diana

Clarification through analogy:

Many black people are against law enforcement because of the racism inherent in the system. I would probably (at the very least) view police with trepidation were I black. I may even be actively against the police force (depending upon my circumstances and experiences). This is not evidence against police, however, but against racism itself.

The same goes for the DP. It is levied too much against black folk, and sometimes against innocent black folk (just like law enforcement). This isn't an argument against the DP, but against racism itself.

You perhaps fail to acknowledge that the death penalty could exist in any other form than its present one, while I argue that the present one is clearly flawed, but the DP itself is not necessarily a bad idea. Again...there are some cases in which it is the reasonable and humane option.

d

JPD

I meant prisoners teaching each other criminal skills!

JPD

Yeah, whatever :Cheeky:

It would require the removal of all humans from the face of the earth.

But in what way is incarceration - and all it entails- "humane"? So it protects the victim to a degree (unless the convicted communicates with the outside world and has the victim dealt with) and it satisfies in an extracting revenge sort of way. Bit like capital punishment really.

Blackbeard

Diana;

Life in prison means life in prison .... but if 20 years later (as in the case with Hurricane Carter) evidence comes forth that exonerates the wrongly convicted person, of course he/she will be released. No questions, no parole hearing, charges dropped, apologies offered, compensation (to the best of societies ability) is then made. If Hurricane Carter had been sentenced to death and executed (there was no death penalty at that time in that state ... I believe it was New Jersey), there would be no way to reverse that. Sure you can't give Hurricane back the 20 years he lost in prison, but at least we were able to give him the rest of his life back. He was released in 1985 and is still alive and well living in Canada and has dedicated his life since his release to aiding wrongfully convicted people. He received an honorary law degree as result of his work in that area. Should we have just killed this innocent man and deprived him of all this? Fact: if there were a death penalty in New Jersey, Hurricane Carter would have been executed after 10 or so years in prison, give or take a couple. And you say that would have been the more "humane" option.

And yes, I have spent 8 days in jail .... well the sentence was split up into four 2 day weekends, so 48 hours was the longest stretch. It sucked, big time. If I were sentenced to life yet knew myself to be innocent, I would endure as many years as it took until I could prove my innocence, because if I am innocent, there must be a way to prove it .... I would hope. Hope would be all I had and it would be enough. Yet you presume to deny me that, you presume to tell me that it would be more humane to just kill me if I can't prove my innocence in the 10 or so years of life I would spend on death row.

And I did make a suggestion about a way I would support capital punishment: if it was an option that the convicted can choose. Simple, if someone is sentenced to life without chance of parole (though of course they would be released if exonerated of the crime at any time in the future), they automatically have the option of converting it to a death sentence. They can exercise this option at any time. So, if an innocent man is convicted and after ten years (or however long) of trying, he remains unable to make any progress in proving his innocence, he can "opt out". There is no other scenario I can imagine where we can guarantee that no innocent person will ever be wrongfully sentenced to death. There's a good chance the Gacey's, Bundy's and Dahmer's of the world would choose this option as they know there is no hope of their ever seeing the outside world again. Ted Bundy in fact went to Florida to do his last killing spree because he knew that there, when caught, he would be sentenced to death. Authorities already knew he was a serial killer by that time and APB's were sent to all jurisdictions looking for him (he had escaped custody).

To JPD:

We have come full circle, so I am done. And after all that you still fail to see the difference between life in prison and the death penalty when it comes to the wrongfully convicted. You admit it happens, you admit it will happen in any system in which humans are involved, yet you still seem to have the atrtitude that "Might as well kill them".

Just to be clear: A truly guilty person has virtually no hope of proving their innocence after they are sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole (a just sentence for first degree murder), so they will do no more harm. And as you said, life in prison and capital punishment both serve the same purpose, punishment and revenge. So why kill them? (I know your answer, you've already said that you basically don't believe they have the right to go on existing). This is me turning your argument against you, see how easy it is to do without being fallacious?

Thanks all, I'm out on this one. I have said all I need to say and have already begun repeating myself over and over so ....... :wave:

JPD

I don't think that you have. Perhaps you have in your imagination. I don't regard life imprisonment as satisfactory punishment.

Blackbeard

Did you not just write that?

over and out

JPD

You haven't demonstrated that incarceration is humane. Or does the perpetrator's welfare suddenly become less important?

arkirk

Somebody earlier pointed out that vicious murderers and the like need to be QUARANTINED. That position seems to be mine. Along with that, I think we need to reevaluate the entire concept of capital punishment. In the old days, Capital punishment (the root of the word caput or head) was often decapitation. The French, when they overthrew the royalty revelled in this activity. I feel this is part of why the French Revolution didn't do much to further the aspirations of the average citizen, locked as it was in blood lust. The period immediately following the Revolution was referred to as the Reign of Terror.

Buddhists speak of sin as a mistake. Obviously, they call murder (that and treason are commonly punished by death) a sin and a mistake. We are so emotional when murder comes close to us. We rail about things like "closure" and "justice" and some sort of "debt" the convicted has accrued to society.
Now I in no way condone murder. On the other hand, when one has ocurred what is the actual situation both society and the killer has produced.

By removing him from the common pool of humanity through quarantine, we are being not only logical but also just in my eyes. The question of guilt or innocence looms large with death penalties. The question of whether or not the killer can become disabused of the ideas that caused him to kill is open.
I for one would rather see a killer live out his/her life in as socially productive a manner as possible. If there is a debt, cannot someone tackle that debt on the installment plan in quarantine? Not as punishment but as an attempt on the part of the killer to live a life of restitution.

We do not know what non-punitive quarantine from society could ultimately mean to both the accused and society at large.

diana

Well, I for one don't want people like Kahmer and Gacey having a choice. In at least the extreme examples, I feel we do society a service by simply excising the damaged from the planet.

I also acknowledge that innocent men are convicted, and we don't want to kill them. I'm just trying to decide where the whiskers become a beard (so to speak). Also, I separate my support of the death penalty from approval of the current system. I am, of course, fully aware that many innocent men have been executed.

That doesn't make the death penalty bad, though. It merely points to flaws in the judicial process.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

d

grumpytheBright

You probably meant people like Dahmer and Gacy, no true?

Actually, that IS what makes the death penalty bad. And the flaws aren't in the judicial process, they are in US. We humans don't always, in fact seldom, do really important stuff in a dispassionate manner. We emote all over the place and make really bad decisions.

J. Dahmer killed and ate parts of 17 boys, kept some of their heads in his fridge, and tried to make zombie slaves out of some of them by performing brain surgery with an electric power drill.

12 good and true citizens of Wisconsin found him SANE.

What the fuck???

We can draw 2 inferences from this. One: the words sane and insane have no meaning at all in the State of Wisconsin; and two: at least one jury in that fair state had no abillity whatsoever to dileberate dispassionately.

grumpytheBright