Again, if paroled and released criminals are the problem, give them life without parole.
No need to kill them.
Capital punishment is a means of self defense in our society?
Non sequitur.
Is Capital Punishment ever justified?
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Again, if paroled and released criminals are the problem, give them life without parole.
No need to kill them.
Capital punishment is a means of self defense in our society?
Non sequitur.
Again, there are loopholes around LWOP, not to mention economic costs (far more costly than death penalty cases, actually). Bottom line, it doesn't prevent them going out again. And come on Optional, if the system only hands out LWOP with the frequency of new IPOs, what are the odds of LWOP being meted out in the numbers you're proposing?
Absolutely. As a result of its implementation, you or your loved ones may not be the next victim.
The odds of my loved ones getting killed in an auto accident, a plane crash, via smoking, drinking etc. are much greater than murder by an ex-con. If you are consistent in your desire to protect life, you have to outlaw all things that cause death that could be prevented which have a greater death rate than murder by an ex-con.
You are not presenting a very practical argument.
Your solutions seems to boil down to, I don't have a solution to the potential problems, so let's kill them.
Fine choice.
Hardly. You're losing your cool.
I'll agree with you about the car accidents, and smoking and drinking are your own fault. Plane crashes, though, uh-uh, unless more than 13,000 Americans are now dying every year falling from our skies. And to talk about "odds" are of little comfort if you're one of the 13,000 victims or a loved one to him/her. Cold.
I am consistent in my desire to protect life from being taken by criminals who have already taken it once.
Resorting to broadening out this discussion to the ludicrous scope you have proposed is unfortunate to witness.
I DO have a solution. And that solution is capital punishment.
You, on the other hand, do NOT have a solution other than to pray for a rehabilitation pill to appear out of thin air and to pray for reform that has miniscule chance of succeeding and is years away if at all. In doing so, you relegate the thousands who are victimized every year to the status of "inconsequential."
Since you've decided to summarize your thoughts, let me do the same and state finally that your citizen v.s. terrorist argument is tenuous, to say the very least.
Fair enough.
Politics frequently plays a part in capital murder cases. Prosecutors trying to gain publicity, to keep their name in the papers, planning to run for higher office, etc.
We're learning more and more about the unreliability of eye-witness testimony today, as well as the human tendency to "confess" under pressure from police. Once these "confessions" are in writing, they're very hard to undo. Many people have been sentenced to death purely on the basis of eyewitness testimony, or a confession. Frequently the signers of these confessions are mentally retarded, or borderline.
To me, the worst thing about capital punishment is the example it sets. In the 1800's, in England and the U.S., people would travel for many miles to view an execution. These events were basically parties. They stopped having them publicly because people were enjoying them too much. The lynching and burning of blacks was the last manifestation of this mentality. I frequently hear that murderers should be put to death. In this country, I believe there are about 15,000 murders committed each year. I think two-thirds of them are solved. Would these advocates of killing every murderer really like to see ten-thousand people put to death every year in this country? Twenty-five or so people executed each and every day. I doubt it. Some studies have shown that immediately after a high profile execution, the murder rate rises. It cheapens life all around, and tells people that the way to solve problems is with violence. We know governments think like this, they always have and they always will. It's up to us to rise above it.
I don't care much what happens to the convicted murderer(unless of course they're innocent, which they sometimes are). To me it's about what the actions of the government say to society. Put another way, how would you feel if the U.S. engaged in public torture, dismemberment, etc. Couldn't you make a case that it's more humane to chop a guy's arm off than kill him. He might take that option, if given the choice. There are plenty of governments that believe such stuff is good for the people, for instance, Saddam Hussein publicly decapitating a couple of prostitutes on a busy downtown street a year or two ago. But I for one would not want to live in such a country. I see us as evolving towards an ever more humane attitude towards our fellow man(witness the world wide anti-war protests that took place today), and I think governments killing people in this way has no place in this new world. It appeals to our most basic and powerful instinct, the instinct to kill that which frightens us.
Hapaboy: Thanks for calling me on expressing these opinions(without an attitude, no less!). Just one last thing. To see one death penalty case up close, check out Errol Morris's documentary The Thin Blue Line.
From hapboy: "Then you place the rights of criminals above the lives of your fellow citizens. 13,000 lives, to be more precise. That is the approximate number of Americans murdered each year by paroled and released criminals."
Whenever someone quotes statistics, assume they are lying.
For some reason, we think because someone quotes numbers, that they have done the research.
Wrong. Usually, they haven't....or if they have they can provide a link to the source of the data.
13,000 to be precise? A nice round number, isn't it. Not 12,873, but exactly and precisely 13,000.
Yes, the precision to support the argument would be the exact number of ex-convicts who were in prison for murder who commit murder each year after release from prison. Or an average based on 10 years of collection of data. Something that sounds legitimate.
No doubt there were ex-cons who were not guilty of capital murder who were paroled or served their time who ended up killing someone upon release from prison. So should we execute anyone who goes to jail, because they may one day re-enter society and kill?
My guess is that figure hapboy used to justify his position would be substantially lower if it just included ex-convicts who had committed murder who killed again once returned to society.
Most murders are not pre-meditated, but crimes of passion or anger, usually involving the abuse of alcohol or drugs. Many murders are not planned, but happen in the commission of a crime where things go wrong.
The question begs, why would someone use statistics that are incorrect or misleading to prove a point?
Because the are unable to make their point honestly based on common sense and reason, without trying to deceive the audience with false data.
I find that when people use false and misleading data, they are losing the argument, and they know it.
I also have found that is it nearly always the case with internet debates, that when someone begins to resort to name calling, and personal attacks they have lost the argument.
I question hapboy's judgement and objectivity in this discussion.
When it was suggested that murderers get life without parole, his response was that the parole board might change, they might escape, they might kill a guard, a prisoner, etc. Lots of might be in there. Yet when it is suggested that the killer might be innocent due to false evidence, planted evidence, false witness testimony....he falls quite silent.
If I suggest that isolation in prison without parole solves the problem, he has no answer apart from the cost.
He is entitled to his opinion, but that is it, just opinion. We try in this country to make laws based on reason and common sense, on probabilities, not unfounded fears.
I have yet to hear a cogent, sound, and reasonable argument to support taking the life of a citizen versus life in prison without the possibility of parole.
So far, the cost of such confinement and the "possibility" that they may kill again are what I have heard.
Cost and "possibility" is not sufficient to me to have a man put to death when there are alternative forms of punishment that keep the convicted killer confined from harming others, and the cost is minimal compared to wasted expenses in other areas of our society.
That we have yet to find a method for better rehabilitation of prisoners, is a reson not to try, and to kill them?
Fine logic.
You'll find I have very little "attitude" alanack until I receive it first. If you are referring to the running feud w/dgabriel, well, he and I go way back....
On this thread we are discussing, for simplicity's sake, those cases in which guilt is irrefutable, based upon other things, DNA evidence. (Please see the first post of this thread for background.)
Hey, 13000 people alone are murdered every year by parolees and ex-cons. If the choice is between the criminal and innocent lives, there should be no question that it should be the criminal's life that is forfeit.
"frightens us"? Let's be real: the term should be "is killing innocent members of our society in great numbers."
By enforcing capital punishment the government and society are making a statement that is hardly in-humane. By ridding our society of animals that have already slaughtered innocents and are allowed to do so again, we are in fact acknowledging that the lives and welfare of our society at large take precedence over the rights of those who would do us harm.
My .02 cents. Please note the lack of attitude.