NationStates Jolt Archive

from a bumper sticker:

Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?


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Really, what is the logic behind that?

You might call it revenge or payback, but how is death a punishment? I call it a blissfull release from real punishment that it too good for murderers.

thoughts?

So they can't kill others. That's always been my understanding of it, at least.

However, I think the public should be able to lynch them.

But what about the innocents? What about the public? Would THEY become killers?


:roll:

I don't get what your point is...

so it's either punishment by death or nothing? what about detainment for violent offences instead? don't you think that that would be a harsher punishment plus keep them from killing others?

And are you sayign that if the public lynches someone then they are innocent and not killers?

:?:

I don't get what your point is...

so it's either punishment by death or nothing? what about detainment for violent offences instead? don't you think that that would be a harsher punishment plus keep them from killing others?

And are you sayign that if the public lynches someone then they are innocent and not killers?

:?:

Harsher punishment?..let me see here...Convict A kills a store clerk in a robbery just because he could...all for $50 bucks, gets caught, sent to prison....in prison...3 meals and a cot....chance to continue his education, even college level, learn trades....some even highly sought after trades, cable television...access to literary publications/books, wieght rooms. All this paid for by the parents of the store clerk he killed and people just like me....and you think this is harsh?

I'll call it simple as I can...revenge..I will show you and everyone you know that by killing someone we will take your life. You were evil when you killed that store clerk...I will restore the balance when we take your life

Couldn't have said it better, Salishe. I saw a recent study that showed where I live we spend 5 times the $$ per year on convicts than we do on our school children. Maybe if that was reversed there wouldn't BE any criminals.
I also agree with the "Old Testament" style punishment. Maybe if criminals knew there were actual consequences for their actions they wouldn't go around killing people for a few bucks. I'd rather spend $2 on a bullet than $40,000 a year housing and feeding a criminal.

I am AGAINST capital punishment, I ythink life inprisonment is better, but it's to conmfy, back to bread and water and hard beds.

Well I think education, books, meals is kuhl to give prisoners but not movie theaters, cable tv, weight rooms, or even companionship with other inmates. I think they should have to show that they really do want to better themselves and have to go thru rigorous trials and tribulations to earn those books and that education (drug tests, phycological evaluations, and the like).

of course you make prison sound like fairytale land when it really is horrific. rapings, humiliation and beatings by inmates and gaurds, racism by inmates and gaurds...

so you still feel that people should be killed for killing because you think that killign is wrong?

what balance is restored again?

:twisted:

this is how they should be punnished. The tankers way

http://media.ebaumsworld.com/index.php?e=dontloot.wmv

:twisted:

this is how they should be punnished. The tankers way

http://media.ebaumsworld.com/index.php?e=dontloot.wmv

also they says its more expensive to perform capital punishment than give someone life in prison.

besides they make money off the prisoners by using them for cheap labor.

I think we should just pull an Escape From New York on 'em, stick 'em on an island.

The argument that if you take another person's life then you shouldn't be able to continue yours is a strong one, but making them suffer by not allowing them a normal standard of living is the only one I can accept. Who's going to kill the killers? Some nutter off the street?..

President of HoopHoopland

The deterrent argument is balls. As far as I'm concerned there are two types of murderers;
1) The vast majority are related to gangland conflicts, armed robberies, muggings etc. These are crimes of desparation and social deprivation. By allowing the criminals the opportunity to earn qualifications and the like during their (very long) stay in prison, they will come out with opportunities to avoid such destitution and desperation again.
2) Psychotics. Serial killers and the like can, obviously, not be deterred as they do not act according to reason. The only choice is to imprison them for life.
No one who commits such a heinous crime as murder assumes they will be caught. If they did, they obviously wouldn't do it. States in the USA without capital punishment have lower murder rates.
The only real argument for capital punishment is base revenge. I guess it's up to each individual to decide if that is the only thing they want the justice (notice choice of word) system to be for.

Suppose a man drives a getaway car for a robbery. A policeman spots the heist and shoots at the fleeing felon; our man gets scared and drives away with an empty car. The policeman's shot kills an innocent bystander. Guess what? Our man is guilty of "felony murder" and gets executed.

Or suppose he's part of the robbey plot but chickens out at the last minute, without telling the authorities for fear of reprisals from his gang; same results otherwise, cop shoots and kills innocent bystander. SAME RESULT! Our guy is guilty of "FELONY MURDER" and gets executed.


Suppose a woman is pregnant, third trimester, and drives recklessly enough to demolish her vehicle and kill her unborn baby. In PA, such a woman was recently charged with murder. Kill her?

Society sets an example by its actions. Executions do not give a message that killig is wrong; the message is that killing is good and justifiable.

Suppose a man drives a getaway car for a robbery. A policeman spots the heist and shoots at the fleeing felon; our man gets scared and drives away with an empty car. The policeman's shot kills an innocent bystander. Guess what? Our man is guilty of "felony murder" and gets executed.

Or suppose he's part of the robbey plot but chickens out at the last minute, without telling the authorities for fear of reprisals from his gang; same results otherwise, cop shoots and kills innocent bystander. SAME RESULT! Our guy is guilty of "FELONY MURDER" and gets executed.


Suppose a woman is pregnant, third trimester, and drives recklessly enough to demolish her vehicle and kill her unborn baby. In PA, such a woman was recently charged with murder. Kill her?

Society sets an example by its actions. Executions do not give a message that killig is wrong; the message is that killing is good and justifiable.

I so pity someone like you...No..what it sends is the knowledge that society will not tolerate a killer...society has a vested interest in making sure you don't kill again...and don't give me that life in prison...as long as he lives..he mocks his victim(s)..he enjoys his life..no matter how harsh, he still breathes..his victim(s) does not...there is simply no way you can get around this....balance must be restored..a good life(or lives) was taken while an evil one lives..the balance must be restored.

Suppose a man drives a getaway car for a robbery. A policeman spots the heist and shoots at the fleeing felon; our man gets scared and drives away with an empty car. The policeman's shot kills an innocent bystander. Guess what? Our man is guilty of "felony murder" and gets executed.

Or suppose he's part of the robbey plot but chickens out at the last minute, without telling the authorities for fear of reprisals from his gang; same results otherwise, cop shoots and kills innocent bystander. SAME RESULT! Our guy is guilty of "FELONY MURDER" and gets executed.


Suppose a woman is pregnant, third trimester, and drives recklessly enough to demolish her vehicle and kill her unborn baby. In PA, such a woman was recently charged with murder. Kill her?

Society sets an example by its actions. Executions do not give a message that killig is wrong; the message is that killing is good and justifiable.

I so pity someone like you...No..what it sends is the knowledge that society will not tolerate a killer...society has a vested interest in making sure you don't kill again...and don't give me that life in prison...as long as he lives..he mocks his victim(s)..he enjoys his life..no matter how harsh, he still breathes..his victim(s) does not...there is simply no way you can get around this....balance must be restored..a good life(or lives) was taken while an evil one lives..the balance must be restored.

Society is like a parent. If as parent abuses a child in the name of punishment, the child grows up to become an abuser. That's which there are traceable generations of child abuse.
Government sets an example by the way it acts. If it kills, it tells citizens that killing is ok. The only difference between the executioners and the rest of us is that they have the power of the state behind them. If I find myself in a position of power over someone else then, someone who seems evil to me, I should just kill him. It's the same thing.

Suppose a man drives a getaway car for a robbery. A policeman spots the heist and shoots at the fleeing felon; our man gets scared and drives away with an empty car. The policeman's shot kills an innocent bystander. Guess what? Our man is guilty of "felony murder" and gets executed.

Or suppose he's part of the robbey plot but chickens out at the last minute, without telling the authorities for fear of reprisals from his gang; same results otherwise, cop shoots and kills innocent bystander. SAME RESULT! Our guy is guilty of "FELONY MURDER" and gets executed.


Suppose a woman is pregnant, third trimester, and drives recklessly enough to demolish her vehicle and kill her unborn baby. In PA, such a woman was recently charged with murder. Kill her?

Society sets an example by its actions. Executions do not give a message that killig is wrong; the message is that killing is good and justifiable.

I so pity someone like you...No..what it sends is the knowledge that society will not tolerate a killer...society has a vested interest in making sure you don't kill again...and don't give me that life in prison...as long as he lives..he mocks his victim(s)..he enjoys his life..no matter how harsh, he still breathes..his victim(s) does not...there is simply no way you can get around this....balance must be restored..a good life(or lives) was taken while an evil one lives..the balance must be restored.

Society is like a parent. If as parent abuses a child in the name of punishment, the child grows up to become an abuser. That's which there are traceable generations of child abuse.
Government sets an example by the way it acts. If it kills, it tells citizens that killing is ok. The only difference between the executioners and the rest of us is that they have the power of the state behind them. If I find myself in a position of power over someone else then, someone who seems evil to me, I should just kill him. It's the same thing.

Society like a parent?..sounds communistic to me..no..Society is the group will of it's people made manifest..the State has determined that execution is a final punishment necessary...in this case 12 citizens have exhibited the group will of the State in mandating execution. It is by far not the same thing.

from a bumper sticker:

Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Really, what is the logic behind that?

You might call it revenge or payback, but how is death a punishment? I call it a blissfull release from real punishment that it too good for murderers.

thoughts?

I agree. I am not a fan of revenge/payback, and I say keep killers and mass murderers/terrorists in isolation

Murder is murder is murder... There are no two ways about it.

Well, I would personally be all for capital punishment, if it wasn't for miscarriages of justice.

I like my idea-remember the crank? An 19th century device-a crank that prisoners had to turn so many times every day. I want to bring that back, except fit them to dynamos and make all these convicts contribute to the electricity supply!

I'll admit I have several reasons for being aggressively opposed to capital punishment. The first is religious. As James W.L. Park, a former execution officer at San Quenton said:

As I read The New Testiment, I don't see anywhere in there that killing bad people is a very high calling for Christians. I see an awful lot about redemption and forgiveness.

This is one of those rare moments when I think the Bible and, specifically, The New Testiment is quite clear. To embrace the teachings of Jesus Christ and walk the path Christianity recommends to spiritual enlightment is to eschew violence and, particularly, capital punishment. As Jesus himself (supposedly) said in John 8:7

So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

Furthermore, my particular "flavor" of Christianity believes that there is divinity in all of us. So, while a murderer may have elected to kill someone, for us to then kill that murderer still represents a direct attack on God and makes us no different from that murderer.

Finally, to close out the overview of religious objections, I think the Most Reverend Joseph A Fiorenza, President of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/U.S. Catholic Conference in 1999, said it best:

We oppose the death penalty not just for what it does to those guilty of heinous crimes, but for what it does to all of us: it offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life by taking life.

Now, I fully realize those arguments only have any credibility if you are a follower of the Christian faith. However, I do have simple rational arguments against it.

First, it doesn't work as a deterrent. Some proponents claim that the fact capital punishment is a possibility reduces the crimes it can be given for. This is not true. The FBI's Preliminary Uniform Crime Report of June 16th, 2002, showed that the murder rate in the South increased 2.1% while the murder rate in the Northeast decreased by nearly 5%. Since 1976, the South has accounted for 82% of all executions whereas the Northeast has accounted for less than 1%.

Another study of the deterrance effect of capital punishment by William Bailey on the lifting of Oklahoma's 25 year moratorium on capital punishment. His reasoning was that, if there was a deterrent effect for executions, you should see a fluxuation in murder numbers between when capital punishment was not allowed and when it was reinstated. His results, published in Criminology volume 36, 1998, covered the years of 1989 to 1991 and found absolutely no evidence of a deterrent effect for capital punishment. However, he did notice a sharp rise in stranger killings and non-felony stranger killings (although it is impossible to say if this is because of the reintroduction of captial punishment).

These represent only two of a vast number of studies done that all show there is no deterrent effect for capital punishment. You don't "scare" criminals out of being criminals because, when you commit a capital crime, you're not bargining on being caught in the first place.

Second, there is an argument that it's not fair and more expensive to keep a inmate in jail for life than to kill them. This simply isn't true. The December 2003 Kansas Performance Audit Report: Costs Incurred for Death Penalty Cases: A K-GOAL Audit of the Department of Corrections discovered that captial cases are 70% more expensive than comprable non-captial cases. The median capital case from investigation through execution cost $1.26 million whereas the median non-capital case for a comprable crime from investigation through the end of incarceration cost $740,000. While it may seem counterintuitive, when you add up costs for initial trials and pre-trial, investigations and appeals, the actua incarceration only costs around 22% of the entire bill.

Third, it's geographically discriminatory. The South has far more states with capital punishment and, in 2002, 61 of the 71 executions occured in Southern states. It seems unfair that the same crime can merit two different solutions (one very final indeed) depending on the state. Even further, two out of every three executions between 1976 and 2003 occured in only five states: Texas, Missouri, Virginia, Oklahoma and Florida. Texas leads those five states in numbers executed. Outside of these key states, death penalty scentences have been in decline. The Washington Post reported in late 2002 that

"...outside of a few states, the death penalty remains in decline....a few states account for the overwhelming majority of all executions. The more isolated they become, the greater the pressure for reform will be."[/i]

How can we justify putting someone to death based solely on the locale of the crime? Should we amend "Justice for all" to "Justice for all, depending on where you're scentenced?" As Washington State Superior Supreme Court Justice David A. Nichols said in a Seattle Times op-ed piece regarding the scentence of life without parole for serial killer Gary Ridgeway

[quote=Judge David Nichols]We are a nation of laws, ideally applied fairly and proportionally; but we have 50 different death-penalty laws, all of which have different criteria of application. Whether or not to charge or pursue the death penalty is left entirely up to elected prosecuting attorneys, who are often driven by political, social or financial constraints; or, as in this case, circumstances which cause the prosecutor to back down.
Gross numbers of executions are being carried out in some states or regions of the country. An alarming number of convictions have been found to be wrong, and the death penalty is unfairly inflicted upon the poor, minorities and the under-represented.
There is simply no way the death penalty statute can be administered fairly. There are too many variables and inconsistencies to allow any person interested in justice to support.
With its repeal, we would stop its inequitable application, the unconscionable costs associated with its administration, and the endless appeals. There is perhaps a risk that by giving up the death penalty, we would surrender leverage we might have against a Gary Ridgway to reveal the details of what he did, but that is a small price to pay for getting rid of that part of the criminal code that mocks our notions of justice under the law.
A life of incarceration with no hope of ever getting out may seem a small penalty to pay when applied to the worst of our wrongdoers, but the death penalty has no place in a sentencing scheme that strives for justice and fairness to all our citizens.


Fourth, it's fiscally discriminatory. As Sister Helen Prejean said

The death penalty is a poor person's issue. Always remember that: after all the rhetoric that goes on in the legislative assemblies, in the end, when the deck is cast our, it is the poor who are selected to die in this country.

Fifth, it's irreversable. In late 2002, there were 3,697 prisoners on death rows in 37 states. Since 1976, 102 have been exhonerated by DNA testing. That's 113 innocent people who fell through the cracks and by the grace of God were not wrongly put to death. The loss of one innocent life is not worth countless "guilty" prisoners put to death out of a misplaced sense of vengence and bloodlust.

Sixth, many death row convicts have brain damage or other mental defect from violent beatings or sexual abuse as children. I know, at some point you have to take responsibility for your own actions, but can we in good conscience kill the ill? If so, what does that say about us? Dr. Jonathan Pincus, chief of neurology at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Washington, and Dr. Dorothy Lewis, a professor of psychiatry at New York University, published their study of 15 death row inmates in 1986. They found that all 15 had suffered sever head trauma during childhood, about half had been injured in serious assults and 6 were chronically psychotic, but, instead of using it as an "abuse excuse", they downplayed their disorders under the assumption that it was better to be bad than crazy. Many of these men had suffered abuse so severe that they couldn't even remember the source of their childhood scars.

Seventh, it's racially discriminatory. According to Amnesty International, even though whites and blacks are murder victims in about equal numbers, 80% of the death penalty verdicts handed down since the reinstatement of captial punishment have been for white victims and more than 20% of black defendents who have been executed were convicted by all white juries. Studies across the nation have shown that you are much more likely to receive a death penalty if you kill a white person than if you kill a black person. A study published in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (J. Blume, T. Eisenberg, & M. Wells, "Explaining Death Row's Population and Racial Composition," Vol. I, Issue 1, March 2004, at 165) found that, across all states with a death penalty, a black person who murdered a white person was 2.5 times more likely to be executed than a white person who murdered a white person.

Basically, the only reason for supporting the death penalty is for vengence and a sense of Old Testament, Biblical, eye-for-an-eye justice. It comes down to a moral question: do two wrongs ever make a right? Does the end justify the means? Personally, I can find no excuse for an execution, because it turns us into the exact same thing we are supposedly attempting to protect society from. It reduces us to little better than animal control workers denying the sanctity of human life and existance in pursuit of our own little vendetta. Vengence is not a sufficent reason to end a life and it can never be, otherwise we eliminate almost two thousand years of progressive social evolution. In order to have the moral mandate to impose a death penalty, we must be able to claim higher moral ground than the person we impose it on. But it's a Catch 22, because in order to obtain that moral ground, we can not stoop to bloody violence. Death penalties do not protect society, they errode the very basis of human mercy and justice while showing us to be little better than wild beasts with shiny toys and savage bloodlust.

Now, why is it that so many people believe that jails are about punishment? :roll: Why punish and kill our criminals why we can rehabilitate them, and try to make them productive members of society. Just because you commit a crime, does that make you evil for the rest of your life? (By the way, yes is not the answer i'm looking for) Why are we needlessly killing people when they can be productive to society? The same thing goes with war, why do we have to kill each other?

I do not believe in capital punishment but rather make conditions so crappy and make them so miserable they will kill themselves. Thats my take on it.

The fine art of killing is a public utility, like cable TV.

Somehow I think being locked up in a very small cell for the rest of your life is worse punishment than just killing the person who commited the crime. At least if you get the verdict wrong then you can set them free. If you kill them then find they were innocent and try and bring them back, they'll eat our brains. But only if instructed by their zombie master..... Sorry, I read a lot of books on Voodo...