The Death Penalty

The guillotine is quick. No one knows how painful it is because of that.

It's messy. Nations that execute people, for whatever reason, tend to prefer the process to be clean both figuratively and literally.

Schild und Schwert der Partei

France used the guillotine for executions from the Revolution until it abolished the death sentence in 1981.

One thinks the Guillotine is quick. Nobody's around to tell us. Hanging, however? One slip up and the rope's too long? the neck won't break and someone can strangle quite slowly.

One has to ask eventually are they seeking justice or just looking to satisfy some need?

Carbon monoxide is more merciful than hanging.

Rope doesn't always break neck Even with a broken neck, that doesn't mean you die right away What do we do if they're strangling? Poke them with pikes? Spectacle Hanging is messy. A dead person releases their bowels. Do you want to clean that?

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

In the case of the guillotine the severed head actually stays alive for a few moments.

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

Well, turnabout is fair play.

As for hangings and guillotines: Any form of execution is going to be messy if done wrong. All that means is you have to be exceptionally careful and methodical in your preparation. Measure twice, cut once.

While I'm generally in support of the death penalty I don't believe in causing undue suffering through negligence and poor execution. Justice should allow people to retain their dignity (to whatever extent they can maintain it) to the bitter end.

But that's a story for another time.

My girlfriend has often wondered why we don't just use an overdose of anesthetic. That's how we put down dogs and cats, and, as near as we can tell, it's painless.

That said I have to agree with Lightysnake—we might think a particular mode of execution doesn't cause undue agony, but since our victims aren't around to tell us about it, we'll never actually know for sure. In my mind, that's just another reason not to do it.

I assume you're joking from the smiley face. Regardless, I don't think that "turnabout is fair play" really has a place in a court of justice.

Though many do hold "an eye for an eye" (despite the fact that it "Leaves the whole world blind") as an ideal of justice. It has no place in a court though.

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

You support everyone getting treated to exactly what they did? Why? Torture, maiming and rape don't help anyone, and a system like that might make people not press major charges, simply because they don't want to be, in effect, committing the same horrible wrong they suffered through. And honestly, a system where people are kept from crime through threats of violence, torture, rape, and murder doesn't sound civilized to me.

I am not saying I think the death penalty is uncivilized. The death penalty is too large a concept to generalize like that. Everything above is about the particular system discussed.

What is the fundamental difference between premeditated killing in the name of justice and premeditated torture in the name of justice? (Except for the difference between killing and torture, of course).

Shame that's exactly what the American prison system offers offenders. Fights breaking out between ethnic gangs, solitary confinement, becoming someone's bitch for protection, and getting stabbed with a toothbrush. Not to mention whatever brutality to guards and wardens are likely to heap upon the population.

People who like the "Eye for an eye" system of justice tend to secretly hope to be One-Eyed King in a world of the blind, if you don't mind mixing metaphors.

edited 14th Aug '14 3:56:42 AM by AnSTH

But that's a story for another time.

This thread has moved at a pretty good clip in the past few days, so I'm not going to bother repeating arguments I've already made ad nauseum — 90% of which are variations on either "that's a position statement on how you feel, not an argument for how things should be or why" or "we could wrongfully execute someone", both of which I've addressed repeatedly.

That said, there are a few things I want to respond to directly.

That's fair; I didn't mean to suggest that any and everything classified as a crime against humanity would automatically merit the death penalty, only that crimes against humanity should be the only thing where the death penalty is even considered. (Or, well, not quite — I don't have a problem with the death penalty for treason, either, but that's neither here nor there.) In your example, I don't think "killed seven people" is worthy of execution in any case, regardless of whether those seven murders were war crimes or crimes against humanity or anything else. If it was "killed seventy people", then yeah, that deserves it. But like I said, I don't have a hard and fast rule in mind that marks an explicit dividing line.

So does that mean you'd restrict life in prison for those classes of crimes, and people that often get it now (like murder, for example) would get lower sentences? Or would you have someone convicted of a single count of murder serving a life sentence in the cell next to someone serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity? If it's the former, then I can buy that as internally consistent, at least — you're just shifting everything toward lesser sentences than we currently have, with "life in prison without parole" as the ultimate sentence instead of execution — but if it's the latter, then I have problems with that that I've already outlined in this thread.

Seriously. Nitrogen asphyxiation. Full stop, end of line, nothing more to be said. Why do we keep coming back to this?

"Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" was originally intended as a limit on retaliation, not an advocation of it. The idea was to prevent "he punched me, so I'll stab him" "he stabbed me, so I'll kill him", etc, not to say "he punched you, you must punch him in return". People who use it to support the latter are a) using it wrong, and b) massively oversimplifying the whole concept of justice anyway.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

And I have a massive problem with that. Not only has it been abused so much by authoritarian regimes that it lost all meaning to me, but I find it inherently unethical to demand loyalty of anyone, less alone with death threats. Everyone who does this isn't worth being loyal to.

I'm going to point out to you that while "we should never execute anybody" is a position statement that can't be proven, so is "some people deserve to die."

Where I live "life without parole" isn't a sentence you get without being a serial killer anyway. Twenty-five years, with the possibility of parole is the usual sentence for garden-variety murder. With that in mind, I'd have to problem with restricting "life without parole" to people who commit crimes against humanity. Then again, I'd also have no issue with just slapping a twenty-five year sentence on them for every person they're convicted of killing. The main thing for me is that somebody who has gone that far, who has participated in a democide, institutionalized torture, or mass rape, cannot be allowed to ever walk the streets. Simply by being free, they're contributing to an international culture of impunity that says "crimes against humanity will not be punished", and in doing so, endangering all of us. What exactly we call the sentence is irrelevant to me, so long as they never get out. In a relevant example, had Efrain Rios Montt's conviction from last year been upheld, he would have gotten eighty years in prison, which at his age (eighty-seven) means he'll die there. I'd be all right with that.

As for treason, I think that the general charge of "treason" is far too general. It should be judged on a case-by-case basis. If somebody sells nuclear secrets to Al-Qaeda, okay, let's lock them up for the rest of their lives. But if they're giving economic information to France, they probably don't deserve anything more than the sentence you'd get for insider trading.

a) authoritarian regimes kill people in order to maintain power by virtue of being authoritarian regimes. It's basically the definition. The fact that they justify it by calling it treason (when it's almost certainly not) has nothing to do with the actual, legitimate crime of treason. Saying that treason shouldn't be punishable by death because authoritarian regimes kill people for treason is like saying that people shouldn't go on diets because authoritarian regimes justify artificial famines by saying that people are overweight. The fact that it's used illegitimately doesn't mean that all use of it is illegitimate.

b) treason is not simply "disloyalty". Treason is very specifically defined by US law specifically because of the possibility of abuse of a vague definition. Treason is going to war against the US government or aiding its enemies in doing the same. That's it. Unless you're in open, armed rebellion against the government, or providing aid to those who are, you're not guilty of treason.

Proven, no, but it can certainly be argued for or against. If you want to go deeper into the subject of whether or not someone can do something so heinous that they deserve to die for it, then I'm happy to explore that topic.

That's basically my stance as well, except replace "being free" with "being alive". If you're willing to lock up someone for the rest of their life for garden variety crimes against individuals (which it seems that you are, even if you don't want to call it that), then you have to do something more severe to punish a more serious type of crime. Since crimes against humanity are more serious than simple murder, then they require the death penalty — a more serious sentence — to maintain proportionality in sentencing.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Go watch Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" and tell me treason is an acceptable charge to demand execution as the punishment. With a straight face.

edited 14th Aug '14 4:36:20 PM by Cyran

"That wizard came from the moon!"

Khudzlin: There are situations where killing someone is absolutely necessary, like if they're leading a huge criminal organization and almost assuredly going to be broken out of prison and return to a life of crime. Torture is never necessary.^note And before anyone argues that it can be if you need to get information, torture doesn't make people tell the truth, it makes them say stuff to get it to stop, which means lying a lot of the time.

An STH: Well, true, but that's not an inherent problem with the idea of imprisoning people. I'd like people to be in prisons where that wasn't the case, just like many of the death penalty supporters would like people to be killed in a cheap, painless way. Idealization is important in comparing systems of justice.

Native Jovian: About the bit where you said, "then you have to do something more severe to punish a more serious type of crime," I don't see why it's just to execute people simply for the sake of giving them a harsher sentence than someone else.

My problem with executing people for treason is that even if they have an armed rebellion against the government who's to say what their fighting for wouldn't be better for the country in the future. Constitutional democracies though the best form of government we know of now (yes an opinion I know but a fairly excepted one) do have flaws in their systems which might prevent some real work needed to be done and over the course of time might deadlock into fighting between two groups who are barely different. Plus if you are successful in putting down a rebellion and spare the leadership it would show you have mercy and probably increase your support.

It's about proportionality. The punishment should be proportional to the crime. A worse crime deserves a worse punishment. Crimes against humanity are worse crimes than crimes against individuals; therefor crimes against humanity should be punished more severely than crimes against individuals. If you decide that the most severe punishment that should ever be used on someone is life imprisonment, then life imprisonment should be reserved for the most severe crimes. If you don't, then you're no longer punishing crimes proportionally to their severity.

Basically, if you want proportional sentencing and want to get rid of the death penalty, then you need to make life imprisonment (the most severe punishment you're willing to allow) unique to crimes against humanity (the most severe crimes that can be committed). That's at least internally consistent, but most people that want to get rid of the death penalty want to retain life imprisonment for things like murder and use it for more serious crimes, which is no longer proportional sentencing.

"Trust me, this will be better for everyone in the long run" is not a valid legal defense. You're not allowed to go all Robin Hood and steal from the rich to give to the poor, even if that would almost certainly be better for the country in the long run.

edited 14th Aug '14 5:53:11 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Yeah it's not a legal defense but I wouldn't say it's necessary to execute them unless they authorized the direct murder of civilians. Basically the rebels of today are the leaders of tomorrow.

I just don't see how remaining consistent is worth killing someone. The death penalty makes sense in some situations, but I really think human lives are more valuable than proper scaling. I understand the theory behind what you said (worse crimes warrant worse punishments), but that still seems to boil down to killing people for the sake of killing them (and to make people feel better), and I fail to see how that helps anything.

edited 14th Aug '14 6:18:31 PM by Speedchesser

I'm getting really tired of repeating myself.

Again, I'm not saying that "X crime should always be punished by death". I'm saying that "you shouldn't even consider the death penalty unless it's X crime". I'm okay with the idea of treason being a capital crime, because there are situations where I can see treason being deserving of death. I'm not okay with something like, say, a single count of murder being a capital crime, because I can't envision a situation where a single murder justifies capital punishment. I'm not saying that anyone guilty of treason should always be executed no matter the circumstances.

It's not about some sort of OCD anal retentiveness demanding symmetry in all things. It's about making sure that sentencing is just and reasonable. Giving a single murderer and a mass murderer the same sentence is unjust and unreasonable, because the mass murderer has committed a worse crime, so deserves a harsher sentence. If you don't believe that capital punishment is legitimate in any circumstance, then you should say that the mass murderer should get life in prison without parole, and the single murderer should get a lighter sentence. If you believe that the single murderer should get life in prison, then you should say that the mass murderer should get the death penalty, as that's a harsher sentence than life in prison, which we've already assigned to the single murderer.

If you want to say that both the single murderer and the mass murderer should get life in prison, then that's unjust and unreasonable, because you're assigning the same sentence to two crimes of vastly different severity.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Okay, but that still seems to be about keeping a consistent scaling in the end. I'm not saying that a system where the worst one gets is life in prison is perfectly fair, but I really don't see why we need to punish people to harsher sentences when it doesn't increase the safety of others. Killing people or treating them with extra cruelty for no purpose doesn't make sense from a logical perspective, and it's ethically iffy, depending on whether you think justice or life are more important, so I really don't see the point in it.

I'm going to try one more time and then stop.

1. People who commit worse crimes should receive stricter sentences. Can we agree on that?
2. Crimes against humanity are the worst crimes that can be committed. Can we agree on that?
3. If you agree with the first two, then it follows that crimes against humanity should receive the strictest possible sentences. Can we agree on that?
4. If you agree with number three, then whatever you think is the strictest punishment that we employ (presumably either execution or life in prison without parole) should be used for crimes against humanity. Can we agree on that?
5. If you agree with number four and number one, then crimes less serious than crimes against humanity should receive punishment less serious than the strictest punishment. Can we agree on that?

If you believe that both crimes against humanity and less serious crimes like murder should be punished by the same thing — like life in prison — then your logic disagrees with mine somewhere. If that's the case, then it would be helpful to point out where, exactly, your reasoning diverges from mine.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.