Capital Punishment - Page 3 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Crime and prevention thereof. Loopholes, grey areas and the letter of the law.
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By Godstud
#14755624
If you make someone's life so unbearable that they commit suicide, it's technically murder. It's no more principled than torture.
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By anarchist23
#14755630
The problem with capital punishment is that it can be counter productive.
If a criminal commits a crime that would result in a death sentence and he can reduce the chance of being apprehended by committing more crime, then he will. As for example, killing witnesses and victims that can testify against him.

China has a novel way of execution.
The execution van, also called a mobile execution unit, was developed by the government of the People's Republic of China and was first used[citation needed] in 1997. The prisoner is strapped to a stretcher and executed inside the van. The van allows death sentences to be carried out without moving the prisoner to an execution ground. The vans also require less manpower per execution, requiring four persons to assist with the injection. The PRC states that the vans are more humane than previous forms of execution. Human-rights groups predict that the execution rate in China will increase because of mobile capital punishment.
By foxdemon
#14755639
No one yet has offered the liberal reason to oppose the death penalty.

The idea goes like this: liberal law must protect the innocent. There is an open trial before an impartial judge so that a person gets a fair hearing if accused of a crime. Given any one of us might be inadvertently, or even deliberately, be falsely accused of a crime, surely we would want that fair hearing, with all the evidence brought forward. But at times the available evidence leads a judge and jury to wrongly find a defendant guilty. If we were to kill them and later find out their were innocent after all, a great injustice would have been done.

In liberal law it is thought to be better to let a few guilty people go free than to wrongly persecute a single innocent person. The death penalty is not compatible with liberal law if the principles of that law are taken to its ideological extreme. Whether that is right or wrong, well I guess that depends on whether one takes the 'society must be protected' perspective or if one spends a moment to imagine oneself wrongly accused and sitting on death row.

What would you prefer? Kill the wrong doers ad if a mistake was made then that is just the price of justice, or would you prefer tohave that protection for the innocent if one day you find yourself falsely accused of a capital crime?
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By One Degree
#14755642
I feel like a tape recorder playing back canned responses. I wonder how some of you feel who have been here for years. :(

Once they have gone to prison, innocent or not, they have been too damaged to risk returning to society. Keeping them around for 50 years in the hope they will be proven innocent is irrational. Capital punishment should be based upon the 'Greater Good', not on isolated mistakes. The greater good to society is served by immediate execution. It is cheaper, eliminates repeat offenders, and even provides relief to the loved ones of the person executed. Closure is important to all concerned.
#14755682
anarchist23 wrote:The problem with capital punishment is that it can be counter productive.
If a criminal commits a crime that would result in a death sentence and he can reduce the chance of being apprehended by committing more crime, then he will. As for example, killing witnesses and victims that can testify against him.

Good point. If criminals know they will live if they surrender, but could be killed if they resist apprehension by force, it makes the police's job safer.
By OllytheBrit
#14756416
Godstud wrote:If you make someone's life so unbearable that they commit suicide, it's technically murder. It's no more principled than torture.


Is it? Do you have a link to prove that? Anyway the point is they'd never murder or abuse a child ever again, and that's good enough for me. Unlike yourself I don't anguish for the rights of the perpetrators, my thoughts are for the victims, especially those toward whom overwhelming strength has been used.
#14756675
If you can guarantee that the death penalty will be used equally against the rich, the police, and white people, no problem.

Because these days, it is probably used disproportionately against poor people, and people of colour.
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By XogGyux
#14756685
GlobalBuddy wrote:Why should or should not there be the death penalty as an option for crimes?
I would like to see the reasoning for the death penalty.
How should it be carried out?

No death penalty.
I personally consider death a better alternative than life in prison. If I was a criminal and had to choose death penalty or life in prison I would choose death penalty. I find it a better alternative.
Therefore I do not think that the "worse" punishment should be the "best outcome" as a result I don't think the death penalty is necessary.
My views are not from an humanistic point of view.
By foxdemon
#14756690
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/523


It isn't really known how many innocent people are killed each year in the American legal system. The true number might be quite high. Those at most risk of being executed when innocent are poor males. More so black males but white poor males are at significant risk also. These people suffer from inadequate legal representation. I think it was Marx who pointed out that rights are a great concept but they fail on the grounds that many are unable to afford legal represtation and thus can not secure those rights in court.

I honestly can't see how the death penalty can be regarded as consistent with liberalism. Of all the nations in the world, you'd think America, the great bastion of liberalism, would be most opposed to execution. Yet, despite their assertion of liberal ideology, and despite that they are personally at risk of being executed even though they are innocent, there seems to be wide spread support for the death penalty. I find this quite remarkable.
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By Godstud
#14756694
I honestly can't see how the death penalty can be regarded as consistent with liberalism.
It's not. It's a throwback to more violent times. This is why most progressive and civilized countries have done away with it.

Check it out... USA shouldn't belong in with those other countries. Not while pretending liberty and justice are founding principles, that is.
Image
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By MistyTiger
#14757487
GlobalBuddy wrote:There is no evidence, and there probably can't be.
In the U.S., states that have abolished the death penalty have consistently had lower murder rates on average.
There are many factors, but the death penalty hasn't been shown to make up for most of the difference.


Do you have a link for that? I would like to see the stats by state.
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By One Degree
#14757518
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-penalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates#stateswithvwithout


Here is a link, but I don't know what value the information has. Do they have the death penalty because they have a lot of murders or vice versa?

Edit: Biased site I am sure.
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By MistyTiger
#14757639
One Degree wrote:
Here is a link, but I don't know what value the information has. Do they have the death penalty because they have a lot of murders or vice versa?


Thanks.

Good question too. Do they have the death penalty because they feel good watching a bad person die? It could be a way of closure for some, perhaps. Or it could just be an unhealthy fascination to see the living die like in the times of gladiators when they would march out the undesirables in the ring to be killed by animals or trained gladiators.

I do not see how capital punishment actually deters major crimes like murder. If people are crazy and want to kill, they just do it. Feelings and rational thinking rarely mix together when people are so emotional.
#14758453
One Degree wrote: Do they have the death penalty because they have a lot of murders or vice versa?

Consider anarchist23's point: if someone has committed a capital crime, then they lose nothing by killing witnesses. ISTR that interviews with death row prisoners revealed a substantial fraction had killed witnesses at the scene of their crime for precisely that reason. E.g., a drug dealer takes out a rival, then everyone else who happens to be in the house.
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By Godstud
#14803819
That's simply an opinion poll. The studies and facts point to Capital Punishment as being ineffective as a deterrent, and therefore, ineffective.
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By Godstud
#14803827
Fact: In 2010, a death row inmate waited an average of 178 months (roughly 15 years) between sentencing and execution. Nearly a quarter of inmates on death row in the U.S. die of natural causes while awaiting execution or appealing their cases.

Fact: 1 in 25 of all people executed, are likely innocent.

In fact, that’s probably low-balling the actual number of erroneous death penalty sentences. “We conclude that this is a conservative estimate of the proportion of false conviction among death sentences in the United States,” “From 1973 to 2004, 1.6 percent of those sentenced to death in the U.S. — 138 prisoners — were exonerated and released because of innocence,” the Associated Press reports. That number, however, according to the study, likely short changes the actual number of wrongly handed down death sentences for a simple reason—while on death row the inmates’ cases receive a much higher level of scrutiny. That leads the authors to surmise, the actual number of mistaken executions is much lower than the number of those sentenced to death.

[T]he great majority of innocent people who are sentenced to death are never identified and freed, says professor Samuel Gross of the University of Michigan Law School, the study's lead author. The difficulty in identifying innocent inmates stems from the fact that more than 60 percent of prisoners in death penalty cases ultimately are removed from death row and resentenced to life imprisonment. Once that happens, their cases no longer receive the exhaustive reviews that the legal system provides for those on death row… The research produced an estimate of the percentage of defendants who would be exonerated if they all remained indefinitely on death row, where their cases would be subject to intense scrutiny for innocence… The study concluded that the number of innocent defendants who have been put to death is "comparatively low. ... Our data and the experience of practitioners in the field both indicate that the criminal justice system goes to far greater lengths to avoid executing innocent defendants than to prevent them from remaining in prison indefinitely."
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... n_u_s.html

The rate of erroneous conviction of innocent criminal defendants is often described as not merely unknown but unknowable. We use survival analysis to model this effect, and estimate that if all death-sentenced defendants remained under sentence of death indefinitely at least 4.1% would be exonerated. We conclude that this is a conservative estimate of the proportion of false conviction among death sentences in the United States.
The study: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7230.abstract
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By Godstud
#14803832
Facts based on real information.

Another factor during this period has been the rise of non-profit law firms, the Innocence Project, and pro bono lawyers, often in association with centers at university law schools, who have provided counsel to death row inmates. In some cases they have gained full exoneration; in others they have gained new trials or resentencing, including commutation of death sentences to life in prison or time served. In 2010, a death row inmate waited an average of 178 months (roughly 15 years) between sentencing and execution.[6] Nearly a quarter of inmates on death row in the U.S. die of natural causes while awaiting execution or appealing their cases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_row


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