Second question about the death penalty. The 100% issue.

[Silverhair]

In my other question, it was interesting to see that some people had no problems with the death penalty in certain cases. So...

1. You are 100% sure that you have the correct person. (Please don't say that you can never be 100% sure. If will offer Dalmer, Gracey, and Bundy as examples of cases of 100% surety. Further, there have been cases where the murder has occurred on video camera and in front of witness and with all the forensic evidence on top of it all. Space aliens faked it all to frame somebody is NOT an acceptable defense.)

2. The crime is especially horrible. Professional hit man, raped and killed a small child, terrorist attack, etc.

If those two conditions are met, then what are your thoughts?

My answer is that I am not comfortable with the current death penalty because of the lack of surety. But if the surety is there, and the crime is horrible, then I have no problem with taking out the trash.

[Qibing Zero]

1. Killing them is a release.

There are worse punishments for those people in those 'I'm 100% sure' cases, and life in jail (and I don't mean the happy cable TV kind) is usually one of them. Most of the extremely bad ones do usually end up dead in jail before they would have been executed anyhow, not that it's a good thing.

[Silverhair]

2. Bundy fought the death penalty.

In the last few weeks he began to tell where the bodies were hidden, and was offering to trade more information on other murders he had committed, in exchange for stays of execution. He preferred to live in jail rather than die. His offers were turned down.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. There is only one acceptable reason for the death penalty in my mind

And that would be if the murderer was a hate criminal. Allowing them to continue to spew their hateful rhetoric from prison only allows them to continue committing crimes indirectly and advocates the harm of more innocent civilians. Then, and only then, do I accept the death penalty.

[SmokingJacket]

4. I still don't like it.

On the personal level, I'd be happy to see the end of a monster like Dahmer or Bundy or Gacy... but I don't think government should be in the business of taking lives. I just don't. It's a gut feeling. Lock them up, throw away the key, make it illegal for them to appear on teevee or any of that. Plus... life in prison is probably worse for these guys than death. They have a death fetish! they probably LIKE the idea of being dead! This is what I feel, but it's not exactly a logical argument.

So when I argue against the death penalty I usually use the 100% certainty argument because I think it's the stronger one -- and it's just an undeniable fact that our criminal justice system is imperfect.

[More Than A Feeling]

5. As I said before, against the DP, all circumstances.

"An Eye for an Eye" went out of fashion a long time ago. The reasons we punish criminals are deterrence and prevention, not revenge. There are ways of deterring and preventing without killing, which makes the DP simple revenge, and that is not what the law is about.

If the law was about revenge, we would allow the victims and relatives of victims to hunt down the criminals in a "Greatest Game" scenario. We don't do that.

[calico1]

6. I would still be against it.

I do not think it speaks well of a supposedly civilized society to legally murder people. Murder is wrong of course, but does that mean that if "good guys" do the murdering that makes it better? I do not believe so. I do not think that lowering ourselves to the level of the murderers makes us better or more civilized. On the contrary, it makes us like them. And besides, I am not God.

[Az]

7. Still against it

No person or persons has the right to take my life. The same basic right extends to everyone else.

No matter the horror an individual has rought no one picks up the right to kill them. The only caveat to this being self defense. B

But in the case of an incarcerated prisoner there is no claim to self defense. The criminal is sequestered and the society is safe from any further harm they may perform. There is no cause to kill them.

Vengence does not correct the crime they have committed. It does not return the lives of the victims. It does not undo the harm.

[SaveElmer]

8. No excuse for the death penalty...it is murder

Doesn't matter that the state is doing it...it is still murder.

And no bullshit self-defense argument. It is not self-defense...it is revenge plain and simple. And the government should not be in that business.

[WildClarySage]

9. No. Killing that person does not absolve us for our failure as a society

to protect vulnerable individuals, nor does it bring the victims back, nor does it deter future violence. It merely degrades all of us to the level of the perpetrator.

[helderheid]

10. Even at 100% I am against it

Especially actually because they would suffer more alive. Further, in the case of rape, I want them castrated.

[brainshrub]

11. I disagree.

I don't support the death penalty for the same reasons I don't support torture under any circumstances. What if you were absolutely sure that a criminal had accomplices: Why not torture the individual until he told you who his partners were?

The answer is that even if your were 100% certain, a policy of torture, just like the policy of the death penalty, creates more problems for society than it solves.

IMHO, the state should not have the right to kill under any circumstances. Most modern countries have abolished the death penalty, the US should join their ranks.

[Guaranteed]

12. The death penalty is the ULTIMATE hypocrisy.

It is government-sanctioned, non-self-defense MURDER.

Except when a person has killed so many people that the only way to bring closure to the whole thing is to get rid of them, the death penalty is never justified.

Even THEN, I don't feel comfortable with it. I remember when they executed Timothy McVeigh. I couldn't believe it.

They had the guy, and he couldn't hurt anybody. But they went ahead and killed him anyway. They murdered him. There was no self-defense involved.

[TahitiNut]

14. Agreed.

Murderers use the same "reasons" for killing that the state uses - there ain't a dime's worth of moral difference - unless it's the state being even less moral. :shrug:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. Murder is wrong. Whether by an individual or the state.

It's beyond me how people seem to want it both ways.