5 ms·

No. The death penalty is wrong, end of. I dont care who we are talking about, if it is wrong to kill, then it is wrong to kill. That has to be n absolute or we

by alan_cx 13y ago

No. The death penalty is wrong, end of. I dont care who we are talking about, if it is wrong to kill, then it is wrong to kill. That has to be n absolute or we just get mission creep in the application of the law. And you know what happens, juniors get to shoulder the blame while the people at the top get away with it. Ever seen a rich powerful person get the death penalty in a western democracy? Look at the US. Its pretty much all economically poor minorities on death row. No politicians, businessmen, bankers, senior military officers, just poor people. I understand your motivation, I "feel" the same way, but I have to disagree with any one who supports the death penalty, for any reason. It is wrong. And for me, that is an absolute. Put it this way, are you prepared for you, your partner, or children to die at the hands of a court in a miscarriage of justice? Are you prepared to even risk that? Do you trust the system enough top gamble your own life or that of your loved ones? Yeah, politicians and associated scum are humans as well.......... unfortunately.

tehwalrus 13y ago
I am (by some definition) a politician. (approved parliamentary candidate, political blogger, what have you. never actually won, mind.) I am happy for anyone who seeks power over others as absolute as political power (and military power, since they can also commit war crimes which are international crimes) to be subject to the death penalty if they misuse that power. Including me. I am not gambling the life of my "loved ones" on such a system, nor am I defending the death penalty in 99.99% of the cases where it is used today (I am just as appalled as you at the way it, and the prison system in general, are used to subjugate ethnic minorities in America.) EDIT: some more clarifications. I hugely respect alan_cx's position, which was mine for many years. I also want to point out that I don't want to change UK law - I want to augment the powers of the ICC (international criminal court) to allow it to punish crimes by death, where the current maximum is life imprisonment. I actually thought they already used the death penalty, but I've just checked and I was wrong.
- kybernetikos 13y ago
  I think the point that was being made is that when you make the rules you have to assume that there will occasionally be mistakes in the application of those rules and sometimes the whole purpose and intent will be corrupted given enough power and opportunity. Given that, even if you support the death penalty for certain crimes or kinds of individuals (crimes against civilians during war or prisoner abuses can test my own anti-death penalty stance) it can still make sense not to support the death penalty as an institution.
  - narag 13y ago
    Death penalty is also a problem when seeking extradition. There are provisions in many national legislations to avoid extraditing persons if they could be imposed a penalty that doesn't exists in the country.
arethuza 13y ago
"The death penalty is wrong" - that's all you need to say, not because of the possibility of someone innocent being executed, for me it's just plain wrong. [And yes, this applies to all the genocidal murderous maniacs of history - if it was my call I wouldn't execute anyone ever].
- nileshtrivedi 13y ago
  Doesn't that mean all wars are immoral (irrespective of the justifications like defense)? Would you say that the military too should not be allowed to ever kill anyone? If no, I see an inconsistency that needs to be explained.
  - lmm 13y ago
    If someone will not submit to the judgement of the law then it's permissible and indeed often necessary to kill them. But if someone gives themselves up or is captured then they should not be killed. In the same way soldiers in a war have a right to surrender, and those who surrender should not be killed - but it's permissible to kill those who don't.
    - nileshtrivedi 13y ago
      This seems like sound reasoning. Thanks for wording it so clearly.
  - arethuza 13y ago
    No inconsistency whatsoever - the discussion is about executions as a penalty in a judicial context. Police, militaries and individuals should all have the right to employ potentially deadly force if required and justified within a legal context.
    - PavlovsCat 13y ago
      If there is no way to save a life (or several) other than to use lethal force against the attacker, then I wouldn't consider it murder, but (self-)defense. Otherwise, I couldn't care less if it's legal or who does it, it's not justified.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
andyhmltn 13y ago
I don't agree with the death penalty as I see it as an easy way out. What sounds like a better option to you: * Spending the rest of your life in solidarity with terrible food and no entertainment * Death
- freehunter 13y ago
  >Spending the rest of your life in solidarity with terrible food and no entertainment That sounds like torture to me.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  Any penal system should focus more on rehabilitation/reintegration than pure punishment. The idea is to make society safer.
  - andyhmltn 13y ago
    Of course. I believe in that too. But I'm talking about the criminals that are beyond help (massacring etc)
    - flyinRyan 13y ago
      So if they're beyond help you want to torture them? Why not put them into a mental hospital and try to work out what went wrong? They'll still have a sucky life, but at least we might get something useful out of it.
      - andyhmltn 13y ago
        No not at all! I don't believe in torture. When I mentioned torture in my previous comment, I was referring to spending the rest of your life in prison, not actual torture.
        flyinRyan 13y ago
        I consider spending your life behind bars as a form of torture as well, or very close. It's certainly incredibly barbaric and I can't think of any advantage it has over a mental hospital.
speeder 13y ago
Death penalty is wrong when you can afford it being wrong. Here in Brazil most of the population want death penalty back, simply because we are expending enormous amounts of money in dangerous criminals (murderers, rapists, thieves that murder, drug lords...) and it is not fixing anything, crime continue rising, and the more people we lock up, the more people show up. Worse, some people even after 30 years in prison (our maximum prison sentence), as soon they get released, they commit crimes again. To not mention escapees... Every time a mass escape happen, there is a surging crime wage. So people here outright think criminals must be killed, the problem is that without death penalty, people then kill instead of criminals, suspects, voiding the "innocent until guilty". In that perspective what is better, death penalty, but you have a trial first, reducing (but obviously not eliminating) miscarriage of justice, or a angry population that might impale the head of a soccer judge on a stake? Yes, that happened here! This week, during a amateur soccer game, one particularly violent player got kicked out of the game, unhappy he decided to attack the judge. The judge after getting kicked a couple of times and fighting the guy, pulled a knife and stabbed in one single stab the guy chest (seemly the heart, since the guy died with that single stab). The team of the violent player was extremely unhappy with that outcome, tied the judge to a tree, stoned him, and then they removed his limbs (I forgot the term in english)and impaled his head in a stake. And the most absurd this might look, the population is HAPPY this happened, and want to prevent the police to catch the perpetrators, because the population WANTS more stuff like this to happen, because the commonly spelled belief here that: "A good bandit, is a dead bandit."
- tehwalrus 13y ago
  I must disagree - the death penalty for civilians is not acceptable. The important thing for Brazil (this is my personal opinion as someone from a developed nation, so by all means ignore me!) is to build the economy so that crime doesn't pay anymore. The new economies (BRIC) are doing a great job of this, and you need to stick at it! You should also know that here in the UK "most of the population" want the death penalty back (I don't know if this is true anymore, but it certainly was until relatively recently) - but the political establishment understand that this is not a vote winner. Much like EU membership, most people who want hanging, or to leave the EU, won't vote against you if you disagree with them on that - they will choose who to vote for on something else. Woe betide any pro-death penalty politician though - as many people would vote against them for this reason (maybe not so much with the EU,) thus, politicians in the 80s and 90s were by and large anti-death-penalty, even though a referendum on it would have brought it back. This, by the way, is not "undemocratic" or anything - it's about what issues are important to people, as well as their direct opinion (this is why many polls about the EU in the UK are misleading - people don't like it, but it's not very important to them.) I suspect that even in Brazil people would (or will eventually) place economic policy ahead of death penalty stance when choosing who to vote for - and so it won't change.

by alan_cx 13y ago

tehwalrus 13y ago

I am (by some definition) a politician. (approved parliamentary candidate, political blogger, what have you. never actually won, mind.) I am happy for anyone who seeks power over others as absolute as political power (and military power, since they can also commit war crimes which are international crimes) to be subject to the death penalty if they misuse that power. Including me. I am not gambling the life of my "loved ones" on such a system, nor am I defending the death penalty in 99.99% of the cases where it is used today (I am just as appalled as you at the way it, and the prison system in general, are used to subjugate ethnic minorities in America.) EDIT: some more clarifications. I hugely respect alan_cx's position, which was mine for many years. I also want to point out that I don't want to change UK law - I want to augment the powers of the ICC (international criminal court) to allow it to punish crimes by death, where the current maximum is life imprisonment. I actually thought they already used the death penalty, but I've just checked and I was wrong.

kybernetikos 13y ago
I think the point that was being made is that when you make the rules you have to assume that there will occasionally be mistakes in the application of those rules and sometimes the whole purpose and intent will be corrupted given enough power and opportunity. Given that, even if you support the death penalty for certain crimes or kinds of individuals (crimes against civilians during war or prisoner abuses can test my own anti-death penalty stance) it can still make sense not to support the death penalty as an institution.
- narag 13y ago
  Death penalty is also a problem when seeking extradition. There are provisions in many national legislations to avoid extraditing persons if they could be imposed a penalty that doesn't exists in the country.

arethuza 13y ago

"The death penalty is wrong" - that's all you need to say, not because of the possibility of someone innocent being executed, for me it's just plain wrong. [And yes, this applies to all the genocidal murderous maniacs of history - if it was my call I wouldn't execute anyone ever].

nileshtrivedi 13y ago
Doesn't that mean all wars are immoral (irrespective of the justifications like defense)? Would you say that the military too should not be allowed to ever kill anyone? If no, I see an inconsistency that needs to be explained.
- lmm 13y ago
  If someone will not submit to the judgement of the law then it's permissible and indeed often necessary to kill them. But if someone gives themselves up or is captured then they should not be killed. In the same way soldiers in a war have a right to surrender, and those who surrender should not be killed - but it's permissible to kill those who don't.
  - nileshtrivedi 13y ago
    This seems like sound reasoning. Thanks for wording it so clearly.
- arethuza 13y ago
  No inconsistency whatsoever - the discussion is about executions as a penalty in a judicial context. Police, militaries and individuals should all have the right to employ potentially deadly force if required and justified within a legal context.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    If there is no way to save a life (or several) other than to use lethal force against the attacker, then I wouldn't consider it murder, but (self-)defense. Otherwise, I couldn't care less if it's legal or who does it, it's not justified.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

andyhmltn 13y ago

I don't agree with the death penalty as I see it as an easy way out. What sounds like a better option to you: * Spending the rest of your life in solidarity with terrible food and no entertainment * Death

freehunter 13y ago
>Spending the rest of your life in solidarity with terrible food and no entertainment That sounds like torture to me.
rbanffy 13y ago
Any penal system should focus more on rehabilitation/reintegration than pure punishment. The idea is to make society safer.
- andyhmltn 13y ago
  Of course. I believe in that too. But I'm talking about the criminals that are beyond help (massacring etc)
  - flyinRyan 13y ago
    So if they're beyond help you want to torture them? Why not put them into a mental hospital and try to work out what went wrong? They'll still have a sucky life, but at least we might get something useful out of it.
    - andyhmltn 13y ago
      No not at all! I don't believe in torture. When I mentioned torture in my previous comment, I was referring to spending the rest of your life in prison, not actual torture.
      - flyinRyan 13y ago
        I consider spending your life behind bars as a form of torture as well, or very close. It's certainly incredibly barbaric and I can't think of any advantage it has over a mental hospital.

speeder 13y ago

Death penalty is wrong when you can afford it being wrong. Here in Brazil most of the population want death penalty back, simply because we are expending enormous amounts of money in dangerous criminals (murderers, rapists, thieves that murder, drug lords...) and it is not fixing anything, crime continue rising, and the more people we lock up, the more people show up. Worse, some people even after 30 years in prison (our maximum prison sentence), as soon they get released, they commit crimes again. To not mention escapees... Every time a mass escape happen, there is a surging crime wage. So people here outright think criminals must be killed, the problem is that without death penalty, people then kill instead of criminals, suspects, voiding the "innocent until guilty". In that perspective what is better, death penalty, but you have a trial first, reducing (but obviously not eliminating) miscarriage of justice, or a angry population that might impale the head of a soccer judge on a stake? Yes, that happened here! This week, during a amateur soccer game, one particularly violent player got kicked out of the game, unhappy he decided to attack the judge. The judge after getting kicked a couple of times and fighting the guy, pulled a knife and stabbed in one single stab the guy chest (seemly the heart, since the guy died with that single stab). The team of the violent player was extremely unhappy with that outcome, tied the judge to a tree, stoned him, and then they removed his limbs (I forgot the term in english)and impaled his head in a stake. And the most absurd this might look, the population is HAPPY this happened, and want to prevent the police to catch the perpetrators, because the population WANTS more stuff like this to happen, because the commonly spelled belief here that: "A good bandit, is a dead bandit."

tehwalrus 13y ago
I must disagree - the death penalty for civilians is not acceptable. The important thing for Brazil (this is my personal opinion as someone from a developed nation, so by all means ignore me!) is to build the economy so that crime doesn't pay anymore. The new economies (BRIC) are doing a great job of this, and you need to stick at it! You should also know that here in the UK "most of the population" want the death penalty back (I don't know if this is true anymore, but it certainly was until relatively recently) - but the political establishment understand that this is not a vote winner. Much like EU membership, most people who want hanging, or to leave the EU, won't vote against you if you disagree with them on that - they will choose who to vote for on something else. Woe betide any pro-death penalty politician though - as many people would vote against them for this reason (maybe not so much with the EU,) thus, politicians in the 80s and 90s were by and large anti-death-penalty, even though a referendum on it would have brought it back. This, by the way, is not "undemocratic" or anything - it's about what issues are important to people, as well as their direct opinion (this is why many polls about the EU in the UK are misleading - people don't like it, but it's not very important to them.) I suspect that even in Brazil people would (or will eventually) place economic policy ahead of death penalty stance when choosing who to vote for - and so it won't change.