The Death Penalty

And why does society deserve revenge in form of the death penalty, while individuals do not? If anything it should be the other way round since individuals have feelings and society does not.

Assuming a thorough process, the only purpose the death penalty serves is revenge. You don't protect society better with the death penalty. So why use it in these instances?

Is consent that can't be rescinded still consent? And coming from a country that has conscription, no, I wasn't aware we were only talking about volunteer armies.

That's a hell of an assumption right there. My entire argument so far has been against this idea. I'm not sure what to tell you other than what I've already said.

That's a massive can of worms and this probably isn't the thread for that discussion. Suffice to say that I'd argue that, in this specific, narrow circumstance, where the situation you'll face and the fact that you can't rescind consent in that situation are both known beforehand, yes, it still counts as consent.

I'm talking about volunteer armies because the legitimacy of conscription is another whole can of worms that's definitely not appropriate for this thread.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

In Islam, this exact point is probably the reason why the death penalty for deliberate murder of people is ultimately decided by whether or not the victim's/victims' living kin desire it. If they decide to forgive the murderer, then he's spared execution, though that doesn't mean he's completely off the hook; there's still whatever other charges he may be guilty of due to the same crime (e.g. if he murdered the victim[s] in broad daylight in front of a mass of people, he could be charged with "terrorizing the public" or whatever they call it in legalese).

That being said, it's a whole other matter if the murder is much worse than something like "I killed that guy because I personally hated him"; if the criminal was, say, a bandit who murdered travellers in between cities/towns willy-nilly, then his crime becomes that of hirabah, and elevates to a crime against the state and society themselves rather than merely against individuals.

edited 7th Apr '17 8:56:53 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Anyway, stuff like what Jovian posted about the business being pulled by the governor of Florida and Republicans in the state spells out why I'm mostly against the Death Penalty for practical reasons and not moral ones. There's just too much shadiness and inequality going on to trust that it's really being used "reasonably" whatever that might be for this.

But on the issues of morality, I don't really think there's an absolute either way, and while I understand where both people who are unilaterally opposed and think it should be applied more are coming from, arguments of moral superiority really just fall on deaf ears with me hear. And that's honestly what a lot of talk in this thread has come down to.

It's difficult to discuss whether a certain method is effective or not if you can't agree on what it's supposed to accomplish in the first place, and that part will pretty much always include a few subjective value judgments of some kind. In any sort of "should we keep doing this?" situation, "arguments of moral superiority" are pretty unavoidable.

Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.

Well, yeah, most people don't advocate for things like this either way unless there's a moral component, but that's different than going "If you support the death penalty in anyway, you're just a blood thirsty monster" or "if you're against it in anyway, you just want anarchy and criminals to murder us all".

Those are obviously hyperbolic, but this thread is filled with people more or less insinuating things of the former's nature. In other places it would be the second.

In other news, Arkansas is running into trouble regarding a plan to hold seven executions over an 11 day period, ostensibly in order to use its lethal injection drugs before they expire. The executions have been halted by federal district court on 8th Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment) grounds.

There are also concerns with the drugs themselves. The standard three-drug cocktail for lethal injection includes an analgesic (pain killer), paralytic, and then the lethal agent. The first drug renders the condemned unconscious and ensures that they won't feel anything, the second prevents and unconscious thrashing or struggling, and the third stops their heart. However, Arkansas uses a sedative rather than an analgesic, which means it puts them to sleep rather than blocking pain (and also putting them to sleep). This means that painful stimulus (such as the injection of the other two drugs) can wake them back up, which is obviously not ideal.

This sedative is the one that is expiring soon (at the end of April), incidentally. If and when Arkansas will be able to replace the drug is unclear, as many states have had trouble getting lethal injection drugs since, in short, no one wants to sell them any.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

See, didn't Arkansas lie to the pharmaceutical company who makes the drugs about what they wanted to use them for?

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

Really? What did they tell the company?

edited 17th Apr '17 8:49:47 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised

We have somethings to sleep, others to stand still and send a few animals to a distant farm.

Not strictly on that order and definitely not on people

Inter arma enim silent leges

x5 I can see where you're coming from. Still, "I don't think there are any valid reasons besides X" isn't necessarily the same thing as "Your reason for this is secretly X!"

edited 17th Apr '17 9:20:56 AM by Corvidae

Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.

Nobody wants to make and sell the government lethal injection drugs for executing criminals on death row, yet plenty of people are willing to knowingly make and sell weapons capable of killing hundreds/thousands of people at once or even annihilating an entire city in a single strike, without any solid guarantees that the government would use such weapons 100% responsibly. How does that make sense?

edited 18th Apr '17 4:36:49 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

People are not fully rational.

The whole point of guns is to incapacitate living things. The whole point of pharmaceutics is the opposite. And lethal injection is a much smaller market than firearms.

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

What?

"[K]illing hundreds/thousands of people at once or even annihilating an entire city in a single strike," That's bombs and missiles, not firearms.

And there are pharmaceuticals that only exist to incapacitate. That's their only purpose. There are, in fact, pharmaceuticals that are designed to not merely incapacitate, but kill. Vets use them regularly.

edited 18th Apr '17 5:09:44 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Pretty much... except I meant nukes instead of mere missiles.

And there's also the use of lethal drugs for euthanizing animals. Or euthanizing humans who actually ask for it, usually because they're suffering from an incurable terminal illness and could not stand their life.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

See, I wasn't thinking of pharmaceuticals serving primarily that purpose.

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

Shockingly, these are different people. There's very little overlap between the firearms industry/military-industrial complex and the pharmaceutical industry. It's almost like people who make weapons and people who make medicine have different attitudes about things.

I'm really not sure what the point of comments like these are.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Ugh, now I'm imagining a Fusion Dance of the military-industrial complex and Big Pharma.

Disgusted, but not surprised

You don't have to delve into the field of medicine to get into the industry of making pharmaceuticals and related substances. IINM, the pharmaceutical industry proper (i.e. the manufacturing aspect) is just a subset of the chemical industry that just happens to mainly provide products for medical purposes; nothing says that it exclusively provides such products for such purposes, so my incredulity is at the claim that practically nobody who goes into the chemical industry is willing to both go into the pharmaceutical manufacturing side and to make pharmaceuticals that are used (sometimes even explicitly designed) for lethal purposes.

Combat stimpacks for everyone! The manufacturer is not responsible for any side-effects that result from misuse or abuse of the product!

edited 18th Apr '17 8:34:02 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

My point is that companies that make medicine don't want to be associated with killing people, so refuse to sell drugs to states that will use it for the purpose of executions, while companies that make weapons are making weapons and therefore aren't part of the death penalty issue at all, so I fail to see how it's even relevant to the conversation.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

In the end the move is based less on moral feelings of the company and more on outrage from the public. So why does the public get outraged about the death penalty but not military weapons? It's a good question, generally it's because the public tends to trust that military weapons are used against people who pose a threat (shot or long term) to people, while executions are done on thosue who no longer pose a threat due to having already been caught.

On top of that there's the point already made, the public expects weapons companies to help kill people, they don't expect medicine companies to do it. The two companies are held to different standards.

edited 18th Apr '17 8:54:59 AM by Silasw

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

Guns that heal and medicine that kills?

edited 18th Apr '17 8:56:43 AM by AngelusNox

Inter arma enim silent leges

"Now? Heheheh...let's go practice medicine."

edited 18th Apr '17 8:59:51 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised

What you're saying here is that the companies that make those pharmaceuticals that are usually used for medical purposes but can be used for execution via lethal injection are always companies that style themselves as serving the medical field. In other words, there are no manufacturers belonging to the general chemical industry that just so happen to include medical pharmaceuticals (including ones that could be used for lethal injections) within their wide range of products, and thus should have no problem being seen as makers of lethal substances that are specifically for use against humans by the government (it's a whole different issue when it comes to unauthorized use; I do not believe even firearms manufacturers would tolerate the idea of willingly letting someone buy their weapons for the express purpose of committing criminal activity against their own country, because at the very least it's bad for business).

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.