Death Penalty

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Well I see what you are saying considering the phrenic nerve, which innervates the diaphragm, arises mainly from the 4th cervical nerve. However with paralysis of the diaphragm one will stop breathing and so yea it'll take a few minutes for complete death if the strangling of the rope isn't taken into account. The problem is though that the head and neck receives plenty of innervation from nerves above the C2 as well as cranial nerves... and the sharp snapping of the vertebral column is surely painful to some extent. Therefore I don't think that such a form of capital punishment is feasible in today's society.

I oppose capital punishment, but this has gotten interesting again.

Guillotine? The blood pressure would drop instantaneously. Still, wouldn't the real torment come before the sentence was carried out? Maybe the most humane method would be to isolate the condemned in an airtight cell upon sentencing and soon after, on a randomly determined date, fill it with carbon monoxide while he sleeps.

Yes I agree... the condemned should be asleep, then any type of gas that slowly displaces oxygen in the bloodstream should be pumped into the cell. It actually seems like a very humane way of effectively putting someone out. Although I could definitely imagine that there would be major legal obstacles to conquer =/

I guess this means that the pro-big government side would rather see big government killing innocents so that convicted murderers don't have to do it. Ok, I see it.




Hah. so, take your prison population, consider the actual number of people that are in jail when they would be assasinated by death penalty. Yeah, all eight of them compared to the tens of millions that are jailed for things that are not commonly accepted for death penalty. SO EXPENSIVE.

Opposing death penalty is not mutually exclusive with accepting forced labor though. Why not let the guy earn his living through work nobody else wants to do instead of giving them free food? But that's an irrelevant topic.

Murdering some one who's mentally ill and has the IQ the size of their shoe size is supposed to be a good idea is it |? and how does it prevent some one else in a similar situation from doing like wise ?

Yet the terrible trio (Howard, Bush , and The Blair Rich Project) are not tried for war crimes some one explain that insanity to me .

How many lives where lost thanks to their witchcraft ?

Do they even care ?

Generally speaking, the criminal law has multiple purposes:

1) Protection of the offender
2) Punishment of the offender
3) Rehabilitation
4) Specific deterrence (deterring the individual from reoffending)
5) General deterrence (deterring the public from committing the same offence)
6) Denunciation
7) Restoration

So how does capital punishment measure up against extended terms of imprisonment on these criteria:

Generally speaking, the protection of the offender is addressed through the existence of a trial and punishment process. People are content to see the law do its work and will refrain from vigilanteism provided that they feel that the system works. Accordingly, it is the balance of convictions and acquittals that is more relevant to this factor than the punishment meted out upon conviction. While light sentences are greeted with public disapproval, those who would be candidates for capital punishment rarely fall in this category. Indeed, the threat of capital punishment can have the perverse effect of inclining juries to convict for a lesser, included offence rather than a capital offence.

As far as punishment is concerned, I am not persuaded that capital punishment does a more effective job at punishing the offender. It certainly deprives the offender of more rights than imprisonment, but I don't know that ipso facto it is more effective.

Capital punishment provides no opportunity for rehabilitation.

Capital punishment is completely effective at specific deterrence.

Capital punishment has been demonstrated to be ineffective at general deterrence.

Capital punishment does not strike me is significantly superior at identifying conduct that we seek to denounce. Is murder less disapproved in states where capital punishment is not practiced?

Neither capital punishment nor imprisonment are at all effective at restorative justice.

At the end of the day, I don't see that any purpose of criminal law, other than specific deterrence, is advanced by capital punishment. Is there any offender who is so incapable of rehabilitation that the offender must be prevented from committing another crime at all costs? Can this not be effectively achieved in prison?

40+ years in 23 hour lockdown in a supermax prison inflicts far more suffering than a quick kill. If punishment is the goal, they should suffer. Remove them from all human contact and watch their chimpanzee tribal brains collapse. Once they start eating their own beard hair, send a pic to the families of the victims.

But if they are scheduled to be released, don't do that to them. Else you have very crazy people on the street.

The main drawback of capital punishment is that innocent people are sometimes put to death.

For incorrigibles I think penal colonies would be appropriate. The Penal Colony is cheaper to run and maintain than a prison in the midst of normal society.

ruveyn

Human life and liberty are important things in my value system.

I'm against the state having the power of life and death over it's citizens. Nobody signed something saying "It's okay to kill me if I break certain laws." So I'm against the death penalty in the current circumstances of where I live.

However, when someone swears an oath and signs on the dotted line when they enlist in the military they are agreeing to abide by a set of rules that do include capital punishment for breaking them. So during wartime in our present circumstance of an all-volunteer military I do support capital punishment for a soldier who commits a capital offense. (We don't have a declared war currently, I do not support the death penalty being pursued for PFC Manning.)

As far as capital punishment not being a general deterrent well the story of Vlad the Impaler's golden cup comes to mind. The story goes that Vlad the impaler AKA Vlad Tepes AKA Dracula had a cup made of gold placed at a public well in the center of his city. Anyone could drink from it or use it pour water into another container. No one ever attempted to steal it because the thought of the punishment was terrifying. Every citizen had probably already seen unfortunate law breakers impaled alive and displayed in public squares for breaking Vlad's laws.

If horse thieves weren't publicly hanged in the old American west I'm sure there would have been more horse thievery.

I think fear is a deterrent, and fear is more powerful the more immediate the thing to be feared is. So yeah, if modern capital punishment means years upon years of appeals on death row then it's not going to deter anybody that much.