Capital Punishment: Should the Death Penalty Still Exist In A 'Civilised Society'?

i think punishment can be a moral end. revenge obv has negative connotations but there's an argument to be made that by having the state take on the role of vengeance it disarms the individual's desire for vengeance, putting a halt to vigilante blood feuds & ceaseless back-and-forth vendettas.

imo that view on punishment is what it comes down to, as well as your conception of personhood, luck/contingencies and how they inform your idea of responsibility/causality

possibly, tho catholic radical pro-life position is not incompatible w/ good/evil

and pro DP pov is not incompatible w/ causality (pragmatic for the better of society arguments) so

"The people who would call themselves my allies are lining up to save the life of a man who would cheerfully murder me. It feels more and more like black people don't actually have any allies."

i can understand why you might feel that way, but being against the death penalty has nothing to do with being against the victims of charleston or any other terrible crime. in the strong form of the anti-DP position, which i hold, the relative egregiousness of the crime doesn't matter: it's wrong to execute people.

if it helps (it won't), i believe that i would also be against the execution of someone who did terrible things to me or my close family and friends, but that brings us into the silly realm of hypotheticals and the "but surely you'd want to see the person who murdered your wife face the death penalty?" discussion and that never ends well. i'm sure it's possible that if something awful like that happened, all bets would be off and i'd call for their head on a stick, but i'd hope that i would be merciful.

i think that allowing the death penalty for a monster like dylann roof opens the door (or rather, keeps the door open) for other monstrosities to happen, like executing many, many innocent people. that's part of why i oppose it. if every 25th execution included a side-execution of a person known to be innocent, and then a tv graphic popped up saying "btw about 4% of executions are innocent people" (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/28/death-penalty-study-4-percent-defendants-innocent), the connection between the implementation of justice in the form of execution and the unnecessary tragedy of murdering an innocent person might be stronger and resonate more with people. but that's not how it is, and that's part of why the death penalty persists.

but like i said, i understand why you would look at it through a more emotional perspective. i hope you don't think i'm a terrible person and an enemy because of it, but i don't think that killing more people provides "justice", no matter who it is and who the victims are.

only 4%

thats not bad that

Missed most of this thread tonight but how did Israel become a talking point here wrt death penalty?

mordy quoted arendt on the morality of eichmann's death sentence

to mordy - yes of course you can oppose it in terms of abstract values too, I suppose I was looking at this in terms of wondering about the positive reasons for it rather than seeing retributive/moral killing as the default norm that doesn't need to be explained

to conclude - I think having an abstract, inhuman concept that you will kill for is a good place to draw the line.

ty ogmor, will catch up

mordy quoted arendt on the morality of eichmann's death sentence

My best friend David used to tell me how disappointed his father was in the state of Israel that they executed Eichmann.

... which seemed to be a thing with Jews of his generation... in Glasgow, at least!

we have a method to determine only the most clear-cut guilty people, and that we won't occasionally get it wrong and execute an innocent person. we don't have that method. so let's save some lives of innocent people by banning the death penalty.

What about people for whom there is clear-cut evidence they committed the crime, they admit to committing the crime, and they have no remorse, and they are racist sacks of shit that killed people? (You can substitute homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, anti-semitic for racist for the general principle I'm getting at.) I mean, Dylann Roof is basically committing suicide by judicial system, and I have no problem with that. Maybe he wishes he could choose the more "manly" option of suicide by cop?

Honestly, I don't see much of a moral distinction between allowing cops to kill people in the line of duty and capital punishment.

And as far as dignity goes, death by shooting was the dignified way to go according to Goring -- who didn't get his wish to be shot, but was hung like all the others.

xp the distinction lies in the justification of needing to protect self or others. when there's no danger, there's no justification of necessity to kill.

Honestly, I don't see much of a moral distinction between allowing cops to kill people in the line of duty and capital punishment.

peter hitchens makes this argument - better to do the proper procedure etc.

received OT principles vs received NT principles so why not just bantz

― wins, Wednesday, January 11, 2017 12:46 PM (yesterday)

NT is seriously overrated, the whole Jesus bit is, how do you Brits say, a bit naff? Revelations is kinda dope, but doesn't really make up for the overwhelming mediocrity of the Jesus parts. sorry that's just how I feel.

It starts off pretty well with the conception & birth & people trying to kill the magic baby, I admit it falters a bit when he is an adult and played by Sam Neill but there are some decent effects and fans of executions will find much to enjoy in the crucifixion scene

robert powell ftw tbh

Jeffrey Hunter was the most handsome Jesus.

Ergo the best.

Honestly, I don't see much of a moral distinction between allowing cops to kill people in the line of duty and capital punishment.

Difficult to kill someone with a truncheon tbf.

but doable

"He fell down the stairs, m'lud".

it makes the judiciary dispensable & blurs the distinction between the actions of individuals and the actions of the state

popular belief in the philippines tho

And in the US, it seems. Esp. if the person you're killing is black.

Ditto capital punishment, of course.

not v comfortable w/ Rick Scott using an executive order to reassign a case because AG wouldn't pursue death penalty for Markeith Loyd, even if it was perfectly legal.

opinion still stands here - Loyd is a sack of shit and should die in jail but still do not support DP for this dude.

everybody I know always brings out the "why should we subsidize a life sentence's meals and room and board" and it becomes apparent few realize how much more costly it is to execute someone (besides, you're still paying for their meals for a very lengthy amount of time prior to the actual execution).

I get tired of ppl justifying the expense of execution

Now where are we

would love to meet somebody whose actual reason for being pro/anti capital punishment was expense-based

I know a few of them! More pro than anti but the "why should OUR tax dollars support a killer getting 3 meals a day".

Few people oppose it FOR the expense, that's usually just an organic retort re: the futility of that argument.

we should eliminate the NEA to offset the costs of executing people

Bring in pre-crime IMO

Clearly the response to not wanting to feed a killer forever is to shorten his sentence. It works in most of the rest of the world.

'works'

Clearly the way to avoid paying for a killer to eat from public funds for too long is to remove the requirement for him to eat.

No, no, no! I have it on good authority the best way is to teach him to fish.

I decided the other day that we should just pay people to stop doing crimes

Universal Basic Income has its own thread

Problem is, if you pay them specifically to stop doing crimes, then pretty soon they'll start demanding better pay.

"Last month's check was for not murdering. Now I need one for not raping either."

Fuck Kevin k imo

i'm generally against summary executions but people who do this deserve much worse

― k3vin k., Monday, 5 June 2017 12:19 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Man u kno I could idk ~respect~ u before man u kno

what's the thing in question?

Raping babies?
Systematic Female Genital Mutilation?
Starting new threads about The Beatles?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/31/opinion/capital-punishment-death-penalty.html?_r=0

appreciated this editorial

there's some value in ILX having over a decade of stuff that can be readily revived at any time just so I can see what a dick I was in my twenties. I'm still arrogant as all hell but wow

Pope Francis says no

top lad