Does Death Penalty Save Lives? A New Debate

[MOBIUS]

I think we should kill people because of the environment. Let's not stop at criminals, let's also kill anyone who's a drain on society as well! Disabled people, old people, stupid people, unemployed people after 6 months - the question is where to draw the line...?

Everyone has a carbon footprint after all, so let's help in the fight against global warming by reducing the global footprint and cutting out the deadwood!

[MRT144]

the main gripe i have with the death penalty is

"with the same amount of money spent on the death penalty could we save an equal amount of lives?"

for instance if we eliminated the death penalty and spent that money on health care could we, in fact save more lives?

[SlowwHand]

Let's not even worry about apples and apples, huh?
Let's just compare apples to broccoli.

[MOBIUS]

Smokers should be given the dp, after all it could be argued we're merely helping them along...

[Proteus_MST]

DP for smokers could indeed save lots of lifes which otherwise would have died from lung cancer and the like after passive smoking.

It also enhances the life quality of many people. Fresh air everywhere, not polluted by cigarette smoke

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
@ Wernazuma III: After your description, Jesse doesn't seem all that innocent. Accomplices bear the burden of the results of the crimes they participate in just as much as the main actors IMO.

So breaking into a car makes you eligible for death row in your opinion, since this is probably the only thing he did.

Are we discussing the pros and cons of the various meathods of execution because if not I don't really care how high the flames were.

I don't want to discuss it, I mentioned it because this very case was one of the bigger accidents at US executions. I don't give in into starting an argument over this.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Wernazuma III
So breaking into a car makes you eligible for death row in your opinion, since this is probably the only thing he did.

It makes you just as guilty as your accomplices. If that puts someone on death row or not isn't for me to say.

[SlowwHand]

I think most would agree that the electric chair is not the ideal choice for the job. It's like driving finishing nails with a sledge hammer.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Let's not even worry about apples and apples, huh?
Let's just compare apples to broccoli.

lets compare apples to broccoli when we are using the same pool of money to decide on what crops to plant.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
It makes you just as guilty as your accomplices. If that puts someone on death row or not isn't for me to say.

I believe a Supreme Court decision is the 70's says that an accomplice cannot be given the death penalty; it has to be the killer, and even then there must be "special circumstances."

[Heraclitus]

In the final analysis, the fact remains that violent crime can be prevented by other means. So regardless of the effectives (or lack of there of) of capital punishment it is unethical, barbaric, redundant and if you believe in the flying spaghetti monster immoral too. Here in Europe we don’t execute people and our murder rates are significantly lower* despite of this.


*Most of Europe


Anyway people who include cost analysis in their argument for the DP are just asking to be mocked and their intellectual integrity to be put in doubt.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
I believe a Supreme Court decision is the 70's says that an accomplice cannot be given the death penalty; it has to be the killer,

Cite?

[Wycoff]

Arguing over the deterrant effect of the DP is pointless, IMO. It's basically irrelevant.

Ultimately, criminal punishment has 4 objectives:
Deterrence
Punishment
Protecting Society at Large
Rehabilitation

Deterrence-

DP would most be a major deterrant if applied to minor felonies like grand larceny. People would be much less likely to steal a car if they knew that they'd get the chair rather than a few years in prison. However, as a society we've decided that the punishment doesn't fit the crime.

We now only allow DP for the most heinous of crimes, crimes for which the convict would get life imprisonment. People who aren't deterred from their actions by the possibility of life imprisonment aren't going to be deterred by the possibility of execution. They're sociopaths, willing to do their crime no matter what the costs. Anti-DP proponents bring up the deterrence argument as a red herring to distract from the issue at hand.

As a supporter of the death penalty, I don't consider deterrence to be the goal. People who would be deterred from an action because of the death penalty would almost certainly be deterred from that action by life imprisonment. There may be some tiny percentage of the population for which that isn't true, but it's so small as to be irrelevant, IMO.

Punishment-

This is where the concept of "justice" comes into play. The anti-DP crowd always chimes in with "executing someone doesn't bring back the victim." That's true. Neither does imprisonment. Imprisoning someone never retroactively prevents the crime; it never retroactively revives a deceased victim.

There's always some aspect of retribution in punishment. You pay your dues to society. The people who receive the DP have commited heinous crimes. Imprisoning them isn't enough to pay their dues to society, IMO. They're still alive, they still get to interact with other people, they still get to read books and interact with other people, they still have the hope of escape. Imprisonment might be terrible, but at least there's some hope and some human experience. The dead are deprived of that.

Furthermore, these people who have been imprisoned for life have a state supported roof over their head and state provided food in their stomachs. It seems wrong to me to keep violent murderers housed and fed for the rest of their lives while allowing homeless people to starve.

To me, the DP provides an element of justice that is missing in life imprisonment.

Protecting Society at Large-

Life imprisonment doesn't truly remove a threat. The prisoner still has the possibility of escape. Beyond escape, that prisoner is still part of society (albeit prison society). He can still prey on people in prison- guards and fellow inmates. Execution is the only sure way to rid society of a dangerous individual.

Rehabilitation-

Rehabilitation is irrelevant here. Life Imprisonment is designed to remove someone from society as permanently as possible. The goal isn't to turn the life long inmate into someone to release back into society, it is to keep him out of society. Any personal growth behind bars is coincidental. With that in mind, there's no distinction here between Life imprisonment and execution.

There's one fundamental problem with the DP IMO- the danger of executing an innocent. There are two parts to this problem: 1. executing the innocent is wrong and 2. the effort to avoid executing an innocent leads to an enormously expensive, unwieldy, and ineffective appeals process that drives up the cost. If executing someone is truly more expensive than mere life imprisonment (the data varies depending on the bias of the source), then it takes away some of the moral force of the pro death penalty stance (because you could therefore better help needy innocents using the excess funds saved by imprisoning for life rather than executing.)

If we had a perfect justice system, then I'd advocate DP for every first degree murder. Since we don't have such a system, then I'd put some serious limitations on the types of evidence that could be used for death penalty convictions- there could not be DP based solely on circumstantial evidence, nor could there be DP based solely on eyewitness testimony. There'd need to be hard, unequivocal, physical evidence of the murder- like having the victims' bodies buried under the defendant's house or chopped up in the defendant's fridge, covered in the defendant's fingerprints and DNA. If the person is found guilty under this higher burden of proof, then they'd get one appeal to SCOTUS. If upheld, they're executed within two weeks via hanging.

This way, only the clearly guilty- the John Wayne Gacys and Jeffry Dahmers of the world- would be executed, and they would be executed rather swiftly. No milking the appeals process for decades on the taxpayer's dime.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Heraclitus So regardless of the effectives (or lack of there of) of capital punishment it is unethical, barbaric, redundant and if you believe in the flying spaghetti monster immoral too.

I've pointed out why it isn't redundant (as it provides more protection for society than does life imprisonment as well as a more fitting punishment for the crim)

The "barbarism" retort is nothing but a hollow insult.

That leaves two claims- it's unethical and it's immoral. For those you give no justification.

Why is it immoral and unethical?

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Wycoff


Why is it immoral and unethical?

That was only my opinion, based on the system of thought I use most of the time. It’s not necessarily unethical, it really depends on you're system of ethics... and those do wary *a lot* either way I do concede that almost anything can be considered unethical or ethical so I retract that point.

Concerning morality, I meant Christian morality. I also concede that morality is utterly irrelevant and unneeded.