[quote="Azurain";p="324300"]Revenge is one of the most basically childish emotions, and juvinile motivations. The 'he did it so he should have it done to him' argument is generally based upon an immature revenge-mindset which should be given no place in the law, certainly not in criminal law.
I'm not necessarily against (or for) capital punishment, but I do not believe that 'it is only fair' is a valid argument for it.[/quote]
Is that to assume that "revenge" is the only compelling argument for capital punishment? Also, you offer no alternatives or reasons why you believe that any punishment whatsoever would ever be appropriate, since it could be argued that it's all "revenged".
[quote="Beer";p="324310"]Capital Punishment is too easy.[/quote]
I would argue that the choice to end someone's life not an "easy" one in most cases. However, how does something being "easy" necessarily equate to being "worthless"?
Capital Punisment?
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1) Remain civil. Respect others' rights to their viewpoints, even if you believe them to be completely wrong.
2) Sourcing your information is highly recommended. Plagiarism will get you banned.
3) Please create a new thread for a new topic, even if you think it might not get a lot of responses. Do not create mega-threads.
4) If you think the subject of a thread is not important enough to merit a post, simply avoid posting in it. If enough people agree, it will fall off the page soon enough.
As I said, Deacon, I'm undecided on the issue of capital punishment. There are certainly other motivations for it, but the intial poster's motivation for being pro capital punishment was primarily a revenge-mentality. The primary reason for punishment in my mind is, of course, deterrance. Deterring people from killing others with the threat of their own death may just be an acceptable legal tactic. I haven't decided yet whether or not the deterrence is sufficient to balance the possible risk of executing an innocent man.
-- Chris
-- Chris
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
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StruckingFuggle
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And, you'd do that to serve what purpose?If i ran the punishment system murders would get beat with a board, with lots of nails, rusty nails, and then make them sit on a pourcipine...... sound painful?
"He who lives by the sword dies by my arrow."
"In your histories, there are continual justifications for all manner of hellish actions. Claims of nobility and heritage and honor to cover up every bit of genocide, assassination, and massacre. At least the Horde is honest in their naked lust for power."
"In your histories, there are continual justifications for all manner of hellish actions. Claims of nobility and heritage and honor to cover up every bit of genocide, assassination, and massacre. At least the Horde is honest in their naked lust for power."
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StruckingFuggle
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That's amusing if its meant as sarcasm ... if you're serious, you realize the irony of that statement, right?Everyone who believes in capital punishment should be shot to death for being a soulless husk of a human.
"He who lives by the sword dies by my arrow."
"In your histories, there are continual justifications for all manner of hellish actions. Claims of nobility and heritage and honor to cover up every bit of genocide, assassination, and massacre. At least the Horde is honest in their naked lust for power."
"In your histories, there are continual justifications for all manner of hellish actions. Claims of nobility and heritage and honor to cover up every bit of genocide, assassination, and massacre. At least the Horde is honest in their naked lust for power."
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peter-griffin
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The only way to make sure this happens is to never punish anyone for anything, ever. The US process of law is the best it gets in terms of filtering out innocents, and humanity can't do much better.I haven't decided yet whether or not the deterrence is sufficient to balance the possible risk of executing an innocent man.
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Deacon
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- Location: Lakehills, TX
[quote="StruckingFuggle";p="325994"]
Make them weigh the decision to take a life more carefully next time. Since we're in the SciPhi forum, let's take a second to take a quick glimpse of an extreme view (much more extreme than my own view, but it helps clarify the point).
Human beings are born with both inherently good and bad traits. As a believer in Yahwe (Jehova, God the Father from which everything else, including his son Jesus, is derived), I believe that the good traits are really not our own, but God's presence helping brighten an otherwise dark world. In other words, in a state of total absence from Him, we would be 100% selfish. A singular human being wants a positive, in whatever form, and it does not want a negative. At the most basic level, a human being wants to live. Beyond that, it wants comfort, power, etc. In the end, each person would basically want to be God, more or less (a complete thread of its own, really). Each person has an internal scale by which every decision is weighed: potential positive gain versus potential negative consequences.
The idea is to provide enough of a negative consequence to outweigh the potential positive gain in any situation in which a person must consider whether to break the law.
Such a system is worked out every day in the real world. You slap my sister, I beat the everloving shit out of you, for instance. Assuming you knew that would be a consequence, you'd have the weigh the positive gain (whatever it is...mental pleasure, probably) of slapping my sister with the negative of getting your ass kicked. Of course, if I *said* I would kick your ass if you slapped my sister, but you slapped my sister without actually seeing me make good on my word, then a tremendous weight is relieved from negative side of the scale, since there's only a *chance* that you'll get your ass kicked, instead of it being a *certainty*.
Now, of course, not everyone makes 100% clear, rational, and logical decisions like that, but that's pretty much what we do on a moment-to-moment, day-to-day basis. Some things we react to almost without concious thought, and some things we weigh carefully before making a decision. However, when someone is at the peak of a passionate moment, let's say when you are in a heated argument with my sister, the threat of a negative consequence must be strong enough to pierce the fog of anger/emotion and to basically drop that scale so hard on the side of a negative consequence that you end up with really very little choice about the matter at all.
If that's really how it works, you can see why capital punishment in its current state is rarely, if ever, going to be a deterrent. If someone knew that, if he were to be found guilty for murdering someone, he would be drug out behind the court house and tortured to death, he would probably think twice before committing that act. Now, that's not to say that torture is necessary, as its only real purpose would be the add weight to the negative consequence side of the scale in his mind when weighing the decision of whether to commit the murder. Deterrence is only one potentially positive aspect of capital punishment.
There are others as well, such as the removal of criminals from society without the exponential cost increases that you get with jails. Torture, of course, is totally irrelevant to this kind of benefit. This kind of benefit would be fully served with a no-torture .45 to the back of the head.
Basically, what you get with a judge/jury/prosecution/defense scenario is a collective dictator. In other words, it's not just one person who makes a decision. It is a collection of people that must all, unanimously, reach the same exact decision after weighing the evidence. Instead of Saddam sending someone to jail, the criminal justice sends someone to jail. The idea is that when you have to take that many people and require that they all unanimously agree that someone is guilty beyond any reasonable doubt, chances are pretty damn good they're guilty, legal tricks, loopholes, and technicalities aside, and that the chances of an incorrect verdict are reduced to an acceptable level, a level that's good enough to deprive a person some or all of their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The problem is that some people make the argument that the possibility of sending one innocent man to jail for a day is too great a risk to take. Others argue that if one person thinks someone is guilty, let 'em die. The reality lies somewhere in the middle. I personally believe the answer is farther away from the "too great a risk" side than is accepted by the majority of Americans, most of whom simply think what they're told to think, regardless.
[quote="peter-griffin";p="326093"]
Yes, so far we seem to have the best grasp on the balance between idealism and realism. Any system that involves humanity will be flawed. That's just part of life. Of course, if you're not a religious person, what "risk" is there in executing an "innocent" man? The only risk I can think of is that you're worried it may happen to you one day, and you judge the threat of murderers running around killing, raping, and maiming people with relative impunity to be less than the threat of being falsely convicted of a crime resulting in capital punishment.
And, you'd do that to serve what purpose?[/quote]If i ran the punishment system murders would get beat with a board, with lots of nails, rusty nails, and then make them sit on a pourcipine...... sound painful?
Make them weigh the decision to take a life more carefully next time. Since we're in the SciPhi forum, let's take a second to take a quick glimpse of an extreme view (much more extreme than my own view, but it helps clarify the point).
Human beings are born with both inherently good and bad traits. As a believer in Yahwe (Jehova, God the Father from which everything else, including his son Jesus, is derived), I believe that the good traits are really not our own, but God's presence helping brighten an otherwise dark world. In other words, in a state of total absence from Him, we would be 100% selfish. A singular human being wants a positive, in whatever form, and it does not want a negative. At the most basic level, a human being wants to live. Beyond that, it wants comfort, power, etc. In the end, each person would basically want to be God, more or less (a complete thread of its own, really). Each person has an internal scale by which every decision is weighed: potential positive gain versus potential negative consequences.
The idea is to provide enough of a negative consequence to outweigh the potential positive gain in any situation in which a person must consider whether to break the law.
Such a system is worked out every day in the real world. You slap my sister, I beat the everloving shit out of you, for instance. Assuming you knew that would be a consequence, you'd have the weigh the positive gain (whatever it is...mental pleasure, probably) of slapping my sister with the negative of getting your ass kicked. Of course, if I *said* I would kick your ass if you slapped my sister, but you slapped my sister without actually seeing me make good on my word, then a tremendous weight is relieved from negative side of the scale, since there's only a *chance* that you'll get your ass kicked, instead of it being a *certainty*.
Now, of course, not everyone makes 100% clear, rational, and logical decisions like that, but that's pretty much what we do on a moment-to-moment, day-to-day basis. Some things we react to almost without concious thought, and some things we weigh carefully before making a decision. However, when someone is at the peak of a passionate moment, let's say when you are in a heated argument with my sister, the threat of a negative consequence must be strong enough to pierce the fog of anger/emotion and to basically drop that scale so hard on the side of a negative consequence that you end up with really very little choice about the matter at all.
If that's really how it works, you can see why capital punishment in its current state is rarely, if ever, going to be a deterrent. If someone knew that, if he were to be found guilty for murdering someone, he would be drug out behind the court house and tortured to death, he would probably think twice before committing that act. Now, that's not to say that torture is necessary, as its only real purpose would be the add weight to the negative consequence side of the scale in his mind when weighing the decision of whether to commit the murder. Deterrence is only one potentially positive aspect of capital punishment.
There are others as well, such as the removal of criminals from society without the exponential cost increases that you get with jails. Torture, of course, is totally irrelevant to this kind of benefit. This kind of benefit would be fully served with a no-torture .45 to the back of the head.
Basically, what you get with a judge/jury/prosecution/defense scenario is a collective dictator. In other words, it's not just one person who makes a decision. It is a collection of people that must all, unanimously, reach the same exact decision after weighing the evidence. Instead of Saddam sending someone to jail, the criminal justice sends someone to jail. The idea is that when you have to take that many people and require that they all unanimously agree that someone is guilty beyond any reasonable doubt, chances are pretty damn good they're guilty, legal tricks, loopholes, and technicalities aside, and that the chances of an incorrect verdict are reduced to an acceptable level, a level that's good enough to deprive a person some or all of their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The problem is that some people make the argument that the possibility of sending one innocent man to jail for a day is too great a risk to take. Others argue that if one person thinks someone is guilty, let 'em die. The reality lies somewhere in the middle. I personally believe the answer is farther away from the "too great a risk" side than is accepted by the majority of Americans, most of whom simply think what they're told to think, regardless.
[quote="peter-griffin";p="326093"]
The only way to make sure this happens is to never punish anyone for anything, ever. The US process of law is the best it gets in terms of filtering out innocents, and humanity can't do much better.[/quote]I haven't decided yet whether or not the deterrence is sufficient to balance the possible risk of executing an innocent man.
Yes, so far we seem to have the best grasp on the balance between idealism and realism. Any system that involves humanity will be flawed. That's just part of life. Of course, if you're not a religious person, what "risk" is there in executing an "innocent" man? The only risk I can think of is that you're worried it may happen to you one day, and you judge the threat of murderers running around killing, raping, and maiming people with relative impunity to be less than the threat of being falsely convicted of a crime resulting in capital punishment.
The follies which a man regrets the most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity. - Helen Rowland, A Guide to Men, 1922
[quote="peter-griffin";p="326093"]
The difference is, if in ten years we learn that we've wrongfully imprisoned someone, we can set him free and probably try to compensate him for the injustice.
Until we master the art of ressurection, there's a significant difference in the case of capital punishment.
The only way to make sure this happens is to never punish anyone for anything, ever. The US process of law is the best it gets in terms of filtering out innocents, and humanity can't do much better.[/quote]I haven't decided yet whether or not the deterrence is sufficient to balance the possible risk of executing an innocent man.
The difference is, if in ten years we learn that we've wrongfully imprisoned someone, we can set him free and probably try to compensate him for the injustice.
Until we master the art of ressurection, there's a significant difference in the case of capital punishment.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
-
peter-griffin
- Redshirt
- Posts: 2520
- Joined: Sun May 04, 2003 8:00 am
And yes, Deacon actually quite eloquently phrased my point as well. I was even going to suggest that torture could be a viable punishment for severe crimes, as it'd be a very significant deterrent.
My only real issue is that with any other form of justice there is almost always some way to correct the injustice of a false conviction to some degree, while capital punishment is so permanent.
Perhaps if a life sentence plus x hours of extreme torture was introduced as the highest sentence for a crime, rather than capital punishment, this could be somewhat remedied, but the psychological damage inflicted by torture is significant enough that I'm not sure it'd really be any better.
-- Chris
My only real issue is that with any other form of justice there is almost always some way to correct the injustice of a false conviction to some degree, while capital punishment is so permanent.
Perhaps if a life sentence plus x hours of extreme torture was introduced as the highest sentence for a crime, rather than capital punishment, this could be somewhat remedied, but the psychological damage inflicted by torture is significant enough that I'm not sure it'd really be any better.
-- Chris
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
[quote="Imperator Severn";p="325271"]
If that were true, it would be logical to sterilize negroes because Africa is a violent place, and young black males are more likely to commit crime in the united states than any other group. This obviously has nothing to do with the kind of place they grow up in, because their genes are what make them criminals, and if that is so, then people closer to them genetically are more likely to be cariers of the criminal gene even if it does not manifest itsself in antisocial behaviour.
EDIT: Moreover, what of people who actually do have genetic defects? What of midgets and people with cystic fibrosis? Perhaps the retarded should be put to death as well?[/quote]
Damn, you saw where I was going with that...
He's proven himself to be an evolutionary defect,
If that were true, it would be logical to sterilize negroes because Africa is a violent place, and young black males are more likely to commit crime in the united states than any other group. This obviously has nothing to do with the kind of place they grow up in, because their genes are what make them criminals, and if that is so, then people closer to them genetically are more likely to be cariers of the criminal gene even if it does not manifest itsself in antisocial behaviour.
EDIT: Moreover, what of people who actually do have genetic defects? What of midgets and people with cystic fibrosis? Perhaps the retarded should be put to death as well?[/quote]
Damn, you saw where I was going with that...
I'll put something here eventually...
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