"You have forfeited your right to live"

[Richelieu]

You come down from that high road and we'll talk.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger No, you are looking at backwards. If you use the most extreme form of punishment and it doesn't do more than a lesser form, there is no rationale in using it.

DP does do more. It permanently removes dangerous people from society with no chance of escape, it prevents having to pay to keep some criminal alive for 65+years, it truly punishes those who have commited crimes so heinous that they've revoked their right to live in society (and yes, prison is still a part of society). Just because you decide not to differentiate between execution and life imprisonment doesn't mean that there's not a difference.

Vengence is not the same as justice.

I can't think of a more subjective term than "justice." All you anti-DP people conflate the terms, especially when try to argue with pro-Death Penatly. Your side acts as if you have a monoply over the definition of justice, and thus you think that stating this meaningless phrase somehow helps your cause. I was illustrating that point. I accept that all punishment has some aspect of vengance. You can't for some reason.

You have yet to lay out some of these ethical reasons.

I did in my previous post. The justification for punishment is that you should be held personally accoutable for wrong doings. The worse the transgression, the worse the punishment. The death penalty is reserved for those who have commited the most vile transgressions (like kidnapping, raping, and murdering some random child).

"Ethical" arguments between the two sides are pointless, because its obvious that we follow two different philosophies. You find my position reprehensible, I find your position reprehensible.

You're stating it like capital punishment should be applied until proven otherwise. That's not the approach for philosophical or ethical debates.

That's ridiculous. I was pointing out that your arguments against the death penalty were weak, and that the exact arguments could be applied against long term imprisonment. Are you against imprisonment?

It takes more money to put somebody on the death row than locking him up for life.

This is another of those phantom stats that both sides trot out. I think this is B.S., but even if I'd accept that its true, it still doesn't sway me to be completely anti-DP. I think that the D.P. used to be given too broadly, and borderline cases drove up the costs because of the constant appeals.

The D.P. should be reserved for cases like this and like John Wayne Gacy, when there's absolutely no doubt as to whether the person did it (like when they find the victim's bodies under your house / in your refirgerator / catch you on tape committing the crime). When that is the case, then person should get one appeal just as a safeguard. If the appeals court confirms the verdict, then that person should be executed by the end of that month. That method would be much cheaper than having to shelter and feed this person for the rest of his life.

[Kinjiru]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Civilization is supposed to have evolved beyond such blatant and unadapted simplism.

Why do you think this statement to be true?

Not trolling, I am genuinely curious.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Richelieu
How about "punishing" being another main function of punishment.

They don't accept that. That's why these arguments never go anywhere. The two sides believe in fundamentally different philosophies.

The anti-DP people don't really believe that punishing people for what they've done wrong is acceptable. They try to obscure this through appeals to ethics and justice, ignoring the fact that there's isn't the only interpretation of justice and ethics.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Kinjiru
Why do you think this statement to be true?

Generally speaking, civilization gave mankind the material possibility to think hard about what it does, and to often go contrary to its gut instinct.

At the core of civilization is the setup of rules so that the humans (who are both an individualistic and a social animal) can live together. Ergo, across the world and the eras, you have rules that ban theft, murder, covetousness etc.

As societies grew increasingly complex (in part because of growing numbers, in part because of division of labour - which is why society grew amazingly more complex since the industrial revolution), rules became more complex as well, so that society continues to function. Here is an example: the ancients could have never believed that our huge countries could possibly be democratic: even the Athenians were sure that a gigantic empire (such as today's Netherlands with its 15 million inhab) would be necessarily despotic. Yet, modern history seems to show that democratic societies are more functional than despotic ones, even in large countries.

About death penalty, unlike old times, we currently enjoy an untold amount of philosophers, law scholars and sociologists who can think and study about punishment. The corpus of thought in this matter was fairly small before the 20th century, mostly some philosophers who pondered the question without giving a systematic answer.
This reflection has shaped the current Zeitgeist (spirit of the times) that punishment has two uses: preventing the culprit from doing it again, and preventing others from doing it.

In short: civilization recently gave us the tools necessary to think about that particular matter, which is indeed not the most urgent matter mankind had to think about. We are now living in a Zeitgeist shaped by the results of this reflection.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Spiffor
This reflection has shaped the current Zeitgeist (spirit of the times) that punishment has two uses: preventing the culprit from doing it again, and preventing others from doing it.

This isn't true. A basic American criminal law class mentions 4 reasons for criminal punishments:

1. Protecting Society from that criminal
2. Deterring others from committing the crime
3. Retrubutitive- the person must pay his debt to society
4. Rehabilitive- give the criminal the opportunity to learn to become a better citizen.

The weight given to these elements differs depending on the crime. I believe that the more heinous a crime, the more focus should be given to 1. and 3.

Deterence only works on the deterrable (meaning that harcore sociopaths will commit crimes regardless of the consequences). Rehabilitation is much less apt to work on a guy that butchered and ate a dozen children than it is on a guy who shoplifted an X Box.


It doesn't surprise me that Europeans leave out the retrubutive portion of punishment. This guy probably would have got 6 years imprisonment in Germany.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Agathon
When it comes to punishment there are two functions. One is to prevent the person offending again; the other is to deter others who might want to commit the same crime.

Any other purpose for punishment is based on metaphysical hokum.

And when it comes to punishment, morality requires that we choose the least onerous method of acheiving the goal. The death penalty is simply excessive and panders to society's thirst for vengeance. In essence the DP is really a modern form of human sacrifice.

So the desire for vengeance is metaphysical hokum? That's, let's say, an interesting view ...

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Wycoff
The anti-DP people don't really believe that punishing people for what they've done wrong is acceptable

I'm anti-DP, but I do believe punishing people for transgressions is not only acceptable but necessary.

We're a social species that's evolved a lust for vengeance as a way to deal with antisocial behaviour. Hokum or not, most people's moral feelings tell them that retribution should be exacted on transgressors. On of the functions of the state is to satisfy these feelings in an orderly manner, to preempt blood feuds and vigilantism.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Geronimo
Why on the other side provide support to a system that currently makes no effort to reserve the death penalty for the most ironclad cases of guilt, relying instead on the philosophy that all convictions regardless of evidence are equally sound so the decision instead gets based on the heinousness of the crime without considering whether the particular defendant might prefer one punishment over the other?

This isn't strictly true. There are sentencing guidelines in the U.S. If someone is found guilty of a crime, the Judge then has a set of convintions that he can choose from. Say that Manslaughter comes with a sentencing range of 10 -35 years. The judge can then look at factors (such as prior history, age of criminal, extenuating circumstances) and sentence the criminal accordingly. Habitual offenders would get the 35 year sentence, while a first time offender who accidentall killed someone in a bar fight would get 10 years.

To ensure better operation of the death penalty, we just need to write better sentencing guidelines. For example, no execution if the conviction was based largely on circumstantial evidence. No execution unless there's DNA evidence proving the criminal did it. Encourage reviewing courts to give great scutiny to the judge's decision of execution. If you make it extremely difficut to execute anyone but the extreme cases (like this guy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc.), then mistaken execution wouldn't be a factor.

[Ecthy]

Originally posted by Wycoff
It doesn't surprise me that Europeans leave out the retrubutive portion of punishment. This guy probably would have got 6 years imprisonment in Germany.

Which one? The one who killed that kid in front of a camera? Are you serious with that assumption?

[DinoDoc]

He meant to say 10 years with time off for good behavior.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Ecthy
Which one? The one who killed that kid in front of a camera? Are you serious with that assumption?

About half. Europeans in general and Germans especially are way too lenient.

I know about the horrors of Naziism and everything, but it seems unjust to give vicious criminals convicted in 2006 light sentences to make up for the brutality of the 3rd Reich. Doing so doesn't change to past, nor does it properly address the present. What good comes from such backward looking?

[Last Conformist]

And your evidence for current European leniency in sentencing having anything to do with the Third Reich is ... ?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
I have an admittedly skewed view, but talking to convicted felons on a daily basis, I would bet heavily that fear of death or long term incarceration is rarely a deterrant for those prone to commit criminal acts.

But then again your sampling is skewed isn't it? All you see are the people who would not be detered while the fellow who's thinking about commiting a crime but who decides the risk isn't worth it wouldn't show up in your sampling because he was by definition already detered.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Last Conformist And your evidence for current European leniency in sentencing having anything to do with the Third Reich is ... ?

You've never heard that refrain before? It seems repeated ad naseum. When there's a mention of German criminal system in a class or on t.v., the German experience with Naziism is almost always mentioned as a primary reason for their leniency.