Capital punishment: why is it not morally and politically acceptable?

In cases of obvious guilt, there's no reason not to use CP. Murders with video proof and witnesses. Serial killers. Volent rapists. Drunk drivers who kill people. There is no reason to keep these people alive. NO reason. Give them one appeal, then rid them from the earth in a year.

 

Is it cruel and unusual to take the money a thief has stolen from one of his peers? When one kills another, they have given up their right to be considered a person. They are now considered animals. There is a reason why we call people who kill animals, it's not because we're being hyperbolic. Animals kill humans. A proper human does not kill or maim another human, except in cases of self-defense. When we no longer abide the rule of law, we no longer become human.

 

All humans are animals, more specifically, mammals. Therefore, according to your logic, if all humans are animals, humans therefore have no rights. I guess we should subject our species to rule by penguins. However, is there a chance that some humans are lower on your ethical food chain than others, and deserve to be treated as second class humans?

 

I can agree with that.

 

It has always struck me as absurdly odd that other animals get treated and thought of so differently from human mammals on the basis that they lack the intelligence to build a nuclear bomb.

 

Excuse me. But I was talking about militias and why a housewife has been given permission by the Supreme Court to own a gun. Not why the US is so awash with guns that the tealady now has to carry one. Get it?

 

Liberals make no proposals related to keeping criminals from getting guns. We already have laws that prohibit criminals from getting guns but criminals ignore those laws. Enforcement is what needs to be addressed and not new laws that prevent law abiding citizens from getting guns.

 

That's just common sense! Of course people like Chucky Shumer, Bloomberg, H. Clinton and their ilk don't have much common sense.

 

Oh really? Isn't it against the rule of law to exceed the speed limit while operating a vehicle on the public roadways? By this ridiculously broad statement, the interstate system in America is being used by non-humans every day.

As I have said here - and others agree with me - the issue is not necessarily that taking the life of someone who has taken a life is so inhumane... it is that the system by which we convict and sentence our fellow citizens is so flawed that we routinely convict and sentence innocent citizens to this maximum punishment. Given the inherent flaws of our current criminal justice system, we know we are simply approving actions by which the state will occasionally murder innocent citizens in order to make us feel safer. THAT IS cruel and unusual.

 

FACT: Every day, 550 rapes, 1,100 murders, and 5,200 other violent crimes per day are prevented just by showing a handgun. In less than 0.9% of the time is the gun ever actually ever fired.
* Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State Univ.


FACT: Every year, people in the United States use a gun to defend themselves against criminals an estimated 2,500,000 times- more than 6,500 people a day, or once every 13 seconds.

* Fall 1995, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

http://www.gunblast.com/Gun_Facts.htm

http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/WP-Tough-Targets.pdf​

 

I wasn't the one making the claim that Michael Bloomberg did not have any common sense. <<< Mod Edit: Flamebaiting >>>

 

The advocates for capital punishment don't have much common sense either. Capital punishment does not make us safer as a society. It is not a deterant and it is not necessary because life in prison without the possibility of parole removes the threat that even the most heinous of individuals represents. Capital punishment is not about justice or about protecting society... it is exclusively about REVENGE and our government has no authority to extract revenge because we, as individuals, have no authority to extract revenge.

 

Please stop the off topic chit chat that is addressing members and not the topic.

Thank you,
Shiva_TD
Site Moderator

 

You misread my post. All humans have rights, which they lose when they break a law, until they have proven themselves responsible enough to be considered a human again. When one takes a life, they are giving into a side of humanity that makes them sub-human. They have stolen somebody else's life and thus forfeit their own life as the law of exchange. I did not say humans were all animals, only the ones who acted like ones.

 

Nonsense. It is about eradicating risks to society at minimal cost to society.

It is purely a cleansing mechanism.

 

The question of using execution to discourage murder must first admit that it does work, and the lives of victims are therefore humanely saved.

The real issue is whether the feminized liberalism against executions cares foirthe many many more vixtims saved than they do for the convicted hkiller/

It is known, for instance, that by the time some killers are actually caught, they have killed many times.
So, for every execution that lowers the murder rate we can assume many more victims have been saved than just the one which convicted the criminal.

Can liberals see the math here, that the issue is whether to save five or ten victims by executing just one murderer????

 

The way you say it sounds so evil.

But I agree wholeheartedly.

 

Incarceration is far less expensive than capital punishment.

Incarceration without the possibility of parole "saves" the same number of potential victims and it is a pragmatic infringement upon an inalienable Right while the premeditated murder of the convicted individual is both unnecessary for the protection of potential victims and cannot be rationalized as a pragmatic necessity.

 

How is it less expensive? The process that leads to determining guilt cannot be counted as an expense because it should be the same in both cases.

In NZ, it costs $90+k a year to keep someone in prison. How is whacking off someone's head or whatever more expensive than that?

Are you saying that the accused will consume more resources (higher court appeals and suchlike) in defending themselves against a death penalty than they would in defending themselves against life imprisonment?

BTW, I exclude the ludicrously slow and tortured death row processes used in the US. They are simply an example of how not to go about executing convicted offenders.

 

Until you get a bunch of idiots running the crime lab like we have in Houston. A newspaper investigated the chief of the DNA testers and found out he let chronic alcoholics show up drunk to the job to test cases. In the meantime they have rape cases dating back to the 80s that haven't been tested.

Harris County sends the most people to death row.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/us/new-doubt-cast-on-testing-in-houston-police-crime-lab.html

'The panel concluded that crime laboratory officials might have offered ''similarly false and scientifically unsound'' reports and testimony in other cases, and it called for a comprehensive audit spanning decades to re-examine the results of a broad array of rudimentary tests on blood, semen and other bodily fluids.

Elizabeth A. Johnson, a former director of the DNA laboratory at the Harris County medical examiner's office in Houston, said the task would be daunting.

''A conservative number would probably be 5,000 to 10,000 cases,'' Dr. Johnson said. ''If you add in hair, it's off the board.'''

 

What if the murderer happens to be another Einstein? Should society terminate this person, or should society use this persons ability, while in prison, to potentially conpensate society for the loss of the life taken illegally? Perhaps some new invention or innovation leads to a greater prosperity due to this one individual, thus outweighing the harm done initially.

Serial Killers on the other hand, if having Einstein like IQ are an extreme threat to society unless some drug induced therapy can change their brain chemistry, and they can be reduced to a docile personality, yet remain capable of contribution to society. Otherwise, if only reduction to vegetable status, might as well terminate them out of mercy.

 

It only sounds evil because there are people who have used the process to persecute the innocent.

It is merely clinical. And clinically effective in the appropriate circumstances.

 

Serial offenders, whether they be murderers, rapists, paedophiles, corrupt politicians or finiancial criminals, are prime candidates for the death penalty.

 

A flawed cleansing mechanism. Consider the number of death row inmates whose convictions were overturned because of advances in forensic technology and legal teams willing to re-examine cases and trials. Then consider the number of death row inmates who were wrongly convicted and executed.

It troubles me to no end that the US continues such a barbaric practice.

 

I am talking about a theoretical model. I am not talking about how badly it is so often applied.