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

did a double take there before I realized you meant John Calvin and not Calvin the cartoon six year old

anyway the death penalty is commanded but the rabbis did a lot of legwork to essentially circumscribe it out of existence, presumably in part because they believed that whatever the torah seemed to say it would be unjust to actually execute anyone

have any of you ever changed your mind about the death penalty? why?

i changed my mind about it when i was in college. i was pro-death penalty before, anti afterward

fwiw this broadly describes my own experience. tbh i still believe that some people deserve to die for their actions -- anders breivik pops to mind -- but i don't think any government or court or jury or person should have the authority to kill them, even without going into the absurdity and unfairness of the american system

that said, i do kind of wonder why these various bloodthirsty states go to such lengths with the drugs and the gas pellets and the electrocution. the guillotine seems like a much quicker and simpler method, and if you can't handle spurting blood and rolling heads, maybe you shouldn't be executing anyone in the first place

xp good for the rabbis imo

while i am more or less against the death penalty i am kind of apathetic on the issue because i agree w/ tombot that state power will find ways to execute people w/ or w/o a formal death penalty and besides it's applied pretty rarely ...

but i have tried to figure out why a lot of americans seems to be all for it, and the best i can figure is that - and this is my answer to a lot of "why are we so stupid as a nation" questions - people in this country tend to think qualitatively in terms of parables, not quantitatively in terms of generalized outcomes for public health

maybe i'm off the mark - i say this despite only having a few very conservative friends and family, but whenever we get into it about death penalty or gun control or taxation or whatever they tend to argue from thought experiment (like constructing some incredibly heinous and rather unlikely crime that "demands" a death penalty) rather than arguing from any sort of evidence-based framework

the bernard shaw method of analysis

what do you mean by that?

oh, this:

they tend to argue from thought experiment (like constructing some incredibly heinous and rather unlikely crime that "demands" a death penalty)

that's what bernard shaw did to dukakis in the 1988 debate i mentioned a bit upthread: he asked dukakis about whether he would support the death penalty for someone who raped his wife

oh haha i thought you meant george bernard shaw

yes that’s exactly what i mean

haha, nope! although now that you mention it, this was what george bernard shaw had to say:

"murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind."

clearly the better bernard shaw

good quote

and because one can safely assume that everyone who has ever lived is actually awful, i just checked his wikipedia and learned that he promoted eugenics. hey, i guess we all make mistakes

I don't have the brain/heart software anymore that allows me to wish physical harm on others, even evil bastards. I just wince thinking about it these days. Maybe it's the psych meds.

i've stopped believing in the ability of the state to administer justice

The state has never been much good at the justice thing. Every judicial mechanism designed to exclude bias and discover truth is easily subverted or defeated, so what remains is mostly just the show.

i wish i had changed my mind so i could more dramatically answer this question but i do think i've made my answer succinct: some crimes deserve the death penalty but our society is not equipped to apply it justly so better at this time it should not be applied at all.

i say we bring back the death penalty but pardon anybody who knows the secret magic words, which are "please don't kill me". it's probably more just than the farce masquerading as justice we have these days.

lmao at milkshake duck George Bernard Shaw

time for a new username

boringly i fully agree with mordys take which iirc the excellent ilx posters kev k and gbx whittled me down to at a previous revive into the matter

i don't know how you weren't first convinced by my pioneering "i am obviously right" tactic

i noted in but yr too nice a guy to really sell the belligerence tbh

dammit deems

Whittle me this

are you making fun of my litp

Ha

good news from washington state:

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Washington state’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the death penalty, as applied, violates its Constitution.

The ruling Thursday makes Washington the latest state to do away with capital punishment. The court was unanimous in its order that the eight people currently on death row have their sentences converted to life in prison. Five justices said the “death penalty is invalid because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.”

“Given the manner in which it is imposed, the death penalty also fails to serve any legitimate penological goals,” the justices wrote.

awesome

huh
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/428361-red-states-move-to-end-death-penalty

740 people on California's Death Row is insane

New Hampshire abolished the death penalty yesterday, becoming the 21st state in country to do so. Is the United States experiencing a sea change when it comes to capital punishment? @taniel in @theappeal Political Report. https://t.co/3NGeysComx

— The Appeal (@theappeal) May 31, 2019

making progress. and by making progress i mean regaining the ground lost since the 1970s

Maybe I'm a snowflake but one of the things I find most shocking about the US is its continued commitment to capital punishment and the fact that calls for abolition are not as audible as they ought to be. Biden's pledge to get rid of the death penalty is a step in the right direction, although I highly doubt it will go anywhere:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/11/brandon-bernard-execution-abolish-death-penalty

This is well known, of course, but the way it's applied is so blatanly, shamelessly racist too:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/us/racial-gap-death-penalty.html

I can't even believe it's up for debate.

Also it seems pretty clear to me that Donald J. Trump *is* a fucking sociopath:

After 17 years without a federal execution, the Trump administration has executed nine inmates since July, and plans five more executions before Joe Biden takes office on 20 January.

For 130 years, lame-duck presidents have held off on executions, and now this shitstain decides to upend that.

Trump is an absolute fucking creep.

hard to think of a better litmus test for being an evil person than supporting the death penalty in any form in 2020

He called for the execution of the Central Park Five, too, which kind of ties it all up neatly: the incarceration system and wealthy white people teaming up to try to get innocent people of color executed for political gain

hard to think of a better litmus test for being an evil person than supporting the death penalty in any form in 2020

Is that any way to talk about Mordy and darraghmac?

Well, that's disappointing. :/

I always thought the latter was just talking about Serge Aurier and it was more of a joek

he is talking about Aurier and it's not a joek

an appeal for clemency on recent good behavior

Is that any way to talk about Mordy and darraghmac?

aka the Just Retribution Crew.

it's a mindset we all understand, because I think most of us can agree that there are crimes so abhorrent that they cry out for just retribution. The problem at its base is that there's no way to allow for a death penalty in those cases that doesn't simultaneously open the door for all sorts of profound and irreversible injustice. and that is even more abhorrent to the concept of justice than any 'failure' of justice involved in letting evil people live in a cage.

I most of us can agree that there are crimes so abhorrent that they cry out for just retribution

Yes, and the death penalty is never it.

Think ive rather come round to the view that theres plenty deserve death but no human system capable of administration in any way that can work

hth

A penniless, ostracized Trump cast adrift in a country he deems a 'shithole', reduced to tearfully solliciting alms as the locals gleefully spit in his begging bowl, would be preferable to a highly publicized lethal injection, for instance.

Granted

But how bout public chainsaw

the death penalty horrifies me, seriously, but

i like watching docs about ex Nazis getting there just desserts. that appears to be my line

not classifying Trump as an ex Nazi for this quibble

but i wouldn't cry or anything