It's a bloody-minded and barbarous practice, that's why

Actually, I have read (albeit at second hand) that there is some evidence that it is worse than that. Namely, that the death penalty is an antideterrent, i.e. the death penalty makes the relevant offences more likely.

The real problem with the death penalty is ...

What do you do WHEN (and it will be when ) you get it wrong, and execute the wrong person?

That is to me, the only argument against it, but, if you'll pardon the pun, it is a killer objection.

There is no way around it.

Even if it had some detterent effect that mere fact that the death penalty is irreversible makes it unacceptable in my view. I've seen folks who think that the possibility of executing innocents is something that must be accepted for the greater good, but I would imagine their tune would change if someone they knew was wrongly executed.

I think, it is the matter of value of human life. If you think that human life has a value only when it can serve as a proof of fornication, you are likely to fall in love with the idea of killing all who "deserve" it, regardles whether, or what effects it is going to have on the rest of the society. If you consider other people's lives having a value per se, you will se it as an abomination.

So what do we do with people who cannot be rehabilitated? One of the problems of America's prison system is that there is almost no attempt to rehabilitate offenders. That is what prisons were originally for.

Life in prison with no parole is just a death sentence, though slower. If society deems that person to have no value to society, what's the point of keeping them around? You might as well just drop them off on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific. In prison they can still cause more trouble.

I personally am not crazy about the death penalty, since I think executing an innocent person is too big of a risk. However, what's the solution to people who have no business in a healthy society? If they cannot be, or will not be rehabilitated...what's the point of keeping them anywhere?

In some of these cases, the perpetrator risks a much more immediate death in the process of committing the crime; one example would be by exchanging gunfire with the police. If the death penalty is indeed an "antideterrent", it might be just a prolonged form of what's commonly called "suicide by cop".

The death penalty is revenge, pure and simple -- applied in an inconsistent manner and sometimes with considerable uncertainty over either the identity of its target or the role of that person in the crime.

IMHO, one of the strongest arguments against the death penalty is the blood-thirsty attitude of too many of its proponents (to know what I mean, just listen to the things said by certain people the next time someone notorious is being executed). While an abstract argument can be made that capital punishment is fitting justice for murder, for these people justice has nothing to do with it: it's all about rage and revenge -- ie. the same forces that cause many murders in the first place.

When punishing the criminals means that you so visibly sink to their level, you have to know there's something wrong.

Keith Douglas is right. A side effect of the death penalty is that the whole process of killing or being killed may enforce the image of a "contest -- an exciting highest-stakes gamble enacting in real life the games of children and the fantasies of television, with the possibility of one's own violent death adding zest to the challenge (as it apparently does for some race drivers, mountain climbers or professional daredevils).

It serves no good purpose, in any way. In addtion to PZ's comments, I would add:

It ends up being a sop to bloodthirsty (and misguided) voters

It does nothing in terms of catharsis for the criminal's victims (a commonly cited, "compassionate" reason for its use)

It does nothing for the criminal who may be guilty yet has a desire to provide some type of compensation (granted, the opportunities are few) for his crimes.

Finally and perhaps most simply, it smacks too much of the Vengeance Ethic.

I'd be against for most cases. The only reason I'd be for it is similar to what cephyn said. I would never execute someone who has just been convicted of one or two crimes. For me, it would take committing many violent crimes over a period of time, many seperate convictions, and negligible chance of rehabilitation. Then you might as well get rid of them to save money. The plus side of this is that you can't execute an innocent because the guy has done so many things that even if you were wrong about one of them, he's still done so many more anyway.

The whole, untreatable-pschyopaths-not-being-mentally-competent-therefore-not-being-eligible thing just gets rid of the only argument I would even give air-time to.

And, since death sentences are automatically appealed (in order to minimize the chance of executing an innocent person) it ends up costing the state more money than to simply keep them in prison with no possibility for parole.

Re: the purpose of prison. The primary purpose of prison is to protect society from the depredations of criminals. The secondary purpose of prison is a matter of opinion. This falls into two camps: one is to rehabilitate prisoners, the other is to punish them. Personally, I think rehabilitation is the way to go, but I do think that a lot of people are so messed up/sociopathic/whatever, that it ain't gonna work on them.

But that's a whole 'nother discussion.

I personally advocate the "donation" of criminals to medial research. It would completely remove our reliance upon animal testing and at the same time, would yield more accurate results. Clinical testing would become a much more affordable affair, since the "donations" would have no legal rights, thus reducing the liabilities for the pharmcos. This reduced cost with the added benefit of human testing results would lead to an ideal situation where fewer lawsuits are pressed against pharmcos, and pharmcos would no longer have to pursue only the most profitable of ventures.

Y'know. Take from society, give back to society.

I'd imagine that anyone who is against the death penalty for ethical reasons is probably going to be against using prisoners for unconsented medical research.

As for death sentences costing more than life sentences, well that's an inefficiency in the legal system. Make a conviction 100% accurate and it's no longer an argument. The question returns to the issue of what to do with a person that has been deemed a cancer upon society.

What about chain-gangs (pref w/out the classic ball and chain!)....enforced community service of some kind that is actually a service to the community! Why can't these people plant trees and dig roads for us?

King Aardvark

For me, it would take committing many violent crimes over a period of time, many seperate convictions, and negligible chance of rehabilitation. Then you might as well get rid of them to save money.

Cephyn

However, what's the solution to people who have no business in a healthy society? If they cannot be, or will not be rehabilitated...what's the point of keeping them anywhere?

Geebus, I guess you do have to beat some people over the head until they "get it."

The issue is: murdering people for economic reasons is wrong. It's so wrong, in fact, that we put people in prison for life for engaging in such practices privately (when we catch them).

Get it?

Even if I didn't have principled reasons for opposing the death penalty (though I do), I would be solidly against it on purely pragmatic grounds. As a forensic scientist, I'm just too acutely aware of the fallibility of the justice system.

I'd be very interested in how many people who are anti-death penalty have had to deal with murdered loved ones directly. I'm not casting stones, I'm honestly curious. I for one support the death penalty. My cousin, his wife, and their unborn child were murdered by a shotgun-wielding criminal that was acting under the influence. He was committed to a mental health facility, and about 10 years later, was released. It may be a bloody-minded vengeance thing, but I wanted to see him die. I'd be curious to see how many people who are against the death penalty would change their minds if their loved ones were murdered.

Make a conviction 100% accurate and it's no longer an argument.

So just exactly how do you guarantee 100% accuracy?

I personally advocate the "donation" of criminals to medial research.

Why not entertainment? We could make criminals perform all sorts of wacky stunts at the point of a tazer.

Such stunts would bring joy and healing into the hearts of, e.g., small children suffering from leukemia.

Linz while chain gangs may work for people with finite sentences, what incentive is there for a person with an infinite sentence to work? It won't cut time off. It wont give any useable or marketable skills when they get out. What's to stop them from just refusing to work? What are you going to do, torture them until they work? Forced labor is not a death penalty replacement. The prisoners would just sit down and do nothing. Would you rather be in a forced labor camp for the rest of your life, being reduced to a human automaton, or would you just rather be dead? If you want to live so that you have the hope of escape, how bitter would you be? Would you commit crimes again?

I'm in favor of the death penalty for serial killers (or more precisely, people convicted of murder one on more than one occasion), and serial killers only. Because, whether or not it works as a deterrent, there are still no repeat offenders.

Josh

It may be a bloody-minded vengeance thing, but I wanted to see him die.

Then by all means go find him and strangle him with your bare hands. Catch him at night somewhere, when nobody is around. Have a flashlight handy so you can see his eyeballs popping out and don't forget to spit in his face as you squeeze the life out of him.

Don't forget to wear gloves, though.

Josh, that is vengeance not justice and I think one of the purposes of the justice system should be to seperate the criminals from the victims so that justice not vengeance is served. Vigilanti-ism is not a safe way to go. What happens when people get it wrong...you get witch hunts and retribution killings of innocent people.

Btw, I totally don't think that what that guy got was justice.

Raven, I agree, we don't have 100% accuracy. That's why I'm against the death penalty.

Great White Wonder,
Is it any more humane to keep a person locked up forever with no hope? Like a caged animal? Really?

I personally am not crazy about the death penalty, since I think executing an innocent person is too big of a risk. However, what's the solution to people who have no business in a healthy society? If they cannot be, or will not be rehabilitated...what's the point of keeping them anywhere?

That's a separate issue. The fact that America hasn't been able to figure out a way to make rehabilitation work certainly can't stand as an argument for simply killing them instead. I agree that thousands of people in prison cannot be rehabilitated (or at least, we'll never figure out how to do so), nor would there ever be public support for releasing the kind of people you see on death row anyway (I was just reminded of Clockwork Orange), but the inconvenience and expense of housing such people is not sufficient reason to justify executing them. I think it's society's duty to house them, regrettably.

Because, whether or not it works as a deterrent, there are still no repeat offenders.

No repeat offenders either if you are kept in a jail cell and handcuffed whenever you are outside of it.

Any non-repetitive arguments for state-sanctioned murder?

Great White Wonder,
Is it any more humane to keep a person locked up forever with no hope? Like a caged animal? Really?

Hope for what?

We're all trapped here on earth. A lot of us are stuck in small towns with nothing to do except read, watch TV, or inhale paint. At least you know where your next meal is coming from in prison.

Great White Wonder, are you for torture? Isn't a life sentence with no hope of parole just long drawn-out torture for a person? If it isn't, it's got to be pretty close. Sure, he's not a repeat offender....but is that really the moral high ground here? Look highly on those who don't kill but imprison forever?

Josh, I know that I would be very, very tempted to give in to the thirst for blood vengeance. I don't know whether I'd be able to resist it; it's a natural, understandable, and powerful impulse.

However: societies don't- can't possibly- exist to gratify every desire of every one of their members, even ones far less problematic than that one. So that very understandable emotion nevertheless should be given little or no weight in this discussion. Not, at any rate, unless accompanied by a serious argument that tries to show why abetting that desire for vengeance in such cases is both morally permisssible and a social good.

The question returns to the issue of what to do with a person that has been deemed a cancer upon society.

...donate them to cancer research, naturally.

Besides, the donation of criminals to medical research places the cost of housing/maintaining criminals completely in corporate hands. The burden on the taxpayer is reduced, and the benefit is that of arriving at a cure for cancer decades earlier.

Isn't a life sentence with no hope of parole just long drawn-out torture for a person?

Go to San Quentin and ask some of the prisoners there if any of them want to be killed today because it's so bad living there.

Let me know what you find out.

Frankly, if any of them do want to kill themselves, I don't have a problem with that. People should be allowed to kill themselves whenever they want, in my opinion. I see that as a fundamental human right.

Great White Wonder, are you for torture?

Fuck you, asshole.

Zed

The burden on the taxpayer is reduced, and the benefit is that of arriving at a cure for cancer decades earlier.

Maybe I should raise some criminals and donate them to prison.

My cousin, his wife, and their unborn child were murdered by a shotgun-wielding criminal that was acting under the influence. He was committed to a mental health facility, and about 10 years later, was released. It may be a bloody-minded vengeance thing, but I wanted to see him die. I'd be curious to see how many people who are against the death penalty would change their minds if their loved ones were murdered.

While I'm very sorry at your loss, and appalled that this man was EVER released, I have to say, I think it's a terrible idea for people who are most directly impacted by such crimes to set government policy on punishment. Bluntly put, it's too important a decision for people who are this emotionally vested in the decision. In other words, it's a bad idea to hand over policy to people who want revenge.

If what happened to you happened to me, I'd very likely want the guy dead, too. But that doesn't mean I should be able to tell the state to kill him. But it's inexcusable that the state should ever have let that man out.

Zed-

That was the rationale for Nazi medical experiments. Seriously. They deemed a group of people unneccessary for a healthy society. (Their reasons for doing this were deplorable.) They then either used those people as human test subjects for medical research and the greater good, or killed them. Is that what we wish to aspire to?

Again, in case there comes any confusion here: I am against the death penalty because you cannot be 100% sure the person is guilty. I also believe that prisons should be more about rehabilitation than for punishment.

The moral quandry is what to do with those who cannot be rehabilitated? Torture them by keeping them in prison forever? Torture them in medical experiments? Or simply kill them?

I don't know.

"Fuck you, asshole."

Wow, GWW. I could have said the same thing in your response to me, but I chose to be civil. Aside from your belligerent jack-assery, it's been a pretty civil discussion for such an emotional topic.

"Great White Wonder, are you for torture?

Fuck you, asshole."

Touch a nerve did I?

cephyn

The moral quandry is what to do with those who cannot be rehabilitated? Torture them by keeping them in prison forever? Torture them in medical experiments? Or simply kill them?

I don't know.

What about mentally ill people who aren't committing crimes and who can't be rehabilitated? What's the difference between a mentally ill person who needs to be kept under constant surveillance night and day and a criminal from the angle of "life without hope is torture"?

Great White:

There's a difference between executing criminals who would kill you in an instant, who you really can't justify spending good money on to house and guard, and killing innocents because they aren't economically beneficial.

Besides, I'm against death penalties in general, but was making a case for an extreme situation where I could see some sense in it. If funds were plentiful (hint: the US national debt is around $8.5 trillion) I'd say look after them for life. I will agree with PZ that it certainly brutalizes the culture, and I would avoid it for that reason.

I'll commend you for your strong ethical stance re: no killing ever. It's just that, when most people argue against the death penalty, the main point is the possibility of killing innocents, not the problem with killing criminals, too.

Honest question: what other alternatives are there for the long term handling of chronically dangerous and mallicious criminals? Anyone have any good ideas?

Touch a nerve did I?

No, you just asked a genuinely asinine question and I called you on it. No big deal.

Wait, I got it....
We've all heard of bio-fuels right?

The fact that America hasn't been able to figure out a way to make rehabilitation work certainly can't stand as an argument for simply killing them instead.

That's not even an arugment. There are tons of programs that act work towords rehabilitation. And a lot that work to a signifigant degree. The just cost money. And it's awfully hard to justify to your average "small government" jingoist moron that rehabilitating prisoners rather than just caging them is actually good fiscal policy.

In my weaker moments I have no problem justifying the death penalty in certain cases... but it's not a rational response.. it's an emotional one.

But I'm definately against the death penalty because the crazy justice system we have has consistantly gotten it wrong over and over again.

Re: whether life in jail is more humane than the death penalty.

I have occasionally toyed with the idea that, for the really nasty cases (the ones you don't ever want out on the street again, and even among the prison population are likely to be a problem) we should put them in solitary for life -- with the proviso that the prisoner will be given a suicide pill on request. Let them make their own choice.

I don't claim it's a very good idea.

Wow, GWW. I could have said the same thing in your response to me

Be my guest. But aren't you the one that said you wanted to see somebody die?

I never indicated in any way that I supported torture. That is why the question to me was fucking obnoxious.

What about mentally ill people who aren't committing crimes and who can't be rehabilitated? What's the difference between a mentally ill person who needs to be kept under constant surveillance night and day and a criminal from the angle of "life without hope is torture"?

If they aren't committing crimes, they are not a danger to society. Society would not need to be protected from them by their deaths. Compassion for someone who is ill and needs help is a good thing. It's a huge difference. For them the issue is not about hope. They want to contribute. They want to be a part of society.

A violent criminal does not. They have actively moved against their society. They have taken all hope, life, away from someone else.

Cephyn

If they aren't committing crimes, they are not a danger to society.

Then why do we "torture" them, cephyn?

Next.

Is it any more humane to keep a person locked up forever with no hope? Like a caged animal? Really?

This is wildly naive. You're implying that of course it's crueler to keep a man in a cage for 50 years than it is to kill him. While this may seem logical if you don't think about it too hard, it doesn't make sense. I daresay it's up to the criminal as to whether lifelong incarceration is worse than death. I'm sure many criminals would *prefer* staying alive to being executed. (And of course, others wouldn't.) This would explain why so many criminals appeal their death penalty decisions for so many years.

It's absurd for the state to execute a man on the one hand, but on the other to say "oh, we're only doing what's least CRUEL to you!"

Josh,

Asking GWW "Are you for torture?" is at least as insulting as the statement "Fuck you, asshole." Don't pretend that it isn't.

GWW basically summed it up. All arguments here for the death penalty are repetitive and flawed at the most basic level. Of course victims shouldn't dictate policies of justice, just like corporations shouldn't decide what tax breaks they get either. And ya, go ask an inmate if he would rather be dead. Behaving in a civilized manner can be expensive and it is our responsibility to support that. Americans try to think like corporations and end up acting deplorably (sp?).

People are more likely to attribute guilt to someone accused of a heinous crime. This is shown by the resistance that you hear on talk shows to people accused of terrorism or crimes against children to having any real defense representation. Even if they are found not guilty, they will be seen with suspicion ever more. Even if the real killer is found!

That said, I am more horrified by life in prison than by the death penalty. Why not bury someone alive and let them breathe through tubes? I have heard prison described in similar terms. And... assuming an innocent person, and the error is never found (most likely scenario) how is that better than execution?

Sorry cephyn said that.

Great White Hope,
death is 100% effective, while keeping people in prison isn't. There are many gangs ran by inmates with life sentences, but I'm sure they don't kill anyone. Oh, and nice "Fuck you, asshole" response to another person. That was eloquent.

Also, are you in favor of defending our country, if another country attacks us? Are should we just let them take over? If you are favor of defensive wars, than you're in favor of killing over beliefs, not even life. Because our society is a set of beliefs. And, when a society successfully defends itself in a war, the loser society generally has a greater death toll than the winner. But, taking more life, and defending your beliefs is more important than taking the life of one person who is a serial killer?

GWW:

If they aren't committing crimes, they are not a danger to society.

Then why do we "torture" them, cephyn?

That's a rather glib analogy. You might well have said "Why do we torture babies by putting them in cribs?" The difference is whether cage is there to protect others or to protect themselves.

"Be my guest. But aren't you the one that said you wanted to see somebody die?"

Yes. But at least I did it politely. And I would bet if someone came to your family's home and gunned them down, you'd have a similar desire. You can deny it all you want, but until it happens (and I hope it never does), you don't know.

That having been said, and leaving GWW's ranting aside, everyone that has said (politely, thank you) that society's laws shouldn't be based on emotion, etc, is probably right. I hadn't thought about it that way. It gives me something to think about. Justifiable rage is still rage, and generally shouldn't be acted upon.

"Be my guest. But aren't you the one that said you wanted to see somebody die?"

Yes. But at least I did it politely.

Funniest thing I've read all year!!! :)

GWW has gone off the deep end, clearly. Mentally ill people who aren't committing crimes and need supervision (as he stated in his example) are not imprisoned by the state or society. They are imprisoned by their own condition. If there was a "cure" or "fix" for them, to improve their quality of life, it would be administered. Someday, maybe there will be some way to improve their lives. That's hope.

As for criminals, the cure to be administered is rehabilitation. IF that doesn't work, what then? If you can't see the difference there GWW, sorry. But you're on your own with that.

George, yes, I am implying that. IF its up to the criminal then, we're on to Steve Watsons plan. Solitary confinement and an optional suicide pill. Given the lack of any other good options at this point, I guess that is the least cruel option.

Oh wait, you already nixed Least Cruel options. What would you like then? Most Cruel? Sorta Cruel? I don't understand that argument. Aren't we all trying to find the Least Cruel option? One so not cruel, its actually...Not Cruel?

death is 100% effective, while keeping people in prison isn't. There are many gangs ran by inmates with life sentences, but I'm sure they don't kill anyone.

Then that's a failure of how prisons are run, not an argument for the death penalty.

Serial killers incarcerated for life cease to be serial killers. This is news?

Also, are you in favor of defending our country, if another country attacks us? Are should we just let them take over? If you are favor of defensive wars, than you're in favor of killing over beliefs, not even life.

Are you seriously saying that if one opposes the death penalty then one must oppose their country defending itself??? I certainly hope that's not what you're saying, since that's frigging ridiculous.

When I was a teenager I had some friends that were killed by a psychopath (he is currently serving three consecutive life sentences). This severely tested but did not alter my opposition to the death penalty.

I think violent murderers should be given a small, measured amount of hope. Keep them in locked away forever, in order to protect future victims, but give them an opportunity to develop themselves intellectually and morally in that environment. If by doing so they can contribute in any way to the healing of their victims, that's great (although very unlikely). It's still worth trying for.

cephyn,

Your arguement is so full of blatant contradictions and bizarre arbitrary distinctions that to say GWW has gone off the deep end is painfully ironic.

Pause and critically re-examine your arguement.

Good grief, the goalposts are moving so fast and so far it must be the goalpost moving Olympics!

Also, are you in favor of defending our country, if another country attacks us? Are should we just let them take over?

Different topic.

That's a rather glib analogy. You might well have said "Why do we torture babies by putting them in cribs?"

No, there's nothing glib about it. Cephyn just put his foot in his mouth and now cephyn has it to chew it down and swallow or spit it out and recognize the contradiction.

Cephyn said that keeping people caged with no hope of rehabilitation is "torture". I asked him what he thought about mentally ill people (but it applies to many sick person) who can't be rehabilitated and who are bound to live a life in a very very very restricted setting. I asked cephyn to explain why is one "torture" and the other "not torture"? He didn't answer.

In Cephyn's place, I might just have shut up and leaft because there is no good answer. That is because his premise is fucked, as Cauldron already pointed out.

George, yes, I am implying that. IF its up to the criminal then, we're on to Steve Watsons plan. Solitary confinement and an optional suicide pill. Given the lack of any other good options at this point, I guess that is the least cruel option.

I'm not sure you caught my point. You're saying that lifetime incarceration is crueler than execution, and that policy should be based on that.

My reaction is that I don't see how you KNOW that incarceration is crueler than execution. For some criminals it *won't* be. Some criminals would prefer incarceration. So it's a bogus line of reasoning.

My impression is that convicts who want to kill themselves don't usually have too much trouble finding a way to do it.

The penalty for committing the crime of attacking this country is death.

Now it's OK?
If the war is active, then its self defense. No problem. Clear and present danger and immediate threat. But that's not the death penalty. That's self defense in the face of lethal force and intent.

If the war is over, and/or its a POW in a zone of peace, what then?
1)They are a clear danger to our society.
2)Can they be rehabilitated?
3)If not...back to the same issue.

I think we should take the same magic wand we wave to make the death penalty justifiable, and use it to magically eliminate all crime in the first place.

Frankly, I'm astonished at the number of people who think revenge is a justification for the death penalty. If you want revenge, take revenge. Kill the bastard and turn yourself in to the police. I'm guessing that in most states, if you kill the man who killed your family, and then freely confess the crime, you could plead down to 2nd degree homicide or 1st degree manslaughter. 20 years with early parole for good behavior. Piece of cake. And I think you'd get more satisfaction out of the revenge if you did it yourself.

I mean, I'm hardly a libertarian, but when it comes to revenge, I don't think the state has any business getting involved.

George, please explain the difference between war and the death penalty.

My criteria for the death penalty is to executed serial killers.

My criteria for war, as justified for most people, is that in defense of your country. Now, what is a country? It is a group of people that follow certain laws and tend to share a relatively common culture. Why would you defend this country? To defend the laws and culture? To defend the people? Laws and culture are the beliefs of a society. You're killing others over beliefs. And how countries kill less of another country and win the war? So, you kill more of their people than they killed of yours. And, you killing because you have your beliefs, and they can't tell you what to do.

So, death penalty=kill one person who has killed more than one other person.
War=killing for your beliefs, and killing more people of another society than they killed in your society.

I'm in favor of both, but I don't see how someone in favor of defensive war can be against the death penalty.

George:

death is 100% effective, while keeping people in prison isn't. There are many gangs ran by inmates with life sentences, but I'm sure they don't kill anyone.

Then that's a failure of how prisons are run, not an argument for the death penalty.

That does seem to be one of the major problems here. It's the same thing with everyone being opposed to the death penalty for the reason that the court systems are so flawed; if the system is cleaned up, then we have more options to consider. Some people are arguing from a realistic perspective, others from an idealistic perspective.

For the lifetime solitary + suicide pill option: that seems a little to Pirates of the Caribbean to me.

For the medical experiments, we shouldn't stoop to forcing them to do it. We should just strongly encourage.

I think I'm still happy to live in Canada where we don't have the death penalty.

Cephyn said that keeping people caged with no hope of rehabilitation is "torture". I asked him what he thought about mentally ill people (but it applies to many sick person) who can't be rehabilitated and who are bound to live a life in a very very very restricted setting. I asked cephyn to explain why is one "torture" and the other "not torture"? He didn't answer.

I did answer. Not my fault you didn't get it. Will you just lash out with profanity again? Is that what you do when frustrated?

Mentally ill people in your example are not imprisoned to protect society from them. What you are asking is not about death penalty, you're asking about euthanasia. And that's different. With the prisoner, society has deemed them beyond hope. They will always be a danger to society. With the ill person, they must make that decision themselves, or someone will have to make it for them - but they are not imprisoned in order to protect the rest of us.

Euthanasia != Death Penalty. My premise is not fucked, but thanks for trying.

I'm in favor of both, but I don't see how someone in favor of defensive war can be against the death penalty.

Try this:

dude in prison isn't likely to kill anybody, so let's not kill him to save money.

army of dudes in other country are killing innocent people here so they can take over our country and institute the death penalty for having gay sex. so we do the only we can to prevent this atrocity which requires killing the dudes in the other country to make them stop killing us.

You can't see the difference? What the fuck?

There will always be repeat offenders. Just as the death penalty itself is applied imperfectly, the prison system can not guarantee life-without-parole prisoners will not gain freedom.

I used to support the death penalty. I still support the theory of the death penalty. What I did do was weigh the costs of a convicted murderer regaining freedom and killing again against the costs of executing an innocent man. It is my personal opinion that the latter makes the more indelible stain upon our social contract.

Any non-repetitive arguments for state-sanctioned murder?

Like both sides have any new horses to bring to the gate. Both sides have their stock phrases and arguments which are not likely to sway anyone with an existing opinion.

I did answer

You gave a non-answer. You replied with a non-sequitur. Please, don't make me pull down your pants and spank you in front of everybody.

***
For it to work, you have to assume that death penalty offenses are committed in a rational state of mind, and further, that there are no rational grounds for assuming one will be able to get away with it. Neither condition is true.
***

PZ

I agree with your general position on the death penalty. But I don't think this statement about deterrence has validity. A person doesn't need to be "rational" to be deterred. "Irrational" people can be deterred, as well. Even psychotic serial killers don't pick targets in the middle of the street during daylight (usually). They know that they might get caught, and they know that getting caught leads to bad things. Clearly, criminals of all kinds are deterred by potential penalties. The relevant question is *How much?* The additional deterrent value of the death penalty may be very small, at the margin...perhaps not large enough to justify the negative aspects of the punishment on society, such as the potential for an irreversible mistake.

The same goes for the likelihood of getting away with it. The fact that criminals aren't always prosecuted and punished simply implies that criminals discount the potential impact of punishments. Nobody would ever commit any crime (well, almost nobody) if they knew they would be caught and punished with certainty. There is nothing unique about the death penalty as a punishment in this respect.

It should read " how many countries kill less."

I type good.

Cephyn, should we have gone into Afghanistan? They (or al-Qaida, anyway) attacked, but we weren't still being attacked. So there really wasn't any clear and present danger. Was that ok?

Anyways, I'm for defensive wars (but not Iraq, that was just retarded) including the war in Afghanistan. I'm also in favor of the death penalty, because they seem to follow similiar, if not identical lines of logic.

Like both sides have any new horses to bring to the gate. Both sides have their stock phrases and arguments which are not likely to sway anyone with an existing opinion.

Posted by: Sean

Not true. The death penalty in the US is going the way of the dodo. Slowly but surely.

George, please explain the difference between war and the death penalty.

If you can't see the difference, I doubt I could explain it to you.

I'm in favor of both, but I don't see how someone in favor of defensive war can be against the death penalty.

Sorry, but millions and millions of people in the west disagree with you. Good to keep in mind.

"When I was a teenager I had some friends that were killed by a psychopath (he is currently serving three consecutive life sentences). This severely tested but did not alter my opposition to the death penalty."

You're a better person than I am.

I'm for defensive wars (but not Iraq, that was just retarded)

Not only was it retarded, it was not a defensive war. The US simply invaded Iraq because it fucking wanted to.

Like both sides have any new horses to bring to the gate. Both sides have their stock phrases and arguments which are not likely to sway anyone with an existing opinion.

I disagree. DNA analysis has revealed very starkly just how common it is in America for innocent people to be convicted of felonies. (The governor of Illinois imposed a moratorium on the death penalty for that exact reason.) My impression is that this realization has seriously eroded public support for the death penalty.

GWW basically summed it up. All arguments here for the death penalty are repetitive and flawed at the most basic level.

Sarcasm on. Oh, you are right. They are all just repetitive and flawed at the most basic level. You win.

Oh wait, what if I say this...

All arguements here against the death penalty are repetive and flawed at the most basic level.

There. Now what? Call it a draw?

Wow. Talk about synchronicity. I read this paragraph (among many others) on the bus this morning:

"And as no-one could make sense of it, thoughts turned instead to retribution; the only way forward after such a senseless loss of precious human life was to ... er ... kill someone else."

Christopher Brookmyre, "Country of the Blind"

GWW:

I hate to say it, but your comments about pulling cephyn's pants down etc is getting awfully close to Lenny's comments about dick waving on a previous infamous post. I hope it doesn't get that way here.

I'll agree with you, certainly a defensive war is much more cut-and-dried justifiable than the death penalty in any circumstance.

In states with the death penalty the muder rate is 5.1 per 100K, in states without the death penalty its 2.9 per 100k. Clearly its not a deterrant, but this will contiue to be an issue for a long time. In my state of Texas many people boast of how we lead the nation in the number of people put to death, but our murder rate is 6.1 per 100K. Personally, I have to admit I have flip-flopped on this issue a few times. When I see people like John Couey...I think he is a poster child for the death penalty, but the death penalty has never brought back a victim. Then again no person ever put to death has ever commited murder again.

Cephyn, should we have gone into Afghanistan? They (or al-Qaida, anyway) attacked, but we weren't still being attacked. So there really wasn't any clear and present danger. Was that ok?

Depends on how you see it. We wanted to go in to get those who attacked us. If we captured them alive, or were handed them, we probably would have imprisoned them, and then tried them. The penalty for a guilty verdict is what we're arguing about.

However, the rulers of Afghanistan not only refused to help or hand us the individuals who still posed a threat to our society (as it is their sworn oath to fight the US), they supported the views and actions of those criminals. So we invaded to neutralize the threat, as well as the enablers of that threat. So while not a strictly defensive war, it was a responsive war.

Iraq was, and still is, a load of BS.

George said,

If you can't see the difference, I doubt I could explain it to you.

I hope your not a teacher of any type. Since, if someone can't obviously see your point of view, they must not be able to understand it. Sounds like all the creationists I argue with.

George said,

Sorry, but millions and millions of people in the west disagree with you. Good to keep in mind.

And millions and millions of people in the west are creationists. That doesn't make them logical.

Great White Wonder said,

Not only was it retarded, it was not a defensive war. The US simply invaded Iraq because it fucking wanted to.

Thanks. None of us knew that. Now, try to make three consecutive posts without using the word fuck or being insulting. It's hard, isn't it?

"When I was a teenager I had some friends that were killed by a psychopath (he is currently serving three consecutive life sentences). This severely tested but did not alter my opposition to the death penalty."
You're a better person than I am.

"Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think I can safely and honestly say, he was a better man than I, as well. I think most people could.

Josh, for what it's worth, I do hope you spend a good while pondering that point, because I feel much as you do. I would almost certainly want the murdering bastard to die.

But that is vengeance, pure and simple, and I have always believed that vengeance is never a good thing.

I might not be able to control myself. Hope I never find out. My recognition of the wrongness of the act hopefully is an indicator that I wouldn't take vengeance. But if it ever does happen to me, and I give into the rage, I will not ask someone else to do the crime for me. I will do it, and I will take full responsibility for my actions.

Thanks. None of us knew that. Now, try to make three consecutive posts without using the word fuck or being insulting. It's hard, isn't it?

Yes, mommy.

Somehow I doubt that eliminating the death penalty will reduce the homicide rate, as implied in a previous post. There are probably gobs of other social factors that correlate as well, like economy, social programs, etc.

I disagree. DNA analysis has revealed very starkly just how common it is in America for innocent people to be convicted of felonies. (The governor of Illinois imposed a moratorium on the death penalty for that exact reason.) My impression is that this realization has seriously eroded public support for the death penalty.

I know. That is why I currently oppose the death penalty.

What I failed to make clear was that the number of people who are going to be converted over the underlying moral questions concerning the death penalty will probably round to zero.

I believe the growing opposition to the death penalty comes from pragmatic causes such as fear of executing the innocent or fatigue with the often decades long process.

Now get the Harry Potter talking hat and teach it to infallibly declare guilty or innocent. Where do you think public opinion would be under this scenerio? I honestly do not know, but would expect a fairly strong swing back to support for.

Perhaps it is worth seeing what one US Supreme Court Justice has to say on the matter. I especially like the part that any inocent persons executed would go to Heaven so that arguement against is not a problem. Here is the linkL http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0205/articles/scalia.html

Okay. Let's see. I basically oppose the death penalty because (a) I dont think the state has any business killing people and (b) the risk of killing innocent people is basically a certainty.

According to your, uh, 'reasoning', this means I must also oppose the ability to countries to defend themselves and their citizens from attack.

And supposedly if I support the ability of countries to defend themselves and oppose the death penalty for the reasons given above I'm 'illogical'.

I'm sorry, you're so far off in your own abstractions you're making no sense at all. In my experience, people who earnestly offer arguments this daffy aren't usually worth arguing with -- it won't go anywhere.

In fact, it reminds me a lot of Christians who attack atheists as being immoral, since in their conception of how atheists must think, they dont see a 'reason' for atheists to be moral, so therefore, atheists must NOT be moral.This whole line of reasoning exists in a similar vacuum of noncontact with the actual views of the people being described. Such Christianists get similarly annoyed when it's pointed out that atheists don't go around killing and raping people any more than religious people, since it violates these abstract arguments they've concocted.

In your comparison of people who disagree with you to creationists, I can only offer the fact that hardly anyone else agrees with your equation. There is very little support for the death penalty in Europe, but very wide support for defending their own countries. And yet these are often the same people who accept evolution. Funny, that.

Perhaps it is worth seeing what one US Supreme Court Justice has to say on the matter. I especially like the part that any inocent persons executed would go to Heaven so that arguement against is not a problem. Here is the linkL http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0205/articles/scalia.html

Posted by: LM Wanderer | August 24, 2006 02:17 PM

So if I were to strap Scalia to a gurney and inject him with Sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride, he'd be okay with it because he'd wind up safe in the arms of Jesus?

The death penalty implies killing a prisoner. If this is not unethical, what is? It also defines the difference between dead penalty and war.

I am against the death penalty, not for "practical reasons", but just for ethical reasons. That does not mean that I disagree with the practical objections given by others.

I also think that children should not grow up in a society where the authorities kill people. They (those children) should from the start on become conscious that killing is not something that "we" do, maybe others, not us. Somehow it should be evident that the state represents a different ethical level than do the criminals: fighting crime should not be like a war between criminal organizations.
I suppose the above implies that I am against the death penalty for - well, Hitler, Bin Laden, the (hypothetical) assassin of my family...
Finally, I am against it for esthetic reasons: I can't think of anything uglier than an execution.

The argument of weighing the costs of convicting an innocent person vs. letting a guilty one go free is a false one.

When you convict an innocent person - you HAVE ALREADY let a guilty one go free, as the case is closed and the real perpetrator of the crime will not be sought.

George said,

(a) I dont think the state has any business killing people

George also said,

And supposedly if I support the ability of countries to defend themselves and oppose the death penalty for the reasons given above I'm 'illogical'.

So, states can't defend themselves by killing? That would be consistant with your beliefs. If states can defend themselves by killing, then you are illogical.

George said,

I can only offer the fact that hardly anyone else agrees with your equation.

The fact? You've statistically studied my equation, considering the first time I used it was in this thread? And again with the democratic view on logic. Logic is not a democracy. And, I'm not saying you're amoral, moral, or whatever. I'm just saying you're logically inconsistant.

And gww, it really is hard, isn't it?

I'm also in favor of the death penalty, because they seem to follow similiar, if not identical lines of logic.

Its difficult to believe that anyone would take this line of argument seriously but here we are. The fact is Klevau that neither the logic nor the underlying circumstances of the scenarios you present are even remotely similar. Wars of defense are fought because there are no real alternatives to killing in that circumstance. When one country has declared war upon another, it is not possible to simply "imprison" a nation in order to remove the threat. In fact, contrary to the imperatives of state sanctioned murder, all efforts are made to preserve life even in military conflict when it is at all possible while still achieving military objectives. Moreover, if there was some way to effectively imprison and neutralize an enemy without killing, this is undoubtedly exactly what nations would do instead of fighting wars.

I find it disturbing to hear the argument that the US prison system fails (or makes no effort) to rehabilitate coinciding with the idea that some or many prisoners cannot be rehabilitated. It seems to essentially admit defeat -- that because the prison system doesn't work we must kill some percentage of the prisoners. It's as though some people believe that our only options are to either let dangerous criminals go or kill them.

So, states can't defend themselves by killing? That would be consistant with your beliefs. If states can defend themselves by killing, then you are illogical.

Ah, perhaps this is the crux of your bizarre logic!

I don't think the state executing criminals is self-defense.

I think I can safely and honestly say, [King] was a better man than I, as well. I think most people could.

Agree.

The argument of weighing the costs of convicting an innocent person vs. letting a guilty one go free is a false one.
When you convict an innocent person - you HAVE ALREADY let a guilty one go free, as the case is closed and the real perpetrator of the crime will not be sought.

Not quite. Yes, jailing an innocent person is a horrible screw-up. However, it does sometimes happen that they are eventually exonerated (whether or not the real perp is ever found), often because their family refuses to accept the verdict, and pushes their own investigation. Not often, but there have been several famous cases in Canada within recent decades (Google "David Milgard" for one).

We can't give these poor sods back the years they lost, but we can apologize and compensate them -- which is more than we could if we had killed them.

So if I were to strap Scalia to a gurney and inject him with Sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride, he'd be okay with it because he'd wind up safe in the arms of Jesus?

This is an interesting experiment. Maybe we could get Josh to, uh, execute it.

Logic is not a democracy. And, I'm not saying you're amoral, moral, or whatever. I'm just saying you're logically inconsistant.

Yeah, you're "saying that" Keavu but you're full of shit. Try reading for comprehension for a change.

This is an interesting experiment. Maybe we could get Josh to, uh, execute it.

Yes, and we could certainly get GWW to make light of Scalia's death to his family. He seems to be good at it.

BMurray, sometimes in spite of one's best efforts, one is defeated. There is nothing inherently wrong with admitting defeat if you are actually defeated. There are a lot of people who cannot admit defeat, and do some very irrational and dangerous things because of it.

Is the current US prison system a failure? I believe that in part, it is. But it is not the prisons themselves that are the problem, its the entire circumstances and views surrounding imprisonment that causes the failure.

I think more effort needs to be made on rehabilitation. I also think that there will be a percentage that either resist or completely reject rehabilitation. I think society must be more willing to accept the concept of rehabilitated individuals. And I think that we will still arrive at the central problem - what to do with violent, deadly serial offenders who either cannot or will not be rehabilitated? If that is admitting defeat, what's the alternative? More attempts to rehablilitate? Keep doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result? I'm sure you know what that is the definition for...

The argument of weighing the costs of convicting an innocent person vs. letting a guilty one go free is a false one.

Just skimmed back and whiffed. Did anyone make that argument?

I do not think anyone here would disagree that when an innocent person is convicted, the truly guilty party is free. That is true in any case with any penalty.

I am a very cautious supporter of the practice myself.

It is truly sickening and sad how many innocents have been killed for shoddy covictions and defense work. The reputed number of killed innocents in Illinois is disgusting, to say nothing of that incorruptible bastion of death, Texas.

I think that there should be lengthy appeals processes for the accused, and DNA evidence should be required in all such cases. Technology will help us be more accurate in the future.

I guess I'd say I'm a supporter of the DP in cases of absolute certainty. If there's a shred of doubt though, I would not find myself wanting to throw the switch on anyone. Is my position a bit of armchair legalistic hsahing? Sure. But beyond voting for intelligent, thoughtful leaders who have sway over these decisions, I'm not sure how else I could make the system more effective.

I too oppose the death penalty, but one argument I've heard that may have some merit is that the threat of execution allows prosecutors some leverage in plea-bargaining. Faced with the prospect of death, some defendants may plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence, thereby avoiding a costly and perhaps risky trial.

Do you think the argument is altered in any way by Larry Niven's proposal that a victim of the death penalty can help others to live? 2 eyes, kidneys, liver etc. 8 pints of blood and so on?

George, I said the state executing people is self defense. You, however, said that you don't believe in the state killing people. But you believe in war. In warm, people are killed, whether for self defense, or whatever. Had you said, "I don't believe in the state killing its own people," you would have been consistant. But you didn't.

And way to use another I'm more of an athiest and evolution supporter than you come back. I compare people's logic to the groups they despise, to get their attention. It's nice to know that you liked it enough to use it back at me.

I find it disturbing to hear the argument that the US prison system fails (or makes no effort) to rehabilitate coinciding with the idea that some or many prisoners cannot be rehabilitated. It seems to essentially admit defeat -- that because the prison system doesn't work we must kill some percentage of the prisoners. It's as though some people believe that our only options are to either let dangerous criminals go or kill them.

I agree -- I think this is a line of reasoning that depends on drastic oversimplification of the issues. Of course there are more options than letting criminals go or killing them. In fact, in real life, the most COMMON choice is a 3rd choice, imprisonment.

As for rehabilitation, I agree that rehabilitation has fallen out of favor more for economic/emotional reasons. People don't mind spending huge amounts of money to make or run prisons (see California), but most people don't viscerally like spending money to redeem a criminal. It seems to conflict with revenge, plus there's a popular sense that rehabilitation 'doesn't work' anyway.

That said, I think that many criminals really cannot be rehabilitated, and I suspect that most criminals on death row fit that description. And while public sentiment toward the death penalty may be waning, I doubt there'll ever be much public support for a violent criminal ever being released, even if he IS rehabilitated.

George, I said the state executing people is self defense. You, however, said that you don't believe in the state killing people. But you believe in war.

I believe in self defense. I don't think the death penalty is self defense. I think the cost to society of a country not defending itself is far far greater than the cost to a society of not executing its criminals. If you can't see that distinction, it's your problem. Although 'logic is not a democracy', I would again remind you that millions of reasonable people do not see the conundrum you've concocted here. Guess you're smarter than all of them.

Stop with the logic by democracy -

even if he's of average intelligence, he's smarter than 3 billion people. it's a useless thing to argue with. millions, billions of generally reasonable people believe and do unreasonable things. it just has no place in this discussion.

That last post should have read, "I never said," versus "I said." Can't type in this lab gear.

One question for everyone: Do you have real jobs? Because I find it very hard to keep up with just one forum while still doing my work.

P Z Myers wrote:

One other thing I'd add, though: the death penalty isn't even an effective deterrent.

That might be an effective objection if there is evidence to show that current sentences for other crimes are the most effective deterrents.

Is there any such evidence?

I support the death penalty because I think it is the only just penalty for murder and I've given some of the reasons why over on Wilkins' blog.

What I rarely hear from opponents of capital punishment, other than a visceral revulsion against killing and a fear of making an irreversible mistake, is a definition of justice which allows the worst kind of killers to get away with imprisonment.

George said,

I believe in self defense. I don't think the death penalty is self defense. I think the cost to society of a country not defending itself is far far greater than the cost to a society of not executing its criminals.

This is much better, and with a slightly different logic, than what you started with. That is a logically consistant statement.

This is much better, and with a slightly different logic, than what you started with. That is a logically consistant statement.

Thank you, Spock.

Faced with the prospect of death, some defendants may plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence, thereby avoiding a costly and perhaps risky trial.

That's true for innocent defendants as well as for guilty ones--it's efficient, granted, but it doesn't prove that they're guilty, just that they expect the trial would go against them for whatever reason. Race, class, and previous criminal history can convince them they wouldn't win at trial, regardless of guilt or innocence in the case at hand, so this approach runs the risk of extracting a guilty plea from an innocent defendant on threat of death.

Shift work. Last day off before I go in to work four twelves.

Should be interesting. On my last shift I was the lone voice speaking in support of the Constitution when my coworkers were howling for vigilante vengeance against a local child killer (Joseph Duncan up here in the Pacific Northwest if you care).

Quite a few seem mentally incapable of differentiating between supporting the Sixth Amendment even in nauseating cases and supporting the heinous perpetrator himself. I am so looking forward to redneck retribution. *sigh*

The DP is certainly not self-defense unless you figure there is a halfway decent chance of the criminal escaping. You've already got them.

Forgive me for delving into the rather crude realm of historical analogy (I will probably be flamed mercilessly for this, and I realize it's a rather crappy analogy):

1) Criminal rehab (successful): Germany after WW2
2) Imprisonment: Germany after WW1
3) Criminal escaping: Germany at the start of WW2
4) Death Penalty: What W wants to do to Iraq using his WMD.

I guess this is more an example showing why the best option would be to try harder to rehab, then accept the criminal back once the rehab is complete.

It seems a lot of people reading Pharyngula object the death penalty on the ground of the imperfection of the judiciary system. But the real impact of death penalty on society is merely moral. Given the ratio between the number of executed individuals or the number of persons they killed, and the total number of murders in the US, the number of alledged killers eliminated is nearly negligeable. Hence my proposition that the impact of death penalty is merely moral and should be considered only in this light.
It seems that death penalty exists only to quench a need for revenge. As long as revenge will be needed, so will death penalty. Now both philosophy and theology teach that revenge is morally wrong : it won't repay for the harm done and no reason for killing is morally acceptable. But that is where a lot of americans will defer, because the perception of morality, tributary to the education, is not encompassing modern discoveries in both fields.
In addition if you take a close look at the often wretched lives which lead to murder, you are left thinking that nobody given proper chance and means is unredeemable. And because the state has the duty to protects its citizens, it could also be held partily responsible for their failure to comply to society rules, and make amend by providing sufficient means to ensure that convicts don't recidivate. But that is not cheap...

Do you think the argument is altered in any way by Larry Niven's proposal that a victim of the death penalty can help others to live? 2 eyes, kidneys, liver etc. 8 pints of blood and so on?

There are a number of objections to this idea.

The most trivial one is simply that almost no one is both a candidate for the death penalty and a good donor. A fair number of people that deeply into the criminal justice system are hepatitis or HIV positive, have engaged in high risk behavior, or are simply too old to be good donors by the time they're executed.

A sub-objection of the above: In order for the organs to be harvested, the person in question would have to be killed in some way that caused brain death but left him or her otherwise intact. Intubation and cardiac support would have to be started right away. And most drugs could not be used for fear of poisoning the recipient. So an execution might look something like this: an awake or lightly sedated person is intubated, causing gagging and discomfort, put on artificial respiration (which is quite uncomfortable for someone who is awake), then shot in the head at point blank range, wipe up the scattered brains, do an EEG to confirm brain death, and start cutting. Ugly, to say the least. Also I doubt you could collect both blood and organs. Either you take the blood first and the heart stops/starts to rot (along with the other organs) or you take the heart first amd the blood clots. There may be ways around that, but I've never heard of blood donation from a cadaver.

The second is that it gives a positive incentive for executing people. Running short on organs? Just execute someone! This increases the odds that a person will be executed without proper safeguards to ensure their guilt and decreases the odds of any new safeguards (which are clearly needed...see Project Innocent's work) being inacted. Inevitably, that means more innocent people being executed. It also creates an incentive for more crimes to be declared death penalty eligible. After all, drug dealers, rapists, child pornographers, and attempted murderers are irredemable slime, right? Why not execute them all instead of continuing to support, what was the phrase?...oh, yes, useless eaters.

Finally, it creates a disincentive for the average person to become a blood or organ donor if blood/organ donation is assoicated with executions. It'd be pretty creepy to sign an organ donor card if you knew that most donor organs came from executed criminals. Not a rational objection, but given the number of people who refuse to sign organ donor cards already because they feel creeped out by the idea, I don't think it's a good idea to put up another barrier.

"This is much better, and with a slightly different logic, than what you started with."

No, that's pretty much how I read George Cauldron's logic originally.

The basic criminal justice equivalent of defensive war is the investigation of crime and arrestation of criminals, not execution.

Jerome, you've missed some. There are other arguments than revenge/punishment (though that's a major one). A couple of us were mentioning the "give up when enough's enough" mentality when dealing with repeat violent offenders.

And to your last point, even when society is to blame, sometimes what is done cannot be undone. Society definitely needs to try harder to start with.

The shallow claims of justice being served by the death penalty remind me of children whining, "but it's not fair!" No, it's not fair that a killer spend his life in jail rather than die. But it might be right. It might be some small indicator that we are no longer animals. It might be worth it.

I think that many criminals really cannot be rehabilitated

Unfortunately, you're probably right. But their creation can be partly prevented by altering the environment. Less poverty, better parenting, decreased social violence, etc might lead to fewer people ending up in the place where they can no longer be rehabilitated.

Dear King Aardvark
There is no moral ground to determine when enough is enough and plenty of other ways than execution. In every case you may consider that relapse is the direct evaluation/reeducation system failure.
And I agree Society needs to try harder both before but also after crime.

Cephyn said:
"Mentally ill people in your example are not imprisoned to protect society from them. What you are asking is not about death penalty, you're asking about euthanasia."

I still think you're missing GWW's point. No, he's not talking about the death penalty, OR about euthanasia. He's talking about lifetime imprisonment, and about whether it is torture. The reasons for imprisoning someone for life are irrelevant to the point GWW was trying to make.

You said that it was more cruel to imprison someone for life like a caged animal (or something...). GWW wondered if you thought it was equally cruel to imprison someone who was not able to take care of themselves (someone with a severe mental disability, or something), or whether you though we ought to kill those types of people, too, so that we could avoid treating them cruelly. You then responded with a lot of discussion about WHY the various people were imprisoned (to help them or to protect society from them), which is irrelevant to the main idea -- which had to do with how people feel about it once they already ARE imprisoned. Just trying to clarify.

Josh -- I'm glad you're open-minded and honest enough to reconsider your stance with respect to opposing evidence.

Sean -- yup.

Do y'all really think that all the violent criminals are on death row, and that all the people on death row are serial killers?

Most convicted murderers have been convicted of killing one person. Most of the evidence against them is circumstantial. Eye-witness testimony, to give an example, sucks. These are not slam-dunks, which is how the Innocense Project has managed to clear so many. If you're in favor of the death penalty where there is certainty only, then you're not in favor. Let's face it: Kennedy's assasination was filmed and people are still disagreeing about it. There is almost always a reasonable doubt or an extenuating circumstance.

Josh, the mother of a good friend of mine was murdered about a decade ago. My friend's husband found her body (having gone to check on her after she didn't answer her phone all day). Obviously, the lives of my friend, her husband, and their daughters were horribly, terribly, forever changed by this evil act. Even those of us who weren't her family, but who had known her as a good person, had that good person brutally taken away from us. And if my friend (or her husband) had gone out at once and found and killed the man who did it, in grief and anger, I guess I could have understood it. But to have him executed anonymously, ceremonially--that wouldn't have eased their pain, or released their anger, or any of it. By the time he was arrested and tried, they had begun shakily and slowly to rebuild their lives, to try to trust their surroundings (the murderer was a neighbor). What good would it have done them to watch him being killed in turn? It would only have involved them in another death. He's doing life in prison with no chance of parole, and as far as I'm concerned that's just where he belongs.

Like so many arguments, this one is pretty over at the initial assumptions you make about the value of life and responsibility for the protection of society. Once you've made them the points follow from that. The other side doesn't get it (whatever the other side is) because they didn't make the same initial assumptions.

Like both sides have any new horses to bring to the gate. Both sides have their stock phrases and arguments which are not likely to sway anyone with an existing opinion.

Best quote I've seen on the discussion.

"even if he's of average intelligence, he's smarter than 3 billion people"
God damn it! If I see that one more time...
The value(s) which 50% of the population fall(s) below is the *MEDIAN*. The average only shares that property if the population has a symmetric distribution.
[/Maths Pedant]

i believe in culling the herd

Yes. But at least I did it politely. And I would bet if someone came to your family's home and gunned them down, you'd have a similar desire. You can deny it all you want, but until it happens (and I hope it never does), you don't know.

Well, I do know what this is like.

One friend was murdered in a holdup.

My uncle was killed in cold blood by someone who broke into his house. They didn't even take all that much, just took the TV, beer and car of a lonely old man.

I myself have been a victim of violent crime.

I didn't want any of the perpetrators killed for their crimes. I was willing to let the justice system deal with each and every one of them, because I knew that, emotionally, I couldn't be trusted to make a fair and impartial decision. I had too much invested in all of those instances.

Numad said,
The basic criminal justice equivalent of defensive war is the investigation of crime and arrestation of criminals, not execution.

But, people aren't targeted to die in investigations and arrests. They are targets in war. Hence, the whole killing/death penalty angle.

And George, Spock was the most intelligent person on the Enterprise, and no matter if everyone else on the ship disagreed, I'd still listen to Spock.

And George, Spock was the most intelligent person on the Enterprise, and no matter if everyone else on the ship disagreed, I'd still listen to Spock.

I'm sure you would.

Jerome

I was merely pointing out other motives to execution than revenge. It is certainly admirable to continue trying to rehab people after repeated failures.

There is certainly no definite measure of "enough", and for cases of life and death, there is no ideological "enough" that would justify taking a life. There may be a practical "enough" though: someone who is too dangerous to let in contact with others and who has resisted all attempts at rehab for many years. In an ideal world, you would continue to contain him and try to work on him. But in a practical world with limited resources, it could be argued that a 99.9% chance of no rehab = 100% chance of no rehab; better to use those resources to improve society elsewhere than to babysit someone hopeless.

I can logically sympathize with that view (and in an earlier comment I came out for it), but on further reflection, I prefer to be more idealistic and vote for no death sentence whatsoever.

Well, I do know what this is like.
One friend was murdered in a holdup.
...snip...
I didn't want any of the perpetrators killed for their crimes.

You're a better person than I am. But I would wager that you are the exception, rather than the norm.

malpollyon - and since we're talking about arbitrarily measured "intelligence", which is measured on a bell curve, standardized, normalized, and the entire population, not just a sample, the mean and the median are indeed the same. If there was any reason to believe differently, i promise you I would have said so. I can refer you to my published journal articles where i performed the statistical analysis if you wish. Since we're all talking casually here, i'm sure most of those reading would have gleaned the point of my statement whether i used "mean" or "median"

Ethyl-
Define imprisonment. Holding one against their will, correct? Define imprisoner. The one holding a person against their will, correct? A convicted felon is held against his will by society. An ill person is held against their will by their illness. If they were physically and mentally able, they'd be free to leave at any time. Society is not their imprisoner. If they are so ill that they cannot leave a house under their own power, that does not mean somone has imprisoned them in the house. Their illness has. That distinction, in this case, is a very important one.

Oh, a female friend of my parents was murdered while she was practicing playing the organ for the next Sunday's church by some weirdo serial killer. Her husband had just bought a big brand new Lincoln (back when that was a big deal) and had showed it off to us only four days before the serial killer dragged the bloodied body of the woman to the car and ran over her with it.

I was friends with his daughter. She was devastated--what a horrible way for a parent to die. That whole family fell apart within a few years.

And, still, despite the anger, the blood-curdling rage I felt, of having that kind woman so horribly murdered, to see the effect on that family... Even when it was going on, I had faith in the criminal justice system. Her killer was caught. He stood trial (for about 4 or 5 murders), and he went to prison for a long, long time. And he can stay there, as far as I'm concerned, if he's still alive. This was over 30 years ago.

Cephyn,
You're still missing the crux of GWW's argument, I feel. You're still focusing on the *reasons* for imprisonment, rather than the effects of the imprisonment. I don't deny that the analogy was flawed, or that you're making valid points, but I feel you're missing the point GWW was asking you about. That's all.

cephyn, society defines mental illness, and who gets locked up for what. Being gay was a mental illnes, but now it's not. Society changed its rules. And the mentally ill don't lock up themselves, society does. And when society deems them mentally fit it lets them go. The mentally ill don't have any say in the matter. Kind of like when society deems that a prisoner has served his or her time, then they can go.

Kaethe, I don't think any of us would suggest the death penalty for people who have only done one instance of murder. Even if there was miraculously 100% certainty that a person committed a that murder, most of us still wouldn't be in favour of the death sentence.

Ethyl- the reasons are important. he's looking for an answer to an irrelevant question. Is being so incapable that you can't leave a room even if you wanted to akin to torture, especially if you have no hope of that ever changing? YES! But who is to blame? For an ill person, its not the caregiver, its the illness. Were they to get well they would be free to leave. So the analogy is useless. A criminal permanently imprisoned with no hope of that changing is being tortured by the system, the state, the society. Not by an illness. It is a crucial distinction. If that criminal rehabilitates (whatever that may mean), they should be free to leave. To imprison them with no hope no matter what they do, is torture perpetrated by the society.

Until the day the poor and the minorities get just as fair a shake by the U.S. justice system as the folks that run Enron and Tyco, and until the day the legal system views white-collar criminals with the same disdain as they do idiots who knock over 7-11, the death penalty will be flawed. Even in a perfect legal system - one where public defenders aren't swamped with work and the police try to find the actual guilty party, rather than the first person who confesses - the death penalty is flawed. There's gotta be a whole lot of deck clearing in that department before you can even argue the morality of killing someone who killed someone. The legal system doesn't seem interested in justice so much as numbers, and the idea that prisons were ever for anything but keeping certain undesirables (those of the wrong skin color, economic class and oft-times religion or political affiliation) out of the hair of the status quo, much less rehibilitation, is a sad joke.

That all being said, I'm all for vengence. I think the victim's family should pull the trigger, though. If it's not a deterrent and the only reason for the DP is vengence, let's cut out all this "civilized" nonsense like lethal injection. Say a guy murders your mom, is caught and convicted beyond a shadow of a doubt. He did it. Judge says, "Okay, this dirtbag's eligible for whacking. You wanna?" And you have to pull the trigger, look right into said dirtbag's eyes. That's vengence, boy. Reckon how many people would actually go through with it, though?

(For the record, I'm engaging in a bit of hyperbole concerning that last paragraph. It's probably a really, really bad idea, but it strikes me odd them that yowl the loudest for vengence of their lost want someone else to do the killin'.)

Klevau, GWW was very specific in his example. He said it was a person so ill they could not function on their own and needed surveillance. Surveillance is not imprisonment.
What about mentally ill people who aren't committing crimes and who can't be rehabilitated? What's the difference between a mentally ill person who needs to be kept under constant surveillance night and day and a criminal from the angle of "life without hope is torture"?

They aren't committing crimes. They can be watched while being taken places. That is not imprisonment.

I asked him what he thought about mentally ill people (but it applies to many sick person) who can't be rehabilitated and who are bound to live a life in a very very very restricted setting. I asked cephyn to explain why is one "torture" and the other "not torture"? He didn't answer.

They are both torture. But one is perpetrated by the state and by society, the other is perpetrated by an illness.

This has nothing to do with gays or any other "formerly considered mental illness" category. It was in response to a particular type of example.

If a person was homosexual and imprisoned simply for that reason, that homosexuality was a mental illness, that would be wrong. To do so for life would be torture.

I am not exceptional.

Maybe I just saw enough people I love die that by terrible means that I learned how useless vengeance would be?

Since MLK has arisen here, maybe seeing MLK laying dead on that balcony when I was 6 years old affected me. I remember going to a memorial service for him, and the preachers were reminding the congregation not to hate, not to seek vengeance, for it would have been absolutely the last thing Dr. King would have wanted. Maybe that made a larger impact on me than it would have on most people.

If protecting society from offenders who might be expected to repeat is a legitimate concern, is it ever permissible to incapacitate them, say, hormonally, physically, or mentally as a substitute or adjunct to life imprisonment?

I find it impossible to support state murder, especially when, as recently shown in many and increasingly numerous cases, it is murder of innocent people. After the brief pulse of revenge satisfaction, it accomplishes nothing apart from freeing up another cell.

"But, people aren't targeted to die in investigations and arrests. They are targets in war. Hence, the whole killing/death penalty angle."

That's exactly why it's not a good angle.

People aren't targetted to die in investigations and arrests, for the most part, because it's not normally mpt necessary. That's why it's not self-defence.

People are targetted to die in (defensive) warfare because it's normally essential to the objective. That's why it's self defence.

The death penalty isn't the equivalent of soldiers killing other soldiers to stop an invasion: it's the equivalent of executing prisoners of war.

Well, I do know what this is like.
One friend was murdered in a holdup.
...snip...
I didn't want any of the perpetrators killed for their crimes.

You're a better person than I am. But I would wager that you are the exception, rather than the norm.

This misses a crucial point: that "want" is not a simple concept. Emotionally, I frequently "want" something, while rationally knowing that having it would be imprudent or ethically wrong. It's true about small things, like whether I should have more dessert (which is bad for my health, over the long term), or that I shouldn't steal something I might desire. I've never had to deal with the murder of anyone close to me (although I have sufficient empathy to be moved to rage at times by the accounts of various atrocities), but I think the principle scales: while I might desire the death of someone who has harmed me, that doesn't mean I should get it.

A truly "good" person -- what the religions call a saint -- is one who has purged themselves of those troubling emotions. While that might be a convenient state of mind to be in, for now I'll settle for being a merely ethical person who does the right thing, regardless of feelings.

Hal-
If protecting society from offenders who might be expected to repeat is a legitimate concern, is it ever permissible to incapacitate them, say, hormonally, physically, or mentally as a substitute or adjunct to life imprisonment?

An interesting question. I suppose I think that if you imprison someone for life, but perhaps put them in a coma or unconscious state so that they endure no suffering, it's not torture. But then the same question arises again - why keep them around? By putting them in a coma until they die of "natural" causes, you've simply sentenced them to death. Or at least, a lack of life. It's effectively a death sentence. The waiting around is just to alleviate guilt?

Cephyn, that really depends on how you're applying the term illness to criminals. Criminals in general, versus the mentally ill in specific, are not incapable or incompetent versus the norm for our society. That does not mean that they are not incapable or incompetent. I'm willing to bet there's many a serial killer out there who's driven by circumstances they don't understand or are unable to stop.

Part of the reason why I object to the idea that criminals aren't "ill" is the notion that free will somehow guides our decisions. I disagree with that very notion, and the only judgement that needs to be laid distinguishing the "ill" from the "competent" is the level of threat to our society. I see no reason to distinguish punishment between them if there's equal threat. To that end, the reasons why the crimes took place are only important in that assessment. Those reasons do not form a coherent basis for the definition of torture.

Both of these are entirely seperate from the death penalty, whose worth is questionable at best, and outright detrimental at worst.

Numad, the bottom line is people are still being killed. And most people killed in war are just like you and me. They're not the people that made the policy, they're just trying to survive in their world. Maybe their government would harm them or their family, so they go to war. And we kill them. In self defense. We killed them, when they didn't even want to be there. They just wanted to live their life. But, it's ok, because it's a war.

I would say these people have more of a right to life than a serial killer, and that's my point. Whether or not it's better for you and your ideal of a society is up to you, but I still would say it's inconsistent to expect the killing of normal people in another society, but oppose the death of serial killers in our own.

cephyn, the mental illness doesn't say, "Be imprisoned." The state does. People with mental illnesses cannot leave of their own accord, because the state won't let them. That's imprisonment. Whether it's right or wrong, is up to you. But it's still imprisonment.

I am against the death penalty, however I an FOR a category of criminal offenses that are eligable for a self-induced "bowl of hemlock" after a fixed time of confinement. This would include lifetime violent criminals and murderers. The significant problem that I see with this scheme is prisoners that are maltreated to such an extent by guards and other prisoners because they know the statue of the suicide-eligable prisoners.

I disagree with that very notion, and the only judgement that needs to be laid distinguishing the "ill" from the "competent" is the level of threat to our society. I see no reason to distinguish punishment between them if there's equal threat. To that end, the reasons why the crimes took place are only important in that assessment. Those reasons do not form a coherent basis for the definition of torture.

But that very distinction was made in the example I was asked to answer to. On one side, an ill person who was not committing crimes and not a danger. On the other, a person, ill or not, who had committed and could be expected to again commit crimes. That is not equal threat.

What you are saying is that you agree that there is a certain percentage of violent, dangerous criminals (either criminal by illness or criminal due to other factors) that cannot be rehabilitated. What is to be done with those people? Should they be permanently imprisoned? Should they simply be put to death? What is the difference? Either you deny them a life of worth and value, or you deny them existence on top of that.

I'm arriving at this thread very late, and I admit to not having read all of the above comments. But here are my thoughts on the morality of life- and death-related issues.

Forcing someone to die when he/she does not wish to die: immoral.
Forcing someone to live when he/she does not wish to live: immoral.
Helping someone to live when he/she wants to live: moral.
Helping someone to die when he/she wants to die: moral.

I believe that convicted murderers should be given the choice of the death penalty or life in prison. It is wrong to assume that prisoners cannot find worth, value, and meaning in their lives. It is equally wrong to assume that we are doing convicted murderers a favor by imprisoning them instead of executing them.

More radically, I believe that any person should be able to choose to die whenever he or she chooses. But that is another matter entirely.

There is only one question to answer (in principle): If you can establish guilt with absolute certainty, is it acceptable for the state to impose the death penalty?

If your answer is yes, then the debate is about how far you go to ensure guilt is established (confession, second offence, DNA testing, video evidence, etc). Under current circumstances guilt is sometimes established in error.

If your answer is no, then the debate is about how far you go to ensure that the convicted killer cannot kill again. Under current circumstances some convicted murderers kill again.

In the UK we have abolished the death penalty. Some guilty people have been found to be innocent; rather more have been freed to kill again. I still think that there is a small percentage of truly evil people who should be executed in the interests of society.

To deviate, I disagree with you here, too, in that non-murder alternatives constitute existence without life. Jail does not so encroach upon personal freedoms as to make the difference between life and death moot. Niether does a psych ward, for criminals and non-criminals alike.

I propose that if we are to measure the morality of it, we must determine the degree to which the freedoms of others are encroached upon in doing so. I see imprisoning people causing the government to spend money. I see that money being taken out in small amounts from each citizen. I do not see that money encroaching on the freedoms of the citizens. I do see execution encroaching on that freedom, even moreso than jail time.

It becomes a matter of both practical and moral philosophy. The two merge at the question of whether or not murder can be practical for a society, and the value of the non-murder alternatives. The moment we say "it is practical to commit moral crimes for our convenience" is the moment we allow all of our society to do it, and detriment all of us, especially where murder is concerned.

While I'm not opposed to capital punishment (for murder only) in principle, I have to lean against it in practice, simply because our criminal justice system is so powerfully flawed (with rich white guys being too easily able to buy freedom and poor black guys rotting away in jail for decades because they can't afford decent counsel).

Still, I find key problems with two common arguments from the anti-DP crowd.

1. It's not a deterrent. It is to the guy you're executing. And if, as happens, you do actually have the right guy, then as far as I'm concerned he's getting what he deserves.

Furthermore, I would submit that prison is not a deterrent. Jails are full to bursting, and yet every day, scumbags commit horrible felonies, evidently not the least bit worried of having their freedom taken away. In fact, a lot of popular culture (like hip hop) actually makes having a prison record seem a badge of honor. So if you're going to use the "not a deterrent" argument, you'd have to apply it across the board, which leaves the only alternative that of shutting down all prisons everywhere and not punishing any criminal for anything.

2. It's vengeance, not justice. Newsflash: all forms of punishment are, to one degree or another, vengeance. When a convenience store prosecutes a kid for shoplifting, the store is avenging itself against the kid for his theft. You don't have to kill the offender for your punishment to be vengeful. Punishment is vengeance in all its forms.

Now I'm going to state a position that I'm sure will have the more reactionary and righteous posters condemning me as a barbarian. When a person takes a life in cold blood, he has forfeited the right to his own life. Moreover, I take the view that the family of the killer's victim has a moral right to claim the killer's life in recompense. You might argue that such ghastly savagery does not in fact assuage the family's anger for their loss, but you're only speaking for yourself there. Speaking for myself, I can say that if some cocksucker kills a loved one of mine, I want him dead, and I want to piss on his body while it lays at my feet. I guess that makes me a bad man to most of you here. But I think it makes me human. What alternative should I adopt? Should I just "forgive," turn the other cheek, and invite the killer to dinner at my house?

I'd be very happy to accept the alternative of life without parole, if I didn't know that jail is not only not a threat to these guys, but often the best thing that ever happened to them. Seeing video of serial killer Richard Speck cracking up and having cocaine parties behind bars with his gay lovers ought to be enough to cause even the most weak-kneed anti-DPer to reach for a rope. Life without parole is fine with me...if the guys ends up in a 6'x6' cell, 23½ hours a day, with no visitors, no contact with other inmates, and no television. There. Am I humane now? ;-)

Sorry, I just can't muster up much "compassion" for people who take innocent life.

"Numad, the bottom line is people are still being killed."

It's not.

Your reduction of the issue into this point is very simplistic. A society could have a policy of having police forces serve as jury, judge and executionner in the street and your argument could be used to limit objections of it just as well.

Which is not well at all.

Just a coda to mention that I do respect the concerns of many in the anti-DP contigent, I just wanted to critique specific arguments I disagreed with.

PZ - I agree with you, but I think you could probably find a better link to support the fact that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent. I mean, the chart on that page lists my state's homicide rate as ~5, which isn't even a rate. I realize that some of the surrounding text implies that it is 5 homicides/100,000 people/annum, but even that is not completely clear. In addition, that page is strongly partisan. Surely there is a rigorous study available somewhere?

j wrote:

I believe that convicted murderers should be given the choice of the death penalty or life in prison. It is wrong to assume that prisoners cannot find worth, value, and meaning in their lives.

This is exactly the kind of moral silliness that makes me criticize the anti-DP crowd. Why should we give convicted murderers this choice? Did they offer this choice to their victims? Don't you think innocent victims find worth, value, and meaning in the lives which were taken from them against their wills? Frankly, once a killer is convicted of murder, who gives a shit that he might find worth, value, and meaning in his life? If the worth, value, and meaning of his life was so important to him, he shouldn't have made the choice to take someone else's! I mean, DUH! You reap what you sow.

I just have never understood the misplaced compassion anti-DPers have for murderers, while it never even seems to occur to them to have any for their victims.

Its a hoot that opponents of the death penalty almost always have no problem with the death penalty for the unborn or the incompetent.

Did you know that here in Kansas, you can be executed as late as the day before birth just because mama doesn't want you?

No trial, no due process, no nothing.

And of course scienctist continue to produce the wmds that could deliver the death penalty to the whole world, but, dammit, we must protect the mass murderers and perverts!

You bethcha!

Yes, and we could certainly get GWW to make light of Scalia's death to his family. He seems to be good at it.

Mrs. Scalia, we've cured your husband's snoring problem.

"Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

With all due respect to the Reverend Dr. King, this is a load of bullshit.

Josh, you have my blessing to hate the man who caused you pain. Hell, I'll hate him for you if you like.

no matter if everyone else on the ship disagreed, I'd still listen to Spock.

Remember when Spock was high and getting ready to bone some chick and Kirk ordered him to beam up to the ship?

Spock's response was classic: "I don't think so, Captain."

"I don't think so, Captain."

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, just my 1/50 of a buck: killing is wrong, but murderers have already shown themselves to be evil, so saying the death penalty is barbaric will always fall on deaf ears, especially those of the victims. It's a hard argument to find a correct side on. I personally believe DP to be extremely wrong, since the justice system is flawed and sentences innocent people to death all the time. Also, killing carried out by a state is MUCH more heinous than killing by an individual because we are all equally culpable the person's death if he/she was indeed innocent of the crime we execute them for. I agree with junk science that people should be allowed to hate evil, even with to destroy it, because how else will evil be defeated? It definitely (and correctly) is the source of all criticisms of pacifism that there are incredibly evil people in the world who will do heinous things no matter what society is like. It's an extremely difficult argument.

That said, I would still love the man who kills me, not for himself, but for what I wish he was. That makes me an idiot, I know, and had I lived under a violent despot, I'd be dead a long time without anyone to mourn me. But violence in any course makes me ashamed of myself*.

* READ: MYSELF not you. I am not your judge. It's perfectly okay to hate the person who causes you pain and I agree with your right to do so. In fact, I hate things as well. Violence, however, is beyond my own capabilities. And I feel the Death Penalty makes me equally culpable in violence.

Its a hoot that opponents of the death penalty almost always have no problem with the death penalty for the unborn or the incompetent.

A 'hoot'?

No, it's a lie, since Catholics generally oppose both the death penalty AND abortion. Nice try.

Flip it around, tho: why is it that whenever I hear about people declaring they're 'pro-life', they're always in favor of the death penalty?

Did you know that here in Kansas, you can be executed as late as the day before birth just because mama doesn't want you? No trial, no due process, no nothing.

Abortion at nine months? I don't believe you. Sorry.

And of course scienctist continue to produce the wmds that could deliver the death penalty to the whole world, but, dammit, we must protect the mass murderers and perverts!

'Protect the perverts'? What on earth are you talking about? Are you upset that gays don't get the death penalty?

You bethcha!

You bethcha, you Kansasn! You're a great scienctist!

Try finishing that high school diploma one of these days.

awww George! Don't feed the trolls!

and I'm pretty sure after 22 weeks in kansas, abortions get to be extremely rare and complicated, like when something has gone wrong and the mother's life is threatened. i think their cutoff for "normal" abortions is 22 weeks, less than 6 months. Kansan is a troll. zzzzzzzzz

This comment is in response to Martin.

"This is exactly the kind of moral silliness that makes me criticize the anti-DP crowd."

That's right. Morals, schmorals. Who cares?

"Why should we give convicted murderers this choice? Did they offer this choice to their victims?"

No, they did not offer their victims this choice, and that is why their actions are so reprehensible. When we execute other people, we commit the same reprehensible actions. The death penalty makes me guilty of murder. And I do not want that on my conscience.

"Don't you think innocent victims find worth, value, and meaning in the lives which were taken from them against their wills?"

Yes; once again, this shows why murder is such a heinous crime. I'm not disagreeing with you here at all.

"Frankly, once a killer is convicted of murder, who gives a shit that he might find worth, value, and meaning in his life?"

Maybe you don't. But there's a difference between your apathy/hatred and government-sanctioned killing. Namely, that I am not in any way responsible for the former.

But my comment about prisoners being able to find worth, value, and meaning in their lives was not directed at you. I was responding to the comments that suggested death would be more humane than trapping someone in prison for life, or something to that effect.

"If the worth, value, and meaning of his life was so important to him, he shouldn't have made the choice to take someone else's! I mean, DUH! You reap what you sow."

I don't know about this; it's really a sweeping statement. There's just no way to know for certain about the individual circumstances of every convicted murderer. Other commenters, you included, have already mentioned the perilous flaws in the legal justice system on which the death penalty rests.

I don't believe the death penalty should be completely outlawed; it should simply be applied as a kind of assisted suicide.

Martin, I wrote an entry about this before, but I'll keep it short and sweet.

If I lose a loved one to a murderer, will I want revenge? Almost certainly. I don't think that just because I suffer that I should be above the law. I don't have to forgive and forget - but if I want my life back in order, I'll pick up and move on, regardless. The death penalty would do nothing.

Trying to make criminals useful to our society should be a first step, and if that can't be done, lock them up and keep them there. That's got nothing to do with being compassionate and everything to do with keeping the rest of society out of criminals' harmful reach. The reason why we don't kill them is the stigma that worse would come of it, which seems to have some basis in fact. Otherwise, I'd be all for execution, as I tend to think it would cut costs on the taxpayer.

I just have never understood the misplaced compassion anti-DPers have for murderers, while it never even seems to occur to them to have any for their victims.

May I ask why you think they have no compassion for their victims?

Or is it that you're interpreting a reluctance to execute criminals as a 'lack of compassion' for the victims?

One might wish to consult the book Albion's Fatal Tree for how effective a deterrent capital punishment was under a more benigh totalitarian regime of England in the 1700s, in that the civil authorities could hang you for a myriad of offenses (like poaching). This experience, like that in other continental nations is probably why their practice towards murder is less bloodthirsty, and more lenient than ours.

There seems to be some confusion between torture and suffering. Mental illness involves a situation more in line with suffering, where imprisonment in solitary confinement approaches torture.

Vengence serves no rational good. To suggest this is acceptable rational for capital punishment is beg the question as to its barbarism. The families and loved ones of someone that is murdered require healing, not the opportunity to inflict their pain onto another.

If murder is the worst thing one person may inflict upon another, then there should be no circumstances that allow killing another human to be permitted. The fact that some innocents may have been executed, makes this even more impermissable (I believe there is some evidence for this to have occurred in Florida).

Since I don't believe in the superstition of ensoulment, I don't think abortion is murder--since human life can only be viable once one is a child, and that can only occur naturally after emerging from the womb.

We do exonerate murder when performed in self defense, so self defense is acceptable condition for killing in war. However, I personally do not find the condition that self defense exonerates one for killing another, since there is always a decision that may bring the situation about for which one can be responsible for, and for the same reason look at war from the same perspective. Therefore I think there is no such thing as a just war.

Mike

Whoops-- should read:

We do exonerate murder when performed in self defense, so self defense is acceptable condition for killing in war. However, I personally do not find the condition that self defense exonerates one for killing another , since there is always a decision that may bring the situation about for which one can be responsible for, and for the same reason look at war from the same perspective. Therefore I think there is no such thing as a just war.

Mike

No one seems to have mentioned Europe which has no death penalty, fewer homocides, and much less violent crime in general. What are they doing right that we in the USA are not?

For me, though, the death penalty is wrong for purely ethical reasons. The only reason to apply the sanctions we call punishment is to protect and heal people. When society allows revenge as a "reasonable" motivation in any circumstance, it enables the continuing catastrophe of Sunni vs Shite, Palestinian vs Israeli, Huttu vs Tutsi, Muslim vs Hindu, and every other variant of the mindless Hatfield vs McCoy feud. Isn't it about time we focussed on actually fixing problems rather than trying to make them just go away?

Hard cases make bad laws.

It's easy to point to a particularly heinous crime and say "the perpetrator of that crime does not deserve to live". Making your laws around extreme cases means that your laws will cease to fit the majority of cases. Does the brutality of a Clifford Olson justify killing someone else? Where do you draw the line between "deserves to live" and "deserves to die"?

As a more interesting note, after we (Canada) abolished the death penalty, not only did the homicide rate decrese (possibly part of a decreasing trend), but the rate of conviction for first degree murder cases doubled. That means that twice as many murderers were no longer "able to kill again" because of the abolition of the death penalty.

And as for me... I'm not giving the government permission to kill me. The death penalty is morally unsupportable and a dangerous tool.

It's absurd for the state to execute a man on the one hand, but on the other to say "oh, we're only doing what's least CRUEL to you! - George Cauldron"
You are so right, George. It reminds me of that line from Full Metal Jacket, but with some modification:

"We had to kill the criminal in order to rehabilitate him."

if some cocksucker kills a loved one of mine, I want him dead, and I want to piss on his body while it lays at my feet

Any issues with your sexuality, Martin?

Josh wrote:

I'd be curious to see how many people who are against the death penalty would change their minds if their loved ones were murdered.

Most of us would be more than ready to kill someone who had harmed our relatives or friends. Hell, when I was 22, I was ready to kill the drunken idiots who merely insulted and threatened me (at random) on a Boston street. My boyfriend came to my house later that day to pick me up for a date, and found me smashing my iron into the ironing board while trying to get my clothes ready. If I'd been carrying a handgun at the time of the street incident, I'd probably still be in prison today. And the twits in question, despite being menacing, hadn't even laid a hand on me.

And that's exactly why we need a criminal justice system. We'd be up to our riot helmets in armed vendettas if the friends and relatives of crime victims had the right of direct vengeance. (Note that I wrote "vengeance", not "self-defense".) Grief and rage don't always shoot straight, whether literally with a weapon or figuratively through the courts.

I HOPE MY OLD LOGIC PROFESSOR IS RECORDING THESE COMMENTS.
HIS RULE WAS "FIRST FALLACY LOSES THE ARGUMENT".
NOT MANY WINNERS HERE, METHNKS.

I'd be curious to see how many people who are against the death penalty would change their minds if their loved ones were murdered.

You know, there are actual facts out there about this sort of thing that you could look up:

Murder Victims's Families for Reconciliation
Journey of Hope
Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights

Or just Google "victims against death penalty." Now go and wonder no more.

Martin, I'd have a lot more sympathy for your argument if it weren't dripping with homophobic bile. Might want to check that.

dripping with homophobic bile.
Isn't that a bit hyperbolic? One word (or is it two?) makes it dripping?

For it to work, you have to assume that ... there are no rational grounds for assuming one will be able to get away with it.

I'm with Jesse; I don't buy this particular argument, either. Even if you know there is a decent chance you could get away with it, the death penalty *could* still be a deterent. Take this example: if someone put a bullet in a gun, spun the chamber and asked me to do just one round of russian roulette, I wouldn't put the gun to my head and pull the trigger even though I know full well that there's a 83% chance that I will survive it. The 17% chance that I could get killed doing it is more than enough to be a deterent from playing that game. (BTW, I'm not arguing for or against the death penalty, just pointing out a problem with that particular reason.)

Isn't that a bit hyperbolic? One word (or is it two?) makes it dripping?

I see "cocksucker," and then I see this

Seeing video of serial killer Richard Speck cracking up and having cocaine parties behind bars with his gay lovers ought to be enough to cause even the most weak-kneed anti-DPer to reach for a rope.

and I have to conclude there's more where that came from.

Here is what I replied at Shelly's blog.

Many inherently religious or theological concepts creep into the argument in favor of the death penalty, such as "If you intentionally choose to end another's life"

Just what does "intentionally" mean. Individuals are still the result of their genetics and environment. So what caused the killer to have such an "intent"? If it was genetic, you can hardly hold him responsible, and if it resulted from his social and physical environment he is not "responsible" either.

What is the difference between a bad driver who kills someone, a child let's say, in an "accident" and a person who shoots or strangles the child. In either case the result is the same. But we call automobile killings "accidents", even though the vast majority could be avoided.

About 43,000 people are killed each year by motor vehicles, about a third that number are killed by guns(not including suicides), knives, barehands, etc. So, if it is a question of public health and safety, it would be more useful to crack down on bad drivers.

As to wars, how many are truly defensive? Just take the U.S. Only two of its wars can be justified: The Civil War and World War II. The Revolutionary War maybe. All the rest, from the Indian Wars, Mexican Wars, Spanish-American War and so on were wars of conquest, attacking people who were no particular threat to the U.S. The same is true of almost all wars everywhere down through history.

Remember the slogans, "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition" and "with guns in their hands and god on their side."

There was a debate on this issue over at the Raving Atheist Blog and you wouldn't believe the type of insults, not counter-arguments, I received from self-professed atheists.

A good example that all atheists don't think alike.

I agree, sort of. It's when you get to guys like Tim McVeigh where I think to myself, okay, he has it coming; there's no hope of rehab here.

That's a corner case, though. The rest of 'em, lock 'em up.

I used to work for the Department of Corrections in California. No, not as a guard; as a computer programmer. I rarely met with inmates. But I did meet a very smart, seemingly nice guy who just happened to murder his entire family. I don't think you rehab that. It seems to me that if you murder your family and are still really smart and likable, that makes you more scary, not less.

He cannot come out of prison, ever. There can be no way to ever trust him. So lock 'im up, forever, I guess.

IMHO, the death penalty is just a form of human sacrifice. Where once people were sacrificed to the Sun God to ensure the continuation of the tribe, now people are sacrificed on the altar of Justice to ensure the continuation of civil order. Of course, there is absolutely no evidence that either actually works.

On the deterrent issue, I like to break murders into four categories.

First, there's hot-blooded, spontaneous killings. The death penalty would not be a deterrent because there no premeditation for it to influence.

Second, there are hitmen and other professional criminals. Murder is their business; if they were worried about the death penalty, they'd be in a different line of work.

Third, there are psychotic murderers, serial-killer types. They're not like to be deterred by the threat of capital punishment. They are probably beyond controlling their behavior.

Fourth, we're left with one-shot, premeditated murders, which are actually pretty rare. The death penalty might deter some of the people in this category. But the road to lethal injection is so convoluted, they rightly might have trouble believing that it would ever actually come to pass.

So it's logical to assume that the death penalty can never be an effective deterrent.

Heck, if a massively increased chance of suffering horrible lingering death isn't enough to deter me from smoking, why should the much lower chance of being convicted and sentenced to death deter me from murder?

Dunc -

Excellent point. Timing-wise, their much more likely to smike or eat themselves to death before the justice system gets around to killing them. Of course, we hope that murder isn't as addictive as nicotine.

cephyn: I'm a "in the limit" utopian. Whence I would say that we, as social science and psychology improve, can (i.e. if we make the necessary adjustments) both rehabilitate more criminals and, more the point, prevent, increasingly large numbers of crimes. The problem is realizing that this should be done. I have argued elsewhere that this is the humane approach. If you mean what should we do now? Well, I "simply" say - reform the system. I don't see any other alternative.

Julie Stahlhut: The proposed mechanism behind the antideterrent effect is that because getting executed is so final, perpetrators of violent crime are more likely to kill more people - the possible witnesses - so they don't get caught.

King Aardvark: I have also read that the death penalty often winds up driving up costs even further, as people are more desperate for appeals and so forth. (I wouldn't regard this as a terribly good argument against it, but I mention it in the interests of accuracy.)

Josh: Fortunately I have not. But I do know that other people who have often realize the opposite of your conclusion, so ...

Dianne: Finally! Thank you! Someone raising the crucial issue of prevention!

Martin: I agree that prisons are quite likely not a very effective deterrent. That is why (see above) I have stressed rehabilitation and above all, reform of psychosocial intervention. As for the compassion, there is a line I remember well from some fiction I used to enjoy ... "Do you want to be like them?"

Mike Nilsen wrote:

So it's logical to assume that the death penalty can never be an effective deterrent.

So what?

I've asked several times before - and been met with a deafening silence - where is the evidence for a measurable deterrent effect for all the other sentences imposed by the legal system?

If none of these other sentences have any deterrent effect, it's inconsistent to criticize the death penalty for not being a deterrent.

the problem is not with capital punishment as punishment, but rather the prejudices, imbalances, and fallibility of judicial systems around the world that practice execution.

killing someone is the worst thing you can do to them, because it removes any chance of restitution, retribution, or reconcilliation. and worst still, you force the surviving family, friends, and community to have to enter into a relationship with you: they are forced to know you and your existence reminds them of the thing you did to their loved one. upwards of 80% of murderers are never brought to justice. executing the violent ones can be regarded not as punishment, but as a reasonable re-direction of harm.

i see execution has a proportionate and appropriate response to certain kinds of violent crimes. its value does not lie in being a deterrent (cause it isn't) but in the case of murderers, since their crime was a complete negation of life, removing the murder from relations with the living and with life itself seems quite reasonable. it also satisfies our instincts to protect our loved ones, to remove (permanently) the threats to them, even after the damage has been done.

while on vacation in thailand, when she was 22, my dear friend Heather was stalked and attacked by a 22-year-old man -- while "drunk" he "panicked" when she fought his attempt to rape her; instead of running away in his "panic", he stabbed her and cut her throat. there was overwhelming evidence to prove that he had killed her, and he confessed. it has never bothered me one bit that he was executed.

Ian,

"where is the evidence for a measurable deterrent effect for all the other sentences imposed by the legal system?"

So basically you're saying that you believe the evidence supports the that a society without legal punishment would function roughly the same? I'd reallt like to believe that, and I've been told otherwise.

The fact of the matter is; we have of examples of societies without capital punishments but with other setences. There's, in fact, not only a lack of evidence but certainly positive evidence that the disappearance of the death penalty doesn't encourage crime. Some examples have been cited in this thread.

A society without any punishment at all would be a rarer find.

"If none of these other sentences have any deterrent effect, it's inconsistent to criticize the death penalty for not being a deterrent."

Unless someone had made the argument that the death penalty is a necessary deterrent: which, really, happens all the time.

Ian H Spedding FCD, I disagree. Deterrence is being offered, here and elsewhere, as a justification for the death penalty that counters its obvious shortcomings. I propose that deterrence must be taken off the table, leaving one less rationalization for the DP. You might not think the deterrence issue is relevant, but many DP supporters do; in fact, it's one of the most common arguments for the DP. What's left? Justice? Economy? Vengance? Whether or not imprisonment deters crime is irrelevant. The moral shortcomings of imprisonment are not what is being debated here. Imprisonment has a much lower moral hump to overcome. Without deterrence, the DP is morally suspect, abominably implemented and largely pointless. And until the government can administer it in an equitable, non-racist manner, there's no point in having even this debate. Until then, it's just plain wrong.

As for the economy issue, perhaps we'd have more resources for life imprisonment of murderers if we stopped handing out thirty-year sentences to poor slobs caught with three joints or a dime bag of rock. We could then afford to behave more morally. Just sayin'.

Ian: It's used to refute the common argument that execution *is* a deterrent and therefore "saves more lives than it takes". If it doesn't save any lives at all, it's logically impossible for it to save more lives than it takes.

Part of the problem is that people arguing on both sides are often coming from very incompatible (and usually unexamined) moral premises. Causing harm to criminals can be anything from an unpleasant necessity to an actual moral duty. Obviously if you think that harming criminals is only acceptable insofar as it prevents or reduces an equal or greater harm to someone else, you're going to reach very different conclusions from someone who thinks that you have a duty to make people's lives miserable (or short) if they do something bad. Without dragging those assumptions out into the open, people just talk past each other.

I'm against it. The state shouldn't be killing anybody.

question for all of you who think you're opposed to execution: (incidently, i'm opposed to it in theory but learned through practical experience that i'm okay with it)

if an assailant was about to murder a loved one, say, your spouse or your child, and the only way to prevent that harm was to kill them (there would be no way to stop them merely through causing them non-fatal harm) wouldn't you? and if you answer yes: why would you be okay with killing someone for a murder they were about to commit, but wouldn't be okay with killing someone for a murder they succeded in committing?

i don't mourn the loss of the life of the young man who murdered my friend -- he did CHOSE to kill her (plenty of men rape or attempt to rape without killing their victims) and in doing so he repudiated her right to life, and in my moral universe this meant repudiating his own right to life...the executioner merely finished the job.

i believe that when you violently disregard someone else's right to life, when you opt out of a moral relation with them by KILLING THEM, that you alienate your own right to life. the moral challenge for those of us who are okay with executing violent criminals then becomes finding a non-violent way to execute...which is a real problem since the act of killing someone against their will is intrinsically violent (just because i believe someone has given up their right to life does not mean that they've given up their will to live).

"repudiating" right to life? Anyway, defending oneself is not the same as executing someone. Society is not defending itself by executing, as previous posters have shown. Suppose you had disarmed and incapacitated the assailant. Would you then shoot him dead just to be sure?

JuneL, anecdotal events are not something to make public policy on. I am sorry that your friend died, but what is the difference if she had died in an auto "accident"?

What do you mean he "chose" to kill her? There was a complex series of events leading up to the situation, including the killer's upbringing. Was the killer responsible for his upbringing? A small change here or there could have changed the outcome, even at the last moment. What does "moral challenge" mean? It is a theological concept. In biology and evolution, that means nothing.

It is the same with an auto "accident". If the bad driver had done this and not that, the "accident" may not have happened and a life or lives would have been spared.

There was an interesting film about this by Sean Penn with Jack Nicholson, "The Crossing Guard". It is a rather powerful film, though not well known.

Bernarda--
"What do you mean he "chose" to kill her? There was a complex series of events leading up to the situation, including the killer's upbringing. Was the killer responsible for his upbringing?"

This sounds like you are trying to "excuse" the killer as a victim of circumstances. Although I sympathise with someone who has a horrible and abusive upbringing, I don't excuse that person if they choose a violent lifestyle. They are still ultimately responsible for their own actions. There are plenty of people who have had horrible upbringings who choose to be law-abiding citizens, just as there are people who have been raised in loving, nurturing environments who choose violence.

Judy L.
I am sorry for the violent loss of your friend. No one should have to lose a loved one in that way. I would ask, though, if it was later shown that the young man who was executed for the crime was actually innocent, how would that change your view of the death penalty? Although I understand all those here who have expressed their desire to see the murderers of their loved ones die, I doubt anyone would want the wrong person to be convicted. Our justice system is not at all perfect, and as long as it isn't, there is always the risk that an innocent person can be executed.

I'm still hazy on why people don't think prison is a good enough method of punishment. Come on: you're living in a closet with two more guys for the rest of your life, doomed to use the toilet in front of everybody, have your freedoms taken away, and maybe a menial job with an hour or so as your only time outside of a concrete box with metal bar doors? That's a pretty effective and humilating punishment right there. For a constant period of time, it works very very well. It costs money, but honestly it has to be one of the better punishments out there.

I know I'm late and no one will read this (probably) but I just want to say that the abbreviation DP has me cracking up. No, not just because it's a porn term, but because I'm a Director of Photography and the idea that you can justify (or not) my existence with the fact that I'm a deterrent or that my existence is cruel makes me laugh hysterically.

I know, it's just evidence that I don't care and that I don't believe in anything that my most significant thought on such an important issue is that the letters it starts with are the same as those of my profession. Call me an amoral cynic.

The urge to revenge of anyone who loses a relative, loved one, or friend is entirely understandable. That doesn't mean we should surrender to that passion, but it's a powerful and perhaps unavoidable one.

It's also one that doesn't AT ALL translate to a rationale for conferring the power of execution on a modern "civilized" state. Such a state is NOT a person, doesn't have the emotions of a person, does not have a personal relationship with anyone's relative, loved one, or friend, and we should not indulge either ourselves or such a powerful, but cold and unfeeling, entity by yielding up to it our urge to wreak revenge.

The state won't obtain any satisfaction or other emotional redress for having revenged itself; it can't achieve any "closure" of the hole torn in a web of personal relationships by an act of violence. The state isn't grieving and the state won't heal.

The state may, in some sense, be a corporate construct made up of its agents--police, prosecutors, judges, prison administrators, and executioners--but delegating your most deep-seated emotional needs to these real--and thus frail and fallible--humans isn't healthy for you or for them. These are not the folks you want to develop a taste for exercising urges of this kind. Agents of the state are their to discharge the duties we have delegated to them, not to defray our personal passions.

Whatever emotional, personal justifications those near and dear to a victim of violence may feel, it is they who own and must deal with those feelings. Shopping your personal revenge out to the state to do the job second-hand for you just doesn't cut it, either as emotional vindication or as a rationale for diluting your own power and swelling still further that of the already-bloated state.

Steviepinhead wrote:

Whatever emotional, personal justifications those near and dear to a victim of violence may feel, it is they who own and must deal with those feelings. Shopping your personal revenge out to the state to do the job second-hand for you just doesn't cut it, either as emotional vindication or as a rationale for diluting your own power and swelling still further that of the already-bloated state.

If there were no state-run legal system the simple fact is that people would be out there getting personal revenge themselves. Since you'd be hard put to build any kind of a stable society based on a system of uncontrolled vendetta we agree to hand over justice to the state. Justice for the victims of murder means the death penalty for the perpetrators.

Ian
where is the evidence for a measurable deterrent effect for all the other sentences imposed by the legal system

Actually, the severity of the sentences is not well correlated with crime rates.

As "revenge" was taken over by the state (in the form of the justice system) the rate of violent crime has fallen. As the system becomes better at catching and convicting the crime rate has fallen. The indications are the the certainty of being caught, rather than the severity of the sentence, that is the deterent.

In Canada the conviction rate doubled as a result of eliminating the death penalty. So abolishing capital punishment apparently leads to a greater deterent effect than keeping it.

Justice for the victims of murder means the death penalty for the perpetrators.

Those two things are not logically connected. I could just as easily assert that justice for victimes of theft means the death penalty for the perpetrators. Justice for the wronged spouse in adultery means the death penalty for the perpetrators.

The death penalty has been (and is often still) imposed for crimes such as homosexuality and heresy. The (lack of) logic is the same.

"Kansan" remarked that out here in Kansas you can get an abortion the day before the baby is due.

The response, "I don't believe you!"

Tough shit, I think the person who claimed not to believe that is liar.

Just check with Dr. Tillers Clinic in Wichita.

And it doesn't have to be for a health reason.

Ok. how about TWO days before?

Three?

You tell me.

Numad wrote:

Ian,
"where is the evidence for a measurable deterrent effect for all the other sentences imposed by the legal system?"
So basically you're saying that you believe the evidence supports the that a society without legal punishment would function roughly the same? I'd reallt like to believe that, and I've been told otherwise.

No, I'm saying there appears to be not only no evidence to show that sentences other than the death penalty have the best deterrent effect of all possible alternatives but, even worse, there's no evidence that they have any deterrent effect at all. In other words, all the talk about deterrence as an element of sentencing is just so much high-minded rhetoric.

All you can reasonably infer is that imprisonment reduces crime only to the extent that convicts are not committing any further offences while they're inside.

Mike Nilsen wrote:

Ian H Spedding FCD, I disagree. Deterrence is being offered, here and elsewhere, as a justification for the death penalty that counters its obvious shortcomings. I propose that deterrence must be taken off the table, leaving one less rationalization for the DP. You might not think the deterrence issue is relevant, but many DP supporters do; in fact, it's one of the most common arguments for the DP. What's left? Justice? Economy? Vengance? Whether or not imprisonment deters crime is irrelevant. The moral shortcomings of imprisonment are not what is being debated here. Imprisonment has a much lower moral hump to overcome. Without deterrence, the DP is morally suspect, abominably implemented and largely pointless. And until the government can administer it in an equitable, non-racist manner, there's no point in having even this debate. Until then, it's just plain wrong.

I agree we should forget about deterrence as a justification for the death penalty until there is unequivocal evidence that such an effect occurs.

Justice, in the sense of fairness and proportionate retribution, should be a sufficient reason for executing those guilty of the deliberate and unlawful taking of a fellow human's life.

If a punishment is applied unfairly, that's a problem with the justice system. It's not evidence that the sentence itself is unjust.

Mike Nilsen wrote:

As for the economy issue, perhaps we'd have more resources for life imprisonment of murderers if we stopped handing out thirty-year sentences to poor slobs caught with three joints or a dime bag of rock. We could then afford to behave more morally. Just sayin'

That I can agree with.

Chris wrote:

Ian: It's used to refute the common argument that execution *is* a deterrent and therefore "saves more lives than it takes". If it doesn't save any lives at all, it's logically impossible for it to save more lives than it takes.

I have read of instances where people have been released after completing lesser sentences for murder and have then gone on to kill again. Assuming those are true, you can argue that those executed for murder are not in a position to kill again so, to that extent, the death penalty saves lives.

Of course, the same can be said of life imprisonment where it actually means the convict spending the rest of life in prison. The trouble with that is that the perpetrator is still alive where the victim isn't. The perp comes out ahead and that isn't justice.

Graculus wrote:

where is the evidence for a measurable deterrent effect for all the other sentences imposed by the legal system

Actually, the severity of the sentences is not well correlated with crime rates.
As "revenge" was taken over by the state (in the form of the justice system) the rate of violent crime has fallen. As the system becomes better at catching and convicting the crime rate has fallen. The indications are the the certainty of being caught, rather than the severity of the sentence, that is the deterent.

I agree,there is evidence to that effect.

In Canada the conviction rate doubled as a result of eliminating the death penalty. So abolishing capital punishment apparently leads to a greater deterent effect than keeping it.

...or it just means that juries are more willing to convict if the death penalty is taken off the table.

Justice for the victims of murder means the death penalty for the perpetrators.

Those two things are not logically connected. I could just as easily assert that justice for victimes of theft means the death penalty for the perpetrators. Justice for the wronged spouse in adultery means the death penalty for the perpetrators.

Not if you regard justice as embodying principles of fairness and proportionality, which is the original meaning of the "eye for an eye" principle, of course. It meant "only an eye for an eye". By that principle, the taking of the offender's life is an appropriate response to their taking the victim's life.

The death penalty has been (and is often still) imposed for crimes such as homosexuality and heresy. The (lack of) logic is the same.

Not really relevant since neither homosexuality nor heresy are violations of human rights and so should not attract any sort of legal sanction.