Oolon Colluphid

Hmmm. Well I'll jump in despite not having read further than this yet...I reluctantly have to agree with this. If anyone were to deliberately kill my wife or daughter, I will kill them. It is that simple. Well, not simple exactly: pliers and secateurs would be involved.

Oolon Colluphid

Which is why I do not support state-mandated capital punishment except in extreme circumstances -- so extreme that I cannot off-hand think what might qualify.

But OTOH -- and sorry if someone's already mentioned this -- we already have capital punishment a-plenty, it's just called 'shooting the motherfucker before he shoots some innocent bystander'.

Oolon Colluphid

The core of the discussion is here. "Everyone has the right to life", we might say. But with every right comes responsibility. The right to education, for instance, imposes the responsibility on... someone... to provide it, and on the one with the right, the responsibility to partake of it.

What responsibility does the 'right to life' impose on:
(a) other people
(b) the owner of the life in question?

I'm not sure. I'll just throw out a few thoughts and let people chew them a bit. The following is unformed thoughts, and I may have changed my (not made up) mind by the end of this...

On others, the 'right to life' presumably imposes the responsibility not to kill another. But we do not live by that entirely. We allow -- applaude, even -- the killing of people who would otherwise be about to kill others. We also, however reluctantly, have wars.

(Incidentally, those who argue (and this includes me... I think :worried: ) against capital punishment because of the possibility of killing an innocent might like to consider the fact that war should also therefore never be permissable under any circumstances at all, because no war is targeted enough to avoid, in the sickening euphemism, 'collateral damage'. Absolute pacifism should therefore be the automatic corollary. Perhaps that is best? :huh: )

We also -- just to muddy the waters, sorry! -- allow abortion. This is, one might argue, even more reprehensible than killing someone who has committed a crime. Some of course do indeed argue this.

What about the responsibility of someone with the right to life? Perhaps (he says tentatively), having the right to life confers the responsibility not to kill others? That does seem to be how it is interpreted, when we kill in defence of self and others. It might be possible to look at abortion, say of a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, in the same way.

The way out of the conundrum might be good ol' consequentialism. 'What harm does the action (or inaction) cause?' Well killing someone is about as much harm as you can cause -- to them. But might there be greater harm in not killing them? That seems to be where we're at with 'saving bystanders', wars, and abortion.

(I do realise that abortion isn't necessarily equivalent, btw, it's just there as another example of deliberate killing, which is generally allowed under consequentialist reasoning. Throw in the killing of animals too if you like. )

So... how about this: if the consequences of not killing someone are worse than killing them, then it should be done.

Then the trick is just finding such cases among those who we (society) might put on Death Row. I suspect they would be few and far between: as someone noted above in relation to Jeffrey Dahmer, those who might be candidates for a consequentialist death sentence would be, almost automatically, perpetrators of stuff so vile that their sanity (and therefore responsibility) must be in doubt.

Erm, that's it for now.


I'll still take a bread knife to anyone harming my daughter though.

Oolon Colluphid

One more thing of relevance: ref wars and 'collateral damage', we do indeed try to make warfare as targeted as possible, and regret any innocents accidentally killed as a by-product. I see a parallel with potentially allowing capital punishment, all the while doing our best to avoid getting it wrong.

Or something.

Oolon Colluphid

Question: Do those who so strongly oppose capital punishment consider it to be inappropriate even for (if they weren't already dead ) Saddam Hussain, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, or Fred West or Harold Shipman?

Might a case be made that some people have forfeited their right to life?

I really don't know, so yes, the questions are genuine.

JPD

That's where I'm coming from - sort of. I think CP has a valid place for crimes of a certain kind. I recognise that the police and judicial systems are imperfect. CP doesn't work as a deterrent because it is, at the present time, the imperfect cherry atop the imperfect cake. I can, though, forsee a future where it works and where the execution of innocents is extremely rare. Zero possibility is something valuable to aim for but unrealistic. That doesn't mean that we should reject it any more than we would reject imprisonment because inmates sometimes commit suicide (or kill each other).

Interesting point you made about war - frequently the great big elements are missed.

Oolon Colluphid

Well the problem is that, from a consequentialist perspective, that CP rarely seems to actually be necessary. If the consequence of letting someone live is that others will be killed, then the killing is justified. However, that is not the situation once the immediate danger -- once, for instance, he has been disarmed -- has passed and the 'perp' is in custody. Once there is no danger, the justification for the killing goes away. Simple locking up achieves the same consequentialist end -- defence of others -- that killing him does.

Worse -- for someone like me with a genuine bloodlust-and-proud-of-it (see above) -- note the 'punishment' bit in the term. As a punishment, death is a one-off. It may be the ultimate deprival of liberty, but it is (as it were) short-lived. Permanent, live removal of liberty is far more actual punishment -- as people like Fred West and Harold Shipman's suicides shows.

Ray Moscow

I support the right of everybody to use force, if necessary, to defend himself/herself or his/her loved ones. If the attacker gets hurt or killed in the process, that's just too bad.

I am also sympathetic to those who want revenge for such wrongs done to their loved ones, but I don't think we should let them do it.

However, I'm very much against the death penalty for lots of reasons -- not the least of which is that convinctions for such cases are wrong far too often and are unfairly tried just about all the time. To see this, consider: just how many rich people are on death row?

Only poor people get convicted and sentenced to death, and usually without adequate representation.

However, I'm also against releasing any convicted murderer unless there is very clear evidence that 1) they were wrongfully convicted or 2) they are very, very unlikely to do it again. The second point is practically impossible to ascertain, but I would admit it in theory.

In other words: just lock 'em up and throw away the key.

Ray

grumpytheBright

That makes plenty of sense. If someone deprives your daughter of her mother, your response should be to immediately deprive her of her father by going to prison for life. Tell me, would you do the deed right in front of your daughter? Would you encourage her to participate?

grumpytheBright

Oolon Colluphid

Well, I was thinking in terms of 'if they were both killed'.

And, as should be clear by now (now that, presumably, you've read beyond my first post above ), I never said it made sense.


ETA: And, of course, in practice I'd do nothing of the sort, as it's unlikely I'd be there at the time (if I were, the best I would probably manage is whatever blunt instrument was to hand) and afterwards I'd probably not be let near the scum. Nor, in practice, would I have it in me to torture, much as I wish -- in such extremity -- I did. No, I could easily kill in hot blood (in which case there's a thing called 'diminished responsibility'), but in cold blood, I'm ashamed to say, I'd doubtless bottle it.