Headache

Oh no!!!! Not another clueless person....
"comfortable stay"?? You must somehow mix up Embassy Suites with Smokey Mountain Correctional Facilities. They are not the same.

Maybe you can tell me the name of a single prison where lifers gets ice cream for desert and cable TV? Just a single one... And with supporting evidence, please.

I think you must not have a very good understanding of US prisons, most of them are below what is considered a minimum requirement for a decent human living conditions. Most of the prison should have been closed down due to their inadequacy.

In fact, your whole post shows a total ignorance of the real world.

Death penalty is ALWAYS wrong, just as locking people up for life is ALWAYS wrong. Both are totally inhumane.

I know people will come back with all kinds of emotional crap to try to justify their positions on death penalty and life sentences, but every argument you will use, is emotionally based and not reality based.

irreversible

From Humanist Manifesto III:
Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness.
---------

Agh! It sounds more like socialism, which is a form of coercive altruism. I completely reject that.

irreversible

No. My position on death penalty is practical and, to some extent, emotional. But you opposition to death penalty and life sentences is purely emotional. BTW, if you even oppose life sentences, would let people like Jeffry Dahmer or Charles Manson go free???:huh:

irreversible

Wow, wow, wow! Hold on a minute. I didn't say I would shoot a hungry guy looking for food. If I knew for sure that robber doesn't intend to harm me or my family members, I wouldn't shoot. However, there is no way of knowing that this is the case. For this reason, any presence of an armed robber is threatening to my life and I will act accordingly. And no liberal, no government, no religious nutjob can tell me that I don't have a moral right to defend myself.

Gwen

It's a personal philosophy, not a governmental one. I could just as easily say "playing checkers increases individual happiness"--that doesn't mean I support coercive checkers-playing.
Even if you think that it applies to every individual--that being altruistic is actually good for everybody--that doesn't mean you think it applies in every situation. For instance, I happen to think that people can benefit from doing community service, but I'm against requiring high-school and especially middle-school students to do community service as a requirement, and one of the reasons for that is because I think that the main reason people benefit from doing voluntary community service is precisely because it's voluntary. Hard to get the warm fuzzies from doing something just to graduate.

RareBird

I don't care. If it's irrefutable proof of a capital offense, I favor that that person merely be euthanized and let's move on. Tough tooties.

Autonemesis

I would count Thomas Jefferson as a humanist, even though he owned slaves. Everyone's gotta start somewhere, yanno? But it does tarnish your humanist cred when it comes to a discussion of crime and punishment.

michael1111

that's fine, but then you're not a humanist...more like...a capitalist

Keith&Co.

Nonsense.
If cost was an issue, we wouldn't pay for public defense counsel in the first place. Or for their appeals. Or medical care while in the pokey.

Executing people says that they have done something which even a gregarious species as humans considers too offensive to tolerate, and have been ejected from the herd, and from the herd's protections.

fanucon

Innocent or Less Guilty or Guiltless of that crime.

i doubt they give the death penalty to first time offenders

i support third time sex offenders get the death penalty with all i got