The Death Penalty

I am all for revamping the system. But gas chambers are still something I feel more comfortable with.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Why not let the condemned decide?

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

To a point sure.

Several southern states still have either the firing squad or hanging as an option but no one has requested it.

I don't want firing squads. If they really want beheading, hanging, or something like that so be it. I wouldn't want anything like crucification. But let them be a little open. Hell, let them open their veins or overdose on opiates if they wish.

But if we had to go back to just one method, modified gas chamber is how I would go.

If I was sentanced to death, that is what I would want.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

If we're talking about cost effectiveness up front, firing squad is probably the cheapest and foolproof method available. However, on the back end, possible therapy for the executors (even with the aspect of random bullet placements) isn't that cheap. It's still better than mystery drug cocktails pumped directly into someone's veins. I sympathize with the survivor of the Arizona botched killing's thirst for vengeance and feeling no pity for him as he gasped like a fish on that table, but at the same time I'm not of the belief that we should be encouraging such behavior (or that that feeling of justice served in her statements will last).

"That wizard came from the moon!"

Again: nitrogen asphyxiation. Cheap, quick, painless, foolproof, and no unpleasant unintended consequences.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I wonder how many would take the option of O Ding themselves on crack or something.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

On choosing the method of your own execution (NSFW):

edited 24th Jul '14 5:07:14 PM by Cyran

"That wizard came from the moon!"

Overdose by crack? Very, very difficult and very painful.

Opiates are a little more, gentle? Morphine, opium, and sometimes heroin depending on the blend makes you just dream and keep dreaming.

Uppers like amphetamines and whatnot? That's when you have people choke, oxygen fails, heart all out, nah. That's messy.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

And then what do you do if the judge dies from a car accident or natural causes before the criminal's execution rolls around?

I'm finding myself agreeing with the nitrogen idea. Do you even need a room? Couldn't you just use something like a firefighting mask but with a pure nitrogen tank hooked up instead?

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Nitrogen asphyxiation sounds possibly promising, but no one actually uses it for people as far I could find.

via ABC News Federal Judge Favors 'More Primitive' but 'Foolproof' Firing Squad

"That wizard came from the moon!"

@Native Jovian: I know. That's why I say "take responsibility" before the quote, rather than "look them in the eyes as you personally kill them". The very fact that people are trying to distance the executioners from the executions means the executioners feel something's wrong with it. I think the judges and juries who order death penalties (initial decision or confirmation in appeal) should watch the executions they have ordered (and also visit prisons - on a regular basis for judges). Distancing yourself from the consequences of your decisions is cowardly, especially when a human life is in the balance. To paraphrase Ned Stark again (the exact quote eludes me): "If you can't look the condemned in the eyes and listen to his last words, then you don't have the right to order his death."

Senator John McCain, who supports capital punishment in general, called the latest botched execution "torture". That's not a word he uses lightly, considered he was seriously tortured as a POW while in the custody of North Vietnamese forces.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/25/justice/arizona-execution-controversy/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

It's an accurate word given the incident clearly violates the 8th amendment. I've heard people decry the 8th in response to this, insisting there is no clear definition of "cruel and unusual" thus it could conceivably be used to block any kind of punishment whatsoever.

Which is surely horse shit.

My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.

Just a thought, if we change to an over the nose mask with gas as a form of execution, the prisoner would be able to have someone hold their hand as they pass if they wish.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

^^ well yeah there is no exact clear-cut definition, it's up to the courts to decide what is it and is cruel and unusual. But it is generally easy to interpret that torture is 'within reason'.

edited 25th Jul '14 4:46:50 PM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

Having read through all fifty plus pages of this thread, I thought I'd respond to two pro-death penalty arguments that seem to be coming up a lot.

RE: Retributive justice

A few posters in particular have clung to this one, saying that if somebody kills someone, thus depriving them of the right to live, they should lose their own. They've also said it is justifiable because it "comforts the family of the victim" etc, etc.

Others have made the comparison, but no one has flat out asked these people, so I thought I'd do it—do you support raping rapists? Torturing torturers? Maiming someone who has crippled somebody else? If you do, you're logically consistent but scare the hell out of me. If you don't, your position makes no sense. All the arguments in favour of killing a killer can also be used to justify all other forms of "retributive" justice. It "comforts" the family to know their daughter's murderer is dead? It would probably "comfort" them to know her rapist is now as traumatized as she is. It's cruel and unusual? So's killing somebody. We don't want to ask people to become rapists/torturers/etc? Than why are you okay with making them executioners.

Explain to me, using the same train of logic that lead you to "executing a killer is acceptable" why torturing a torturer or raping a rapist is not.

RE: Some people just have it coming

I find this argument disturbing, especially when combined with an acknowledgement that the death penalty doesn't reduce crime, and doesn't make society safer. At that point what you're essentially saying is "I am okay with sending potentially innocent people to be executed because it makes me feel better." As others have said, if we screw up with a prison sentence, we can at least let you out. We can't undo dead. I know that Native Jovian would say that we can't not punish people harshly enough on the chance that they might turn out to be innocent, but that only works if you accept the premises (that we must punish people harshly, and that death is an acceptable punishment) in the first place. I don't—I'd rather be too lenient than too heavy handed, and I don't think the state can ever justify executing somebody.

I know that Jovian—and others—have said they'd want to limit it to people who commit crimes against humanity, because those people are magnitudes worse than other murderers. Yet have they thought this through? Crimes against humanity is a big group. To use the Nazis as an example, who all is going to die? Just Hitler and his cronies? Or are we going after the camp guards? If we're going after them, should we go after the businesses who sold them the gas, knowing what it would be used for? Who isn't complicit here? And what about mitigating circumstances? Most of Stalin's henchmen would claim—justifiably—that they were in fear for their own lives. Are we going to accept that? Or is the scale of their crime so great we have to kill them anyway?

For that matter the magnitude argument falls flat too, because as much as there's a huge gap between a garden-variety murderer and Augusto Pinochet, there's an equally big, if not greater gap, between Pinochet and Hitler. One killed three thousand people, the other tens of millions. If it is unjust for a regular murderer to receive the same sentence as a Pinochet, how is it more just for a Pinochet (or an Osama Bin Laden) to receive the same sentence as a Hitler or a Stalin?

If your answer is that they deserve the same sentence, you are effectively admitting that the magnitude argument is bunk, and that there is a certain point at which we can't apply a higher sentence, no matter how heinous the crime. In which case, why bother with the death penalty? If you say that no, only some of the people I've mentioned deserve execution, which ones is it? Just the leaders, or the henchmen as well? The ones who killed hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Where is the line? What about other crimes against humanity? Should the men who ran the Serbian rape camps during the Yugoslav breakdown be executed? What about Pinochet's friends in the Uruguayan junta who "only" killed a few hundred people, but practised catch-and-release torture on thousands more? Where do you put the line?

If what you take from this is that any line we're going to draw is completely arbitrary, you are right. That's one of the reasons I'm against the death penalty—because it is arbitrary, and state-sanctioned executions should never be that. If you say "but any punishment is arbitrary" (who decides what gets life and what doesn't?) you're not wrong, but you also aren't attacking my case, because I don't think the role of the law is to punish. The role of the law is to protect the rest of society, and if we can do that without executions—and we know we can—than we should do it without executions. Maybe executing mass murderers makes some people feel better, but the state does not exist to make you feel better. It exists to protect you, and that includes protecting you from your bloodlust and desire for retribution.

Despite agreeing with you on your other points, this:

is debatable. Not everyone agrees on what a state should or should not provide.

Also it's a statement that can be interpreted very worryingly - i.e. by justifying all kinds of freedom-restricting measures in the name of "protection".

I do generally agree with though.

My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.

Well, my point is more than freeing the guilty is just as much of a miscarriage of justice as punishing the innocent. I have said that I support more stringent requirements of guilt for execution than I would for other punishments — I just find "you can't undo the death penalty" to be a poor argument against it because you can't "undo" wrongful imprisonment, either. You can release them, but you can't give the years of their life they've already lost back to them. I'd also say that my argument isn't for punishing people "harshly", it's for punishing them appropriately. I certainly have problems with our current justice system, but the existence of the death penalty isn't one of them. (The way it's applied is, but I wouldn't want to eliminate its use entirely.)

Of course, you say that you'd rather be too lenient than too harsh and that the state can never justify execution without actually arguing for those positions. Your logic works if you accept those premises, but you don't give any reasons why we should accept them. I realize that you're making more of a position statement than attempting a persuasive argument, but still.

That's a valid question, and I'm honestly not sure that I have a good answer. I'm not a lawyer, so I certainly couldn't come up with a rule that would hold up in court, but in general I'd say that only the people who willfully and directly contributed would be subject to the death penalty. If you had reasonable opportunity to refuse the orders without getting yourself killed in the process and you didn't take advantage of it, then you're culpable. You can't legitimately be held responsible for actions taken under duress, so if someone puts a gun to your head and says "do this or die", then you aren't liable for those actions. But if you could have refused to obey the orders (either by publicly rejecting them or simply going AWOL or something) but didn't, then you're responsible for following them.

The line is between "crimes against individuals" and "crimes against humanity". A murderer has committed crimes against an individual. A serial killer has committed crimes against multiple individuals. A mass murderer has committed crimes against humanity. You can argue about where the exact theoretical dividing line is, but in practice I don't think it's that hard to tell the difference.

The specifics of each sentence would have to come down to the specifics of each case, obviously. But generally speaking, if something is serious enough to be labelled a crime against humanity, then it's serious enough that you deserve execution for it — even if it's not mass murder.

That's a distinction without a difference. If you're going to say that execution should not be done because it's punishment instead of protection, what about life imprisonment? Should we ban that, because an elderly ex-con no longer represents a threat to society? Why force old men to die in prison instead of releasing them to live the last few, harmless years of their life in freedom? What if we can brainwash someone A Clockwork Orange style, and make them safe for society in a matter of weeks or months instead of imprisoning them for years? Should we do that, instead?

edited 11th Aug '14 5:09:51 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

@Native Jovian

I think that killing somebody is the worst thing that you can do to someone else. Other people might argue that rape or torture are worse, but I disagree with them on that. As horrible as both those crimes are, people can and do recover from them. Hell, I've read testimonies from political prisoners who were tortured for years, yet have gone on to become more or less functional members of society after their release. Nobody, conversely, has ever recovered from being killed. At the risk of stating the obvious, dead is dead. When you kill somebody—either through murder or execution—you not only kill who they are, you kill who they might have become. You end them, in the most literal sense possible.

With that in mind, I don't think the state should be in the business of killing people. Yes, there are times when we have no choice—if it's a choice between shoot a criminal or let him shoot an innocent person or persons, than yes we shoot the criminal—but executing people who no longer pose a threat is not one of those times. If we're going to say the state can't torture people—and most people seem to agree on that—and that the state can't rape people—and I've never heard anyone other than a psychopath argue for the latter—I think we also have to say that the state can't execute people.

"I just find "you can't undo the death penalty" to be a poor argument against it because you can't "undo" wrongful imprisonment, either. You can release them, but you can't give the years of their life they've already lost back to them."

No you can't undo wrongful imprisonment, but you can stop it. You can let the person out and end their punishment right then and there. You can help them reintegrate into society, and you can pay them for their loss. You can't actually take the damage away, but you can avoid inflicting more damage on them, and you can both apologize and try to make what time they have left more livable. None of these things can be done for a dead man. If we execute you and then find out you were innocent, the most we can do is apologize to your family, and that's nowhere near sufficient in my mind.

The state should not be in the position of handing out punishments that cannot be ended in the light of future evidence.

"in general I'd say that only the people who willfully and directly contributed would be subject to the death penalty."

"A murderer has committed crimes against an individual. A serial killer has committed crimes against multiple individuals. A mass murderer has committed crimes against humanity."

I'm going to try and address both of these at once. First of all, I disagree with the notion that we should punish people according to the class of their crimes. If we're going to have a system where we punish people more harshly as their crimes get worse, than total number of victims should matter more than what class of crime it falls into. To continue with the example from my last post, were I a judge, and were Augusto Pinochet and Adolf Hitler to land in front of me, I would give Hitler a longer sentence than Pinochet. Even if that means that in effect, they both spend life in prison, I would want Hitler to have a longer sentence on the record. I think that doing so sends a stronger message about what is acceptable and unacceptable (and the degrees thereof) than simply executing them both.

And I still think we run into trouble even if we limit our executions to people who had the chance to refuse their orders but did not. Suppose we have, on the one hand, a soldier who, as part of a politicide or genocide, killed seven people. And on the other we have a Serial Killer who murdered fifteen people because they reminded him of his mother. Under current international law, the soldier is guilty of crimes against humanity, yet the serial killer is not. Is it fair to execute the former but not the latter? The latter but not the former? Or is the point moot because you'd want to restrict executions to the leaders anyway (though that still raises issues when you consider that there are individual Nazi camp guards who've killed more people than Osama bin Laden). I'm not saying you couldn't make a case for executing the soldier and not the serial killer, mind you (you could argue the soldier was part of a vastly more evil system while the serial killer was not), I'm just wondering about your opinion.

" If you're going to say that execution should not be done because it's punishment instead of protection, what about life imprisonment? Should we ban that, because an elderly ex-con no longer represents a threat to society? Why force old men to die in prison instead of releasing them to live the last few, harmless years of their life in freedom? What if we can brainwash someone A Clockwork Orange style, and make them safe for society in a matter of weeks or months instead of imprisoning them for years? Should we do that, instead?"

I'll address these in order. I think we have to have life in prison, not only for those who truly are too dangerous to release, but because I agree with one thing you said earlier—namely that some crimes are so heinous that society is required to mandate some sort of harsh punishment for it—not for the sake of punishing the perpetrators but to send a message to society that "this is unacceptable." In doing so, we make that unacceptability a part of society, and hopefully prevent future crimes (though for this to work, we have to keep lengthy sentences for the crimes that truly do horrify us). This is also why I have no problems with a lengthy—or even indefinite—statute of limitations on some crimes. Somebody once asked me what we gain from tracking down old WWII era war criminals. What we gain, in my opinion, is the statement that if you do something like this we will get you, even if it means dragging you out of your old age home, and you will spend the rest of your life in jail. I would also maintain that there are certain people—most notably the aforementioned perpetrators of crimes against humanity—who remain a danger to society no matter how old they get. It's for all of the above reasons that I am in favour of genuine life sentences, though only for the most depraved members of society. I think that it does protect us from them, both by keeping them away from everyone else, and by ingraining on the societal level that "this is wrong" (and before anyone thinks we all know that, consider that before 1945, plenty of countries were okay with what would now be considered war crimes/crimes against humanity. Nuremberg was a statement to the world that "this is wrong").

I would not support the A Clockwork Orange style brain tampering for the simple reason that it is tampering with somebody's brain. If you completely rewrite a person's mind, are they even the same person anymore? Have you effectively killed them? That strikes me as far more intrusive, and far less humane, than jailing them, and of course, in reality, the question of if it would actually protect people or just screw them up more, is a real one.

edited 12th Aug '14 5:00:35 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

We could of course offer convicts the choice of undergoing such a treatment in return for their freedom.

We could, though even then I'd be concerned about it. There's no guarantee that the convict in question would fully understand what they're signing up for, no matter how well it was explained to them, which makes it a morally murky proposition at best.

Here's a hangup. For every person you kill who's a terrible human being who unquestionably committed the crime, how many people are on death row who might have problems with the convictions? In the days when blacks were sentenced on little evidence by all-white juries, or cases where we know innocent people were executed or exonerated...

This is enough of an argument against the death penalty for me. The fact we may imprison innocent men is bad enough, but executing the innocent accidentally is utterly terrifying for me. I've done work with the Innocence Initiative and the amount of cases I've seen where a supposedly fool proof guilty person begins to unravel when you look close are shocking.

Another factor is we are never going to have a perfect execution method. Something can always go wrong and cause unnecessary agony. That is also a solid point in favor of abolishing the system in my eyes.

Isn't hanging the simplest and the most straightforward means of execution? In Singapore, we still use hanging as a way to dispose of the (rare) death penalty cases. It sounds cheaper, less elaborate, and more humane than the firing squad, lethal injection or the gas chamber.

edited 13th Aug '14 1:50:41 AM by iridium248

Hanging is a fairly inefficient and slow method and it doesn't work on very light people, from what I know.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman