The death penalty does not belong in civilised societies

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I'm not for the death penalty,but I think I'd rather be dead than life in prison.

I think precisely because we are not yet civilized we don't have death penalty. We wouldn't know how to handle it. We are in the middle level of civilization. First we had death penalty, then now we don't and I hope we will in the future. Though it's likely we will never reach this level of advancement.

Oh and as for abortion, criminals are at least people, fetuses are fetuses.

Thanks Cornflake. You have done the right thing. That was just what this poll needed.

Last edited by Atom1966 on 19 Apr 2014, 10:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Search google, "Prisoners want to die", and see some prisoners prefer the death penalty.
It is too kind to give people the death penalty, make them suffer in prison.

There are also tons of sociopaths who feel absolutely godlike for what they were able to do to people and even feel more smug for the fact that they were able to do it and still live. They could wake up every day in prison and instead of feeling even the slightest ounce of repentance they actually feel like they won.

I can't remember how long ago it was that a study was done on self-esteem within various segments of society and it turned out that college students scored the lowest while prison convicts scored the highest. The idea that they're being eaten away from the insides every day of their lives for the weight of their own crimes is a bit of a myth. It's only true for the odd case where someone was blackmailed or cornered into doing something they didn't want to, just that these people rarely end up getting in deep enough on the rap sheet to be eligible for the death penalty.

I know a sociopath, labeled "anti-social personality disorder". This person has done maybe two hundred crimes of all sorts from child molestation, hundreds of thefts, gun running, house bombing to get revenge on people, scams, screwing companies/people over when the opportunity strikes ...

You make it sound like sociopaths do not suffer in prison. I have heard many prison stories from this person. I think sociopaths do suffer in prison.

It is not about "eaten alive"; the suffering comes from ...

-loss of freedom
-not being able to have a relationship
-cut off from their families/loved ones
-living with medical conditions
-lack of available care/sub-standard care
-living in hostile conditions
-living in gang/racial tension
-living with poor accommodations
-dread/loss of hope (if young and sentenced to life)
-when elderly they cannot protect themselves as well against the other inmates
-they may develop medical conditions like diabetes say, and prison care is poor, and overall management of their condition will be hard in prison.
-they may even "rehabilitate" or "mature", and realize how dumb they were to throw their life away.

If someone is executed, then they will miss out on all that suffering.

If they're still getting a thrill out of seeing the same million-dollar smile in the mirror, dominating other prisoners in the shower stall, shanking someone in the neck who irritated them last week, has just as many if not more drugs where they're at than on the outside and can even occasionally get a cellphone to see if some fun things could be done to the prosecutor who put them away that involves either rope and gasoline or pliers - they're not only raisin' enough hell to feel great about themselves and not feel like they went soft but they've even got three meals and a bed taken care of.

We're also talking about people who'd find seedy enough surroundings on the outside where to look at a jail cell or to look at where they'd choose to live otherwise you'd hardly notice the difference. From that perspective I tend to doubt that there's this huge extra-added weight of suffering.

I think that if you give government the ability to legally murder people, there is likely to come a day that you will come to regret that decision. Never stake innocent human life on the benevolent intentions of government, if you can avoid it.

Last edited by Stannis on 19 Apr 2014, 7:26 am, edited 2 times in total.

I'd add drone strikes on American soil of so-called suspected domestic terrorists without evidence.

The only good news for death penalty in our legal system - even if it's dubious just on impracticality - is that those elected for it are at least done so by a jury of their peers far more often than by a military tribunal. Someone's life being inconvenient to a certain group or agency usually isn't how they get the chair or lethal injection. More often that's how they end up having a 'suicide' under questionable conditions or end up having a tragic freak accident of some kind.

As far as most modern prisons in America goes, those same reasons are why an old person who is living in poverty might want to try and rob a bank to be sent to prison.

In prison, your health care is BETTER than a poor elderly person in "free" society because it would be a constitutional violation to not attend to your medical needs (the aging prison population is a big financial crisis right now). As far as living conditions, much depends on your security level. If you are placed in low or medium security facilities, your quality of living would be pretty good. Maximum/high security would be different.

Inside a prison, there is a social structure, and inmates can look out for each other. The question really is if your life in the "free" world is so bleak that living in prison would be an improvement. I found it disgusting when I worked in a prison to see that the inmates had it better than most poor law-abiding people outside the gates.

Speck loved prison.
"In May 1996, television news anchor Bill Kurtis received video tapes made at Stateville Prison sometime before the end of 1991. Showing them publicly for the first time in front of a shocked, and deeply angry Illinois state legislature, the video showed prisoners passing money and drugs around without fear of being caught, engaging in sexual acts, and in the center of it all was Speck, ingesting cocaine, parading around in silk panties, sporting female-like breasts grown from smuggled hormone treatments, and boasting "If they only knew how much fun I was having, they'd turn me loose!"

From behind the camera a prisoner asked him why he killed the nurses. Speck shrugged and jokingly said "It just wasn't their night." The tapes were later broadcast on the A&E Network's Investigative Reports, and were used to argue for the death penalty. John Schmale, the brother of one of the slain nurses, said "It was a very painful experience watching him tell about how he killed my sister," in response to a scene in which Speck describes what needs to be done when strangling a victim."

absolutely, i was using that particular example to illustrate how harsh punishments can get short of killing people.

Yeah... given that the right to implement a death penalty has historically been held by all governments throughout history, I'm kind of thinking that this concern has already been empirically falsified.

Even further, nobody is suggesting "benevolence". Most people who want a death penalty want it regulated by systems checking and thwarting the intentions of different power groups within society.

Finally, ALL punishment could be argued against using the same argument. So, I get the impression that there isn't a non-ad hoc way to use this argument that doesn't ultimately conclude that government is impermissible. The problem is that this is an argument about consequences, and we do roughly know the consequences of having a government.

What concern? I said that it's folly to give government unnecessary powers to kill people, since, once it is implemented, it is open to abuse. I'll run through the statistics of wrongful execution if you would like, but I can't believe you don't already know this.



The crucial distinction is that a wrongful incarceration can always be, and regularly is, reversed. A wrongful execution can not be.



Well, that's great. Maybe they can go find an alternate universe where the justice system isn't corruptible or fallible, to institute it then .

Last edited by Stannis on 20 Apr 2014, 8:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

I hate to say it, but a lot of the stuff that people are sentanced to death for doesn't belong in civilised society either.

Granted there are a lot of faults in the way that the death penalty is applied in the US, but at the same time there are crimes that are deserving of the death penalty. --Tim McVeigh being a good example.

I don't see it as a 'penalty' per se, but rather as garbage disposal. --Humaninty would truly be better off without some people.