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Goodbye Jesus

How America Screws Up The Death Penalty


Lilith666

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If we must kill people, we need to do it right.

 

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber, was sentenced to death by lethal injection an hour ago. Some people argue that death is the easy way out, and in this situation, they have a point. This man killed four people and injured over 100--some don't have legs anymore, thanks to his bomb, including little kids. Why should he get a quick and easy death from a needle in his arm, probably decades after the actual crime due to appeals, when many people will suffer for the rest of their lives from their dead or maimed friends and relatives? Lawyers and so-called "human rights advocates" do their best to minimize the unpleasantness of execution, and claim that if a prisoner feels pain during his punishment, it's cruel. Bullshit. It's wrong that we debate whether a monster who caused so much pain should have to suffer. Yes, he should. He should feel pain. We need to send the message that we will not tolerate those who slaughter people who never did a thing to them. The point of the death penalty is to punish the one who is being killed. We are executing murderers, not euthanizing animals.

 

I'm tired of hearing about murderers being coddled. How about we go back to actually administering justice?

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I agree with you but don't forget he will have a lot of "fun" in prison before his death.

 

Do you suggest stadium style executions again? lol

 

That would be interesting.

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I propose the firing squad, or something simple that doesn't involve a procedure with a lot of things to get right. Less room for messing up, and then the people who think they're human-rights champions screaming for blood.

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I think the punishment should fit the crime.

 

You beat someone, you get brutally beaten.

You rape someone...

You shoot...

Acid attack...

 

You get my drift.

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Guillotine was the most effective way if you don't mind the mess.  But in the U.S. it's hard to get things changed because voters don't

 

agree.  As far as lethal injection goes I don't understand why the government doesn't simply use morphine.  There is so much debate

 

about if the chemicals they use work or if they dull the pain.  Morphine solves all the problems and it's 100% effective if used in sufficient

 

quantity.

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I think there needs to be a balance among the three basic goals of criminal justice for the convicted - rehabilitation, deterrence and punishment.

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Sdelsolray: Do you think Tsarnaev can be rehabilitated? Or if you do, that there is a decent chance of doing so?

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My only problem with rehabiltation, when dealing with murder, sets up a society to have a "Free Pass" for murder. Every crime is a different scenario, so i think we need to balance fairness with the punishment a little better. Some criminals deserve a worse punishment than other because of the situatation. Murder is murder but why was the murder committed? Do you think a revenge murder is the same as a thrill murder? They call this the grey(gray, depending where you are from) area.

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I'm decidedly, 100 %, against the death penalty (yeah liberal wimpy European who I am :P ), but if one uses it then yeah, use it right at least.

 

I'm not for making them suffer needlessly though. Yes gut feelings say they should, especially if their crime was something like the Boston bombings or similarly rotten and vile. But with a death sentence especially (where the delinquent won't be able to learn any lesson or such from it anyway) this "suffering" idea is not about justice anymore... it's about revenge. And that's a very human and understandable feeling but the justice system has to be about justice.

 

A more reasonable approach to the question of death penalties, of course, wouldn't hurt. See this recent Slate article for example. But then, reasonable thinking will show you that the idea about it scaring people into not breaking the law can and has already backfired, that it's expensive as shit (what with all the legal procedure to make sure it's okay to off them and such), and of course that it's terribly irreversible if the wrong person gets condemned... which is another sad question altogether for any court system (and apparently especially for US justice).

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I think there needs to be a balance among the three basic goals of criminal justice for the convicted - rehabilitation, deterrence and punishment.

 

Sdelsolray: Do you think Tsarnaev can be rehabilitated? Or if you do, that there is a decent chance of doing so?

 

The balance struck should be on a case by case basis, which is generally provided for in the criminal justice system, i.e., due process, jury trials, etc.  Obvious, the jury's death penalty verdict balanced strongly towards deterrence and punishment, and little on rehabilitation.

 

I don't know if Tsasrnaev could be rehabilitated.  The jury didn't seem to think so.

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If the death penalty is proper for this guy, then it is proper for all other death row inmates. The problem with that is the disturbingly high rate of people found to be innocent after their execution. Current best estimation is 4%, though even one person wrongly executed for a crime he didn't commit is too many. Our desire for revenge goes beyond punishment, and we need to catch up with the other civilized countries that have seen the injustice of the death penalty. China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the USA carry out 88% of known executions world wide. Is this the company we want to keep or should we emulate more progressive societies?

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It was a long time ago, but as far as I recall my Criminology studies, rehabilitation is no better an approach to preventing re-offending than is retribution.  Mind, better methods may have been developed since.

 

In the U.K we sentence to life rather than death (irony of ironies).  However, at least those who are so sentenced get to be freed once the evidence exonerating them finally makes its' way through the appeal courts.  It's not that uncommon a situation.  Murder is an emotive crime, and people can be convicted on the back of that emotion on evidence that would not have supported such a verdict on any lesser offence.

 

Death tends to be a tad final.

 

I also doubt if the idea that causing suffering in inflicting death is necessarily any more just than a quick execution in any given case.  The sentence is "death", not "pain" - the latter is torture, and it is rare to hear anyone support state sanctioned torture.  Also, the main benefit of the death penalty is that it costs less than keeping people alive.  That is true regardless of the level of pain inflicted.

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It was a long time ago, but as far as I recall my Criminology studies, rehabilitation is no better an approach to preventing re-offending than is retribution. Mind, better methods may have been developed since.

 

In the U.K we sentence to life rather than death (irony of ironies). However, at least those who are so sentenced get to be freed once the evidence exonerating them finally makes its' way through the appeal courts. It's not that uncommon a situation. Murder is an emotive crime, and people can be convicted on the back of that emotion on evidence that would not have supported such a verdict on any lesser offence.

 

Death tends to be a tad final.

 

I also doubt if the idea that causing suffering in inflicting death is necessarily any more just than a quick execution in any given case. The sentence is "death", not "pain" - the latter is torture, and it is rare to hear anyone support state sanctioned torture. Also, the main benefit of the death penalty is that it costs less than keeping people alive. That is true regardless of the level of pain inflicted.

I don't support capital punishment, but if the jury calls for it in a case like this, there's no need to try to make the execution pain-free for the convict. I don't advocate torture. Just kill the convict, and if he ends up suffering I won't feel bad for him. Pain is a part of being killed, and lord knows he has already caused much suffering for others. I was debating someone--an adult--who insisted that Tsarnaev should be tortured for the rest of his life. This is a childish mentality. We want to deter crime, not confirm the idea that those we don't like should be put in as much pain as possible.

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If he were sentenced to life in prison, the walls would be for his sake in keeping out the people whose sense of justice would provoke them to try to kill him.  A society's justice system is a reflection of their moral sentiments.  Without the death penalty in the USA, as rarely executed as it is, we would likely see more police officers and on-scene vigilantes imposing the death penalty in less tasteful, deliberate, and public ways.  Even peaceful communities have fangs and claws, and a docile bear will not tolerate certain kinds of poking.  I don't know how European communities would react, but American communities -- even a federal jury pool in Massachussettes, would walk away from the trial with feelings of guilt and shame unless they issued a sentence of death when the question is put to them.  A trial should not victimize the jurors.

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It was a long time ago, but as far as I recall my Criminology studies, rehabilitation is no better an approach to preventing re-offending than is retribution. Mind, better methods may have been developed since.

 

In the U.K we sentence to life rather than death (irony of ironies). However, at least those who are so sentenced get to be freed once the evidence exonerating them finally makes its' way through the appeal courts. It's not that uncommon a situation. Murder is an emotive crime, and people can be convicted on the back of that emotion on evidence that would not have supported such a verdict on any lesser offence.

 

Death tends to be a tad final.

 

I also doubt if the idea that causing suffering in inflicting death is necessarily any more just than a quick execution in any given case. The sentence is "death", not "pain" - the latter is torture, and it is rare to hear anyone support state sanctioned torture. Also, the main benefit of the death penalty is that it costs less than keeping people alive. That is true regardless of the level of pain inflicted.

I don't support capital punishment, but if the jury calls for it in a case like this, there's no need to try to make the execution pain-free for the convict. I don't advocate torture. Just kill the convict, and if he ends up suffering I won't feel bad for him. Pain is a part of being killed, and lord knows he has already caused much suffering for others. I was debating someone--an adult--who insisted that Tsarnaev should be tortured for the rest of his life. This is a childish mentality. We want to deter crime, not confirm the idea that those we don't like should be put in as much pain as possible.

 

Well, there is the Eighth Amendment which forbids cruel and unusually punishment, at least in the USA.  If there is a way to execute a person with little or no pain, then any other method that does not meet that standard is cruel and unusual, at least according to the SCOTUS.

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I'm decidedly, 100 %, against the death penalty (yeah liberal wimpy European who I am tongue.png ), but if one uses it then yeah, use it right at least.

 

I'm not for making them suffer needlessly though. Yes gut feelings say they should, especially if their crime was something like the Boston bombings or similarly rotten and vile. But with a death sentence especially (where the delinquent won't be able to learn any lesson or such from it anyway) this "suffering" idea is not about justice anymore... it's about revenge. And that's a very human and understandable feeling but the justice system has to be about justice.

 

A more reasonable approach to the question of death penalties, of course, wouldn't hurt. See this recent Slate article for example. But then, reasonable thinking will show you that the idea about it scaring people into not breaking the law can and has already backfired, that it's expensive as shit (what with all the legal procedure to make sure it's okay to off them and such), and of course that it's terribly irreversible if the wrong person gets condemned... which is another sad question altogether for any court system (and apparently especially for US justice).

Liberal American here and I'm also against capital punishment. There are no monsters, just people who have acted monstrously. I think it's always wrong to kill a person unless they pose an immediate threat to another's life. Making exceptions for "really bad people" is a can of worms that really ought to be closed and tossed out.

 

Terrorists try to kill people because, in their mind, their targets deserve it. So we kill them, because they deserve it? Obviously, we think wer're right and they're wrong. They think the same thing. So in what manner are we behaving differently?

 

The moral high road demands a different course of action, in my opinion.

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Yup counter-killing is a very very suspect thing.

 

As they (corrently) pointed out on cracked.com some time ago about retaliation of the military kind (paraphrased)...: "So you may think that, if 'they' kill one of 'us' and 'we' then kill ten of 'them', the score is 10:1 in 'our' favor. It is not. The true score then is 11:0 for team violence."

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AndrewTomlinson, I agree with you that a person who isn't immediately threatening should not be killed. It's one thing to shoot someone who has a gun in public and is pointing it at people. It's another to kill a person who is under complete control, cannot fight back, and can do nothing more to hurt someone else.

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The point of the death penalty is to punish the one who is being killed. We are executing murderers, not euthanizing animals.

 

Sounds like a god-complex to me.

 

Society's job isn't to play god. The only role that makes sense is to protect itself. Anything more is just religion by another name.

 

Also, if you think living years in Supermax is the easy way out, you might wanna do some research on life in Supermax.

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If the death penalty is proper for this guy, then it is proper for all other death row inmates. The problem with that is the disturbingly high rate of people found to be innocent after their execution. Current best estimation is 4%, though even one person wrongly executed for a crime he didn't commit is too many. Our desire for revenge goes beyond punishment, and we need to catch up with the other civilized countries that have seen the injustice of the death penalty. China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the USA carry out 88% of known executions world wide. Is this the company we want to keep or should we emulate more progressive societies?

 

Right, and given how broken our prosecutorial system is (it's essentially an old boys club), I bet the real numbers are much higher. 

 

Bottom line; if we as a society execute an innocent, then we as society are also just common murderers.

 

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Vigile, what I'm trying to say is that I don't support the death penalty for various reasons, but if the government is going to punish a person in this way, it should be an actual punishment. Not something watered-down because we are trying to "take the high road." Worrying about whether the convict is in pain doesn't count as distributing punishment.

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There are no monsters

 

Yes, there are.

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bdp: Yes. A rapist, an abuser, a child molester, a person who deliberately hurts and manipulates other people for his/her own benefit--these are monsters. To say there aren't any ("just people who do monstrous things") is naïve.

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Vigile, what I'm trying to say is that I don't support the death penalty for various reasons, but if the government is going to punish a person in this way, it should be an actual punishment. Not something watered-down because we are trying to "take the high road." Worrying about whether the convict is in pain doesn't count as distributing punishment.

 

Then again, what good will this be, in the case of a death penalty?

 

What purpose serves punishment, in general?

 

As I understand it, it's meant to teach the punished person a lesson to change her behavior in the future, and to make others think twice before they do the same. If there's more reasons, please enlighten me :)

 

One of these two reasons is void already - the one you'll kill will not have any chance to change her ways after the punishment. So the remaining question is - does it make others sufficiently afraid so that they won't do the same? As far as I know, experts are far from agreement on this one. Am I wrong? :scratch:

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Not the way the government does execution, it's not a deterrent. It should be, though--I personally think hard labor, water, and stale bread for the rest of one's life would be more effective than the current system.

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