perfect, so innocent people can and will be sentenced, there is no way around that. No amount of punishment for real criminals, crime prevented or what have you does not justify a single innocent getting wrongly executed. Court can and will screw up, that's why nothing permanent should ever be inflicted upon the convicted.

I used to be for the death penalty, but after a conversation with my family at Christmas, I started thinking about it in a more economic sense.

Sure, it takes a bunch of money to keep a prisoner for life; feeding him, holding him, all the myriad expenses. But keeping a prisoner cooped up for life is much less expensive than merely executing him, what with the constant appeals and such.

Plus, when an innocent is later proven innocent, it's fine if he's in prison. Just let him out. It's kind of hard to let him free when he's, y'know, dead.

edited 8th Jan '11 10:50:41 AM by Metalhead467

Except to get the death penalty there is two trials, a lengthy appeal process, and a twenty year delay, at least in California.

Its pretty hard to be falsely convicted. Not that the system hasn't found ways to screw up.

Yeah, that's why I listed my economic reasoning as the more important one.

And yeah, it's hard, but it's still possible.

A lot less likely than to be falsely imprisoned for non-death penalty crimes.

I think it is a good idea.

It's pretty hard to be falsely convicted when you have done absolutely nothing, true.

But how do you know all the people on death row truly deserve death? Do you really trust the justice system to be so precise it can divide exactly between those people whose crimes only merit life in prison and those people who deserve to die for their crimes?

Personally, the death penalty is not at all acceptable for anyone who hasn't murdered someone, escaped from jail, and then murdered someone else. That ought to be the minimum to get the death penalty, because it proves you're still a threat to society in jail.

And I'd still prefer abolishing it entirety. I really don't feel comfortable with the government killing anyone at all.

Would you prefer some disgruntled sympathizer of the victim doing it instead?

For the most part I don't think we have the capability to implement capital punishment in any way that can truly satisfy the most basic requirements of a legal system. That is, to be fair and impartial and at the same time efficient. It will cost innocent lives at a high rate with no capability of taking back such a punishment. Even worse, once a person is executed people will naturally stop caring about the crime and let the real criminal get away if the person was actually innocent. Then crime continues to go on, worse yet if it was a serial whatever (rapist, murderer etc).

I think it is far more beneficial to society if we were to implement instead...

a) A variety of prison types for rehabilitating prisoners in different ways. Religious prisons for those to be rehabilitated via religion (or humanist ideals). Prison farms. Standard security prisons. Workshop prisons.

b) A graduated sentencing system. You spend first x years in prison, then some years in straight rehab, then some years in work-internship program, then some years you spend as house arrest and work-internship and then some years probation and then you're free.

edited 10th Jan '11 9:42:38 AM by breadloaf

To get the death penalty you have to

1.) Kill for financial gain, which generally refers to killing people to take their business or something extreme for financial gain, not to kill someone for their wallet

2.) Kill multiple people

3.) Kill someone either by torture or through extreme means

4.) Kill an agent of the government

5.) Treason against the state

As I said, I feel the state has the obligation to end the lives of certain people. Whether or not they will suffer more in prison is irrelevant to me, they deserve to die.

I don't feel that it should ever be applied for anything less than special cases of murder or treason.

I agree with the death penalty, but I'm actually sort of disgusted when people want to make the person suffer before they die. Give them a quick, clean death if it must be done.

If it were up to me, I'd reserve it for people who are obviously not going to be able to be rehabilitated. Why keep people like that alive?

I think that would require the killing of most prisoners, I think there is only a ten percent rate of success.

The programs are there on the principle to give prisoners something to do other than be bored and plot, and that any number of prisoners not going back to crime greater than 0 is doing some good.

But I don't think they would be called sucessful by statistics alone.

As for a quick death, I'm in support of this but evidentily, the current injections weren't as humane as originally believed/reported. And not to mention that trained medical staff weren't always on staff either because of cost or ethical reasons.

edited 10th Jan '11 11:22:41 AM by saladofstones3

To be fair, we don't do a lot to prevent recidivism (Is that the right word?) in America. Our rehabilitation programs are a total joke. If they weren't, we might have better luck.

So, basically, treat prisoners better and give them better treatment to get well.

But if they still fuck up, put a bullet in their skulls.

edited 10th Jan '11 11:25:47 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

I think a lot of the problem with failure to rehabilitate is that a lot of time society works against it. Prison is seen as punishment, not as a place to reform. And afterward, when they have been 'punished' they continue to be punished through ostracism and difficulty getting legitimate work on top of whatever genuine criminal tendencies they may have.