Is Capital Punishment ever justified?

[dgabriel]

I will address some of the debate points you made and ignore all of the personal nonsense, so excuse me for failing to reply to much of your post.

Quote from hapaboy:

That convicted murderers and rapists have been released for whatever reason, i.e. parole, reduced sentences for “good behavior,” and now, because of overcrowding caused in a large part by frivolous 3 strikes and you're out convictions on pot smokers, and gone on to commit further horrific crimes is INDISPUTABLE. Instead of me posting details of literally thousands of crimes.....

If its indisputable, why can't you dispute it with facts? I said that I never heard of a rapist -murderer who was set free so that a prison could have room for a pothead, and apparently, neither have you.

I don't know what the statistic is for today, but in '97 convicted murderers averaged only 6 years in prison. 6. Besides, "most" doesn't cut it. Tell that to the loved ones of the victims murdered by repeat offenders.

Many of these offenders would not qualify for death under your proposal. If you don't know it, there are generally 3 classes of homocide. A murderer could be include one convicted of negligent homocide, for example.

Anyway I applaud you for taking the time and effort to list examples, although none of them answer my original question.
Your Lee Atwater method is somewhat hollow. I don't oppose holding bad guys in jail for long periods, even life. I oppose capital punishment because I think it is immoral and ultimately bad social policy. These examples you cite, which I will concede for sake of argument as accurate, of bad guys let loose I will submit are examples of where prisons and parole boards failed to retain dangerous people, not failures of society to have killed them in the first place. I agree with you that these horrible people should not have been let out of jail. I don't agree that they should be killed because there is an overcrowded prison population.

I won't take a whole day of my time like you did listing examples where felons served time, were paroled and were never again convicted or even tried of serious crimes, but I know there are many. Do us a favor, and take today to look that up.

Thanks for putting up a serious topic for the community to digest.

(Oh btw, I think your personal attacks are out of place here, try to tone them down)

 

[OPTIONAL777]

Capitol punishment is always rationalized, not justified.

 

[hapaboy]

Quote from dgabriel:

If its indisputable, why can't you dispute it with facts? I said that I never heard of a rapist -murderer who was set free so that a prison could have room for a pothead, and apparently, neither have you.

Good grief. Look, prison overcrowding is largely a result of non-violent drug users being incarcerated, including potheads. As a result, even the most violent offenders (murderers, rapists, etc.) are serving much less time than their sentences and going out and committing more crimes, as I illustrated with some of the above cases.

Many of these offenders would not qualify for death under your proposal.

Which ones? The guy who beat his baby to death? The guy who killed someone for taking a french fry off his plate? The guy who killed the blind bar owner? What are you talking about?

Anyway I applaud you for taking the time and effort to list examples, although none of them answer my original question.
Your Lee Atwater method is somewhat hollow. I don't oppose holding bad guys in jail for long periods, even life.

Well guess what, thousands of bad guys aren't spending long periods in prison anymore due to reasons I've already cited.

These examples you cite, which I will concede for sake of argument as accurate, of bad guys let loose I will submit are examples of where prisons and parole boards failed to retain dangerous people, not failures of society to have killed them in the first place.I agree with you that these horrible people should not have been let out of jail. I don't agree that they should be killed because there is an overcrowded prison population.

And there are hundreds, no, thousands of such "examples." But it is the way the system is! Whatever the cause, the simple truth is these guys are getting out and destroying more innocent lives as a result. How many more murders or rapes or molested children will it take before we as a society say enough is enough? Pro-death penalty advocates are called "bloodthirsty" and worse. To me, it is the anti-death penalty crowd that is the real "uncivilized' party here, because your mindset leads to a perpetuation of the current system that results in the further butchering of innocents.

I won't take a whole day of my time like you did listing examples where felons served time, were paroled and were never again convicted or even tried of serious crimes, but I know there are many. Do us a favor, and take today to look that up.

This is where you show where your sympathy lies - with the criminals, NOT the victims. You admit that these animals get out of prison and commit horrible crimes AGAIN, yet you try to justify it by citing the fact that there are parolees who learn their lesson and no longer are a threat. It is horrifyingly apparent that you are willing to sacrifice even more innocent lives on the basis that at times the prison system works.

But you never answered my question. Your wife is murdered. You have let "justice" be done in a courtroom. Her killer is set free after perhaps a decade or so (as I've showed happens with considerable frequency). Are you satisfied? And does your wife know you consider her entire life and your potential future together to have the equivalent value of 10 years of a criminal's?

 

[dgabriel]

Hapaboy, your fervor is well felt, but you are conjuring up in me an image of you as a fanatic drooling on his keyboard.

I answered all questions and rendered a comprehensive position
on capital punishment. I need not say anymore.

Now, I am rendering you unto the electronic voids, virtually expelled, expunged, and eliminated from the my ET. Into the odious bowels of the Web you go!

Thank goodness for the ignore option. That is my form of capital disposal of you.

TTFN (and forever)

 

[hapaboy]

Quote from dgabriel:

Hapaboy, your fervor is well felt, but you are conjuring up in me an image of you as a fanatic drooling on his keyboard.

I answered all questions and rendered a comprehensive position
on capital punishment. I need not say anymore.

Now, I am rendering you unto the electronic voids, virtually expelled, expunged, and eliminated from the my ET. Into the odious bowels of the Web you go!

Thank goodness for the ignore option. That is my form of capital disposal of you.

TTFN (and forever)

ROFL!

What a cop-out! Your decision to put me on ignore is indeed welcome, but it is not the first time you've stated your intent to do so.

And unsurprisingly, you still managed to avoid the question, by the way. Guess you don't want to admit that your arguments are replete with holes and that the welfare of your wife and honest citizens everywhere are secondary to the rights of criminals.

Being labeled a fanatic by you for choosing to believe that innocent life is more important than the rights of human filth is in fact a compliment.

 

[maxpi]

The ideal leadership would minimize the killings in his domain. Take Los Angeles for instance. Take the profile of the average killer: IQ=90. How do you tell a guy or gal with 90 IQ points that society does not condone killing? Send them a memo? Lots of them can't read. Have the local churches give them the message? What if they never attend, or never listen? Have their parents instill a value into them that says "you don't have the right to kill somebody for any reason"? Lots and lots of parents don't have any values to instill or won't do it. So.... If you arrest, try and convict a murderer and then hang that person publicly, all his/her peers will get the message that society does not condone murder. People with double digit IQ's would hold that value. The murder rate in LA would drop by 95% overnight if you did exactly that. Immigrants tell me that all the time, "grab a few of these gang bangers and kill them, their parents will keep them home at night" they say.

Less people would be killed overall if you did that. Now the super goodie-goodies would still be standing around with their bubble gum for the mind thoughts like "if you kill a criminal then you are no better than the criminal you killed" and what not, but that is just part of life, the murder rate would be very low because everybody would understand that it is not condoned. Look at the statistics, places with low murder rates don't condone murder, it is not that complicated.

Max

 

[hapaboy]

For those opposed to capital punishment who mention being in favor of prison sentences of life without parole for hard-core criminals (never mind that such sentences are not given out anywhere as often as they should be), take a look at the plain economic costs.

In 1997, in New Jersey, these were the costs:

$500,000 to put a new person in prison; $150,000 to build a new cell; $150,000 for arrest and prosecution; and $150,000 to $200,000 to incarcerate that person for five years.

So, you've basically spent $1.15 million dollars for imprisoning then caring for one prisoner for 5 years.

Apparently in Jersey in '97 then, incarcerating one inmate cost $30,000 to $40,000 per year. Let's go with the conservative figure of $30,000 and forget for the moment that costs have gone up in the past 6 years. Let's also assume Jersey's prison costs are more or less on par with the rest of the nation's.

Okay, tab so far for holding one prisoner for 5 years = $1.15 million.

If we put them in for life, how many more years shall we add to the tab? I don't know what the statistics are for the average age of violent offenders, but for the sake of this discussion let's get extremely conservative and set the average age of the prisoner at 40 when they enter the system. So now they're 45 and we've spent $1.15 million on them already. Since the national average life expectancy for the US male is around 72 years old, I believe, let's get conservative again and make it 70.

So our 45-year-old convict who has up to now cost us $1.15 million has another 25 years of life in him. 25 years multiplied by $30,000 = $750,000. Add that to what we've spent on him thus far and you get $1.9 million dollars.

Throw in a little inflation over those 25 years and basically you're conservatively looking at around $2 million for coddling each convict until they die.

Hmmm, isn't the LIFETIME wealth accumulation rate for your average hard-working and honest American around $1 million?

Does it make any sense at all that we as a society spend TWICE as much money on a person who has committed horrible crimes to innocent members of our community than what one of us (should our trading careers fail) can expect to earn in our entire life?

Is it not absolutely RIDICULOUS that we spend more money on prison inmates than educating our kids and feeding the hungry?

-------------------------------------------

Cost of a good piece of rope at your average hardware store: $20

Cost of a .22 magnum bullet: 16 cents.

Cost of allowing a violent criminal back into society: Incalculable.

What is an innocent person's life worth? To the anti-death penalty crowd, apparently not very much at all.

 

[randyhorse]

I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU LAME OHHS ACTUALLY WASTE YOUR TIME RESEARCHING AND POSTING ALL THESE BS STATS & STUFF.

WHO YOU TRYING TO IMPRESS???

I'M NOT IMPRESSEDLOL

AND TOWARD WHAT END??

DO YOU THINK YOU WILL CHANGE POLISY THRU ET?

FUNNY

 

[hapaboy]

Believe me, impressing you is about as high on my list of priorities as shopping for a new toilet plunger.

As far as the stats "and stuff" being B.S., you're welcome to try and disprove them.

 

[randyhorse]

Quote from hapaboy:

Believe me, impressing you is about as high on my list of priorities as shopping for a new toilet plunger.

As far as the stats "and stuff" being B.S., you're welcome to try and disprove them.

YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE TOO MUCH TIME ON YOUR HANDS

MAY I SUGGEST YOUR TIME BETTER SPENT IN THE PEACE CORP OR EVEN A "GREETER" AT WALMART