Capital Punishment, yes or no?

So, personally. I am against the capital punishment for several reasons:

A) It's either very expensive, or very evil.
To preserve human rights, there has to be an extensive amount of appeals involved in death penalty cases, given the weight of the punishment. Which means the trial process alone costs more money than keeping a prisoner in jail for the rest of his life.

B) Modern Death Penalties were invented by the Nazis.
Sentenced War Criminal "Dr." Karl Brandt invented the modern means of killing people, known as the "Lethal Injection Table". It's a contraption made/calibrated through extensive human experiments on people in world war two. In order to establish the best manner in killing someone: Karl Brandt placed people in pressure chambers, gas chambers, deadly hypothermia and what ever else in order to figure out an efficient way of killing people. The Lethal Injection was the product of their death and suffering. Here's a few things about it that renders it both cruel and unusual:

1. It kills people. Death has been linked with fatalities for as long as history has been documented.

2. When killing people: It kills them against their will. We made murder illegal due to the objections of people who were non-consenting against being killed. This is clearly a violation of human rights.

3. There is no sedative or pain killers involved: Before the lethal injection pumps acid into people's cardiovascular system in order to corrode their internal blood vessels and kill them from mass-hemorrhage: The person is not given a legally defined sedative. This means that depending on their metabolism: They may be fully aware of what's happening to them. The paralytic they are given just prohibits them from screaming in agony as their vocal cords are paralyzed. The contraption in question does not even live up to the legal standards placed on killing animals. There is no ethical manner in which you can de-humanize another person so that he's lesser worth than an animal.

4. It does not always kill the right person: Each year, 10.000 people are convicted innocently in America. Now, this may not be the best example since America is highly incompetent, but it's the only study I could find, which does show that people are for a fact innocently jailed. Now, putting someone in prison when they're innocent might be reversible, but scientific studies have shown that death is not. All innocently executed people stays executed, and there will be innocently executed people.

5. It encourages murder: It is shown that places with instituted death penalty has higher murder rates as opposed to places with a more sympathetic/rehabilitation-based system. It's more expensive AND it does not serve as a deterrent. Even if the statistics are anomalous, it still shows that the death penalty is obsolete to potential murderers.

Why so? Because there's three reasons people kill:
A) Greed.
People who are like hitmen and hired assassins, or gang members, et cetera, all rationalize their murders and think they will get away, so the death penalty does not scare them as they assume it's not a viable factor.
B) Emotions.
Passion crimes and moments of temporary insanity are a common reason why people comit murders, even though it's wrong, it still does not mean they're lesser human beings, and it certainly means that they've lost all common sense, which includes the fear of dying.
C) Pathology.
Psychopaths cannot help committing the actions they commit. It's a tragedy, but the only thing stopping them is people who recognize their problems before they go out of hand. Their brains are in layman's terms: Broken. Best we can do is figuring out how to fix them, and prevent/possibly cure the phenomena all together. For these studies, live murderers are needed. For each psychopath who is executed: The concept behind them lives on.

6. It's wrong to murder people based on their illness: Most people sentenced to death suffers from major mental diseases, which is what drove them to kill in the first place. They cannot escape their own pathology, and therefore cannot be responsible for their actions. That being said: They should not be placed in a position where they can harm anyone else, but it is also wrong to kill someone for it. Especially if you're sane.

7. It fades the distinction between good and bad. To abduct a man, restrain him and then slowly murder him whilst coldly ignoring his pleas for mercy sounds like the act of a psychopath to me, and should have no place in a functional justice system.

8. It gives the government too much power: To let a government decide if a man is fit to be in society or not makes sense, but to let a government decide his right to exist? It's extreme, and very inappropriate in a civilized society.

I don't think retribution has any place in the justice system, and I don't think criminals are lesser people since the majority can't empathize with them. I think that harboring hatred for the mentally ill just because of that they become victims of their own minds is very uncivilized, and shows little to no knowledge of their condition. I think we must reach out to those who feel unfit to follow our laws, and do our best to give them a place in this world rather than wasting away on society's tax money. I think we shall treat the mentally sick as patients rather than objects of our scorn. It's horrible when a person dies, yes, and the people who do it are often monsters. But when you kill them in turn: You live by their paradigm, and you don't remove a monster, you merely replace one.

EDIT:

Oh, and, I should add that my father was a professor in Criminal Justice, and a seasoned police officer for 30 years, and his expert opinion: He states that the death penalty is both a burden and an embarrassment to the justice system.

Due to the emotional weight this particular matter carries to me (since my dad influenced me a lot when it came to humanitarianism, especially within criminal justice), I don't think I'll be able to respond well in a debate. So, this post will be my first and last on the subject.

I do not think capital punishment is a bad idea entirely. for instance, if someone murders another, why the hell should they be allowed to live there life when the unforunate person can not? if someone does the crime they should suffer the consequences.

It should only be applied for the worse of crime however - murder, peadophilia, rape and should not be carried out in a degrading manner such as stoned or beat to death. It must be done with some dignity.

However, the problem does arise when there has been a miscarriage of justice and the condemed person has had sentence carried out!

However - what I would prefer to see is something along the lines of camps for the worse offenders. Send them to a deserted colony - maybe an island of the coast, make them farm, mine , whatever , the land and send the product back to the mainland or central storage where is can be distributed to teh workers.

The convicts can keep their basic needs and continue to work the land until their sentence is complete and debt paid back to society.

That way - no capital punishment (death sentence anyway) and due to them being shipped off to camps the overcrowding in prisons is reduced as only the lower extent of criminals would be in prison.

At first, I was all for capital punishment, but this was before I was exposed to statistics that prove that the death penalty is not effective in stopping murderers from murdering. To me, this means that there are repercussions from executing somebody and no actual benefits except the "eye for an eye" which is destructive as hell to a civilized society as far as I can tell.

I could rewrite what Vince was clever enough to point out, but I think his post did the job. Major highlights: it's expensive and isn't an actual deterrent.

That's my opinion. I'd vote for corporal punishment and rehabilitation.

chevosky wrote:The convicts can keep their basic needs and continue to work the land until their sentence is complete and debt paid back to society.

But, that isn't really the question though, is it? It's all a question of morals. In my opinion, the debate of this thread should be:

If capital punishment was an effective method of stopping murder, would it still be morally acceptable to carry out "civilized" executions?

Soviet wrote:If capital punishment was an effective method of stopping murder, would it still be morally acceptable to carry out "civilized" executions?

Well, that's an interesting question, sure. But, it simply does not apply to our species.

If we do get into a place or society where killing people did prevent murders, then, I'd rather go back to a society where nobody could rationalize committing a murder, since, that's the requirement in the first place. I'd feel more safe without people scratching their heads thinking "Alright, what if I put some arsenic in his hot dog? Will they catch me for that somehow or not?". It feels like we've somehow gotten past being, you know... Civilized human beings.

That being said, I would also point out how capital punishment amputates a crucial socialist principal. Which is that people commit crimes only when certain social conditions are met. So if someone commits a murder because they're in a gang or something: They often do so because they have not been properly installed into society, and those people can be more effectively dealt with by making sure they get proper educations and jobs in the first place, thus, eliminating the social conditions that drove them into a gang.

Statistics will also show you that socialist countries who support rehabilitation such as Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Holland have less gang related crimes than America. Counting violent crimes, thefts, robberies, muggings, rapes and first-degree murders.

With the exception to major organized crime acts such as money laundering, drug trafficking, et cetera, since, all nations with human rights respecting people's right to a fair trial and personal privacy will always have to compensate by enabling those crimes. But most nations are equipped with the economical means to deal with those crimes in a way so that society remains unaffected.

But personally I'd rather people sold drugs and laundered money than pistol-whipping me whenever I went into the industrial part of town.

I'm for it, not for the whole, an eye for an eye deal, but more for the safety of society. While rehabilitation is a good thing, it's been shown to be approximately 25% effective at ensuring repeat offenses do not happen. Capital punishment is 100% effective at ensuring repeat offenses do not happen. You can't very well muder another person if you're dead.

IvanGray wrote:I'm for it, not for the whole, an eye for an eye deal, but more for the safety of society. While rehabilitation is a good thing, it's been shown to be approximately 25% effective at ensuring repeat offenses do not happen. Capital punishment is 100% effective at ensuring repeat offenses do not happen. You can't very well muder another person if you're dead.

Same principal applies to keeping someone in jail for life, minus one death.

Comrade Vince wrote:

IvanGray wrote:I'm for it, not for the whole, an eye for an eye deal, but more for the safety of society. While rehabilitation is a good thing, it's been shown to be approximately 25% effective at ensuring repeat offenses do not happen. Capital punishment is 100% effective at ensuring repeat offenses do not happen. You can't very well muder another person if you're dead.

Same principal applies to keeping someone in jail for life, minus one death.

They're going to die anyways- seems more cruel to drag the process out for that long. Also, jailbreak remains a remote, but still existant possibility. If I had the responsibility of millions of lives weighing upon me, I'd want to ensure that they were as safe as they could be, without violating freedom-related rights.

IvanGray wrote:

Comrade Vince wrote:

Same principal applies to keeping someone in jail for life, minus one death.

They're going to die anyways- seems more cruel to drag the process out for that long. Also, jailbreak remains a remote, but still existant possibility. If I had the responsibility of millions of lives weighing upon me, I'd want to ensure that they were as safe as they could be, without violating freedom-related rights.

Jailbreaks are to blame on the incompetence of wardens, not prisoners.

And also: No man will willingly accept his execution, so there's nothing cruel about it.

IvanGray wrote:If I had the responsibility of millions of lives weighing upon me, I'd want to ensure that they were as safe as they could be, without violating freedom-related rights.

Execution violates freedom-related rights, because it is murder. Vince already said this. Rehabilitation may not be successful at stopping a criminal from murder, but almost ever murder is irrational and without thought... so it's not like every person in prison is a lost soul or a psychopath, and those types of people would ideally never get out. The rehabilitation process only needs to be fixed, not replaced with capital punishment. Capital punishment is a very, very long expensive process, it would be cheaper to keep an inmate in prison than try to execute them.

Against for every reason under the sun

I personally don't see how anybody could ever support such a practice

Soviet wrote:

IvanGray wrote:If I had the responsibility of millions of lives weighing upon me, I'd want to ensure that they were as safe as they could be, without violating freedom-related rights.

Execution violates freedom-related rights, because it is murder. Vince already said this. Rehabilitation may not be successful at stopping a criminal from murder, but almost ever murder is irrational and without thought... so it's not like every person in prison is a lost soul or a psychopath, and those types of people would ideally never get out. The rehabilitation process only needs to be fixed, not replaced with capital punishment. Capital punishment is a very, very long expensive process, it would be cheaper to keep an inmate in prison than try to execute them.

It's very long and expensive due to the bureaucratic bullshit. If it's clear beyond any reasonable doubt they did it, hang them and be done with it.

Merriam-Webster defines murder as:

"the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought."

So no, Soviet, capital punishment isn't murder, if the law provides for it.

IvanGray wrote:
So no, Soviet, capital punishment isn't murder, if the law provides for it.

Writing that "lawful" killing (as you may call it) is murder, was actually not a definitive way of classification, but rather a statement of belief.

It's like me saying Che Guevara was murdered and not executed to show that I do not approve of Bolivians killing Guevara. In this instance, I am saying execution is murder as a statement that I do not support "lawful" execution. Nothing more.

It's such a minor point of the debate, too.

Cost:
The cost of a lethal injection (simply the substance and related equipment) costs approximately $86. 9mm bullets only cost 21.95 per case. The cost of a life sentence, between boarding, feeding, and supplying utilities for these convicts, can cost millions of dollars, with the added risk of jailbreak or some kind of disaster freeing the person.
A dead man is a danger to no one.


Morality:

Execution violates freedom-related rights, because it is murder.

When one takes the life of another, are those people even still human? If you can rationally kill another human being, how are you any different than a rabid beast? And what of shootouts on the street? If law enforcement officials watch a suspect kill hostages left and right, must they ensure that the criminal is not harmed?

Because it is "inhumane"? No, they take the shot, because this person is not a person at all. They have lost their humanity, and as such, lost any responsibility we have to their well-being.

Death is not only a natural part of life, but it helps stabilize people. Lenin and the Bolsheviks didn't want the Tsar to receive a life sentence; they shot the self-indulging feudalist-imperialist beast on his train as they ran, and immediately executed his family. Technically, they had committed no crime! Under a "humanitarian" court of law, the Tsar would of, at most, been convicted of negligence, and his family could not have been punished at all.

So why did they do it? Why would the Reds murder a shitty ruler and his family?

Because it ensured the safety and stability of Russia, and the new Soviet Union. To eliminate the execution from society would be impossible, for any crime, if deemed "evil enough", can become an exception to the rule.

I live in the United States, and as such, I have met some of the most "humanitarian" hippies around. That said, even the most life-preserving New York hippy would approve of the execution of Osama Bin Laden. Why? Because 9/11 changed the social and cultural structure of the Americas, in such a terrible way. He caused the heartache and misery of 3,000 families.

And what of the Norway shootings? Anders Behring Breivik, the insane right-wing bastard, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail for 93 murders. But we can't kill him; he has a mental disease, so he didn't mean to do it... Well, actually, he did mean to do it. But he's sorry!... But... He said it was "unfortunate but necessary."