The Death Penalty: Your Thoughts

[Maxximus 353]

This comes up fairly often and we haven't had a thread on the topic in awhile, so what say you?

 

 

I've changed. Just a few years ago I'd have said kill 'em all, who cares. Now a days I'm not even sure how I feel about the death penalty. Sure there are always gonna be psychopaths that should be put down but I think most people deserve a chance to make amends for what they've done, not just strapped to a board and injected with State approved murder chemicals. This is probably best suited for discussion in it's own thread.

[Guest Magic]

I used to think I was for the death penalty, but in recent years as I've gotten older I've come round to the view that spending the rest of your life in prison is equal a punishment, if not worse, than instant pain free death.

 

I'm pretty sure it's also been statistically proven that it doesn't work as deterrent for violent crimes either, and that in places where the have the death penalty murder rates are equal if not higher than places without it.

 

I'm all for reforming the justice system, certainly in Great Britain, and creating a tougher system for those people who deserve it. I think you need to look at harsher sentencing for some crimes (mainly violent/sexual etc), and more, not necessarily lenient, but certainly look at alternative punishments for other crimes (such as tax fraud, theft etc.) It's silly that at times someone who's stolen a lot of money can be locked up for longer than a rapist. But the death penalty is probably not the answer, no.

Edited July 21, 2014 by Magic

[Guest John Hancock]

Nope.

 

On a safety level, you can't take it back, and is it worth killing hundreds, if not thousands, of completely innocent people for the sake of killing murders instead of just locking them up for life?

 

On a moral level, I think cathartic violence is a bad thing to encourage on a state level.

 

On a political level, I don't think government-issued violence against it's own people is a good idea.

 

On a practical level, all research has found that it's effectively useless unless you make it the punishment for financial crimes like theft, which is insane.

 

Now that doesn't mean I feel particularly sad when murderers and rapists or whatever die. I've not shed many tears for spree killers who have been shot before they can be arrested, and I won't be attending any candle-lit memorials for child kidnappers who get stabbed to death with toothbrushes, but I'm just uncomfortable with it being an official state policy. It just doesn't seem worth it compared to life without the possibility of parole, which is cheaper, safer for innocent people, morally more justifiable, a better example for a government to set, and, for the criminal, probably a lot less fun.

[Guest The Beltster]

Some people deserve to die for what they've done. I'm in favour of it in certain circumstances but I think its drawn out too long. If you're given death, you die the next day. No appeals, no nothing. Sure there are innocent people who will occasionally be executed but with the way DNA testing, forensic science etc is now and its only going to get better, I'd say the chances of so small that its a risk worth taking.

 

I'll always be for it if you deserve it. You need to make sure you're sure before you kill them though. Some people dont need to be allowed to be alive on this planet if they are no good to nobody, totally unsympathetic and more than happy to brag of what they've done and happy to tell you they'd do it again if they ever got out. And on top of all of that, you have to spend hundreds of thousands housing, feeding and cleaning these pieces of shit for the duration of their worthless lives.

 

Get rid of them. If you dont want to kill them, stick them in a penal colony on an island in the middle of nowhere with no resources and no rules and let them fight it out amongst themselves to see who gets to eat.

[DC 536]

There are certain cases that crop up where I think "Yup; that one deserves the needle", but in general I think prison with no chance of release is the better option.

 

Of course, this is not in the (relatively) cushy cells with games consoles, TVs, etc and should be in an "as basic as we can make it" prison where it's three meals per day and a barred window (with perhaps 1hr per day for exercise).

[dsrchris 190]

Sure there are innocent people who will occasionally be executed but with the way DNA testing, forensic science etc is now and its only going to get better, I'd say the chances of so small that its a risk worth taking.

 

Just to add something to think about, DNA and forensic evidence is nowhere near as conclusive or easy to obtain as TV and movies would have you believe. Put it this way, I wouldn't depend on the UK Criminal Justice System to conclusively prove my innocence based on their forensic work. Especially because I've seen the amount of internal investigations into fraudulent work that goes on in a large forensic service provider.

 

Let's just say there have been more than a few instances of scientists making the evidence fit the crime, rather than allowing it to be left to reasonable doubt.

[Guest John Hancock]

There's been plenty of people with DNA evidence against them who were later released from death row on appeal and found innocent. Research by the University of Michigan, which is probably the major study on wrongful execution estimates that a bare minimum of 5% of all the people executed by the American government provably didn't commit the crime they were convicted of. Since it's hard to prove someone innocent, especially when they're dead and the case is closed, the study estimated the actual number is probably much higher.

 

That's America, easily the most sensible country that still kills people, we're not getting even getting into China or Saudi Arabia or wherever.

[GENE 86]

If there is one hundred percent prove then I'm all for it, and by one hundred percent I mean for example Lee Rigbys killers who openly admit and are proud of their crime.

[etz 78]

I'm totally against the death penalty, for a number of reasons :

 

1) we get things wrong way too often

2) Both DNA and fingerprints aren't anywhere near as concrete as people think... as in, less than 50% accurate in most cases.

3) State sanctioned murder is still murder

4) Life in prison is worse than an easy death

5) keeping people alive in prison is less costly than executing them

 

Also, prisons don't have to be a drain on the tax payer, they can be commercially viable enterprises using the comparatively cheap labor of the prisoners.

[Guest John Hancock]

Yeah, limits on prison labour are a bit silly I think. Obviously we aren't talking about concentration camps, but I've no problem with the idea of someone literally repaying their debt to society. It's also go for improving work ethic, productivity and could even be vocational training for certain prisoners.

[Omega 354]

If there is one hundred percent prove then I'm all for it, and by one hundred percent I mean for example Lee Rigbys killers who openly admit and are proud of their crime.

 

How many people are going to admit to murder if there is a death sentence though?

[Maxximus 353]

Therapy, schooling and job training should all be mandatory for non violent criminals. They should also have a chance to apply for work/school before their release date. Let's teach these people how to contribute to society instead of becoming better and in a lot of cases, even more hardcore, criminals.

 

I'm not sure what do do with the violent criminals besides make them work their asses off while they're inside like Johnny said. They should for sure have the therapy too and if they really have reformed allow them to apply for work before their release too.

[Guest Boyo]

The problem with the judicial system is that it isn't a flawless process, so it would be stupid for such a flawed system to have a finite, irreversible endgame like death.

 

Like many people have said, there are occasions where a crime is so clear cut and horrible that, you know what, the perpetrators probably should die for it. However if we're not killing people I'm all up for making them wish they were dead instead. In many ways it's a crueller punishment than death itself.

 

Cheers!

[Guest John Hancock]

The problem with the "If we can 100% prove it, we're killing you" school though is that it effectively rewards being a good murderer. If you're a murderer under that system, the quality of evidence becomes literally a life or death issue, which would encourage you kill witnesses, and would mean the end of serial killers telling victim's family's where the bodies are buried, amongst other things. It would be basically mean that clever murderers get a lighter sentence than stupid ones. And that's just murder, if it became a legal ruling that more evidence means more prison time, I think the amount of kidnappers and rapists letting their victims survive would start dropping rapidly.

 

On top of that, it would also be constitutionally illegal under most sensible legal systems, because the punishment is based on the quality of the evidence, not the seriousness of the crime. There's a Latin term for it which I've forgotten, but it's one of the foundations of basically every Western legal system, that the evidence is only to establish guilt, and then the punishment is handed down dependent on the guilt, not the evidence that established it. Basically, you can't give someone a stronger conviction for a crime that they are observably 100% guilty of compared to someone who has been found guilty of the same crime, but the evidence was less clear cut. You can't run a legal system like that, it would be a complete mess.

[DC 536]

Just to add something to think about, DNA and forensic evidence is nowhere near as conclusive or easy to obtain as TV and movies would have you believe.

It's an actual recognised thing called The CSI Effect; due to (as you said) TV shows and movies, specifically the CSI franchise, people believe that forensic evidence is infallible, irrefutable, easy to obtain, treat and quick to test.

 

Not to mention that jurors in some cases believe that real CSIs are like the ones on the show (which are really an amalgamation of police officers, forensic detectives and lab technicians, while also thinking the technologies available on the shows are also real-life contraptions.

You can't run a legal system like that, it would be a complete mess.

I'd say it's a mess at the moment anyway.

[Guest Boyo]

Oh yeah I absolutely agree with that, and that's what I meant by "flawed". Maybe flawed is the wrong word, but it's definitely not a flawless system either.

 

EDIT: directed at Hancock

 

Cheers!

Edited July 21, 2014 by Boyo

[Guest John Hancock]

I'd say it's a mess at the moment anyway.

 

How so? You could say it's ineffectual, or it's flawed, or it's wrong, but how is it a mess in the way that judging the severity of punishment on a sliding, ambiguous scale of the quality of evidence would be a mess?

[DC 536]

How so?

Based on news reports that show there is no consistency in sentencing and that the more severe the crime doesn't automatically mean a more severe sentence.

 

For example, a guy with over 100 burglary convictions and has never been jailed appears before a judge again and is still not given a custodial sentence, whereas someone who commits a more white collar crime is sentenced to a period of time in prison. This has actually happened.

 

Other examples include a guy who beat up his girlfriend to the point of endangering her life and threatened to kill her (in front of the police) not getting a custodial sentence, only to then kill her a few weeks later.

 

Of course, these are extreme examples, but are atypical of the lack of consistency and lack of actually dealing with an issue.

 

Not to mention that if someone breaks into my home and I defend it to the point of injuring the person, there is more chance of me getting a custodial sentence for violence than the burglar for breaking in.

 

It's the lack of consistency, the softly-softly approach and the apparent unwillingness to actually imprison people who deserve to lose their freedom.

 

All of this is before we even get to the farce that the European Court of Human Rights grew to be and how that has been used for the most frivolous of cases, such as prisoners suing for compensation (and winning) for sometimes ridiculously inane reasons. Criminals appealing deportation and winning because they have a girlfriend. Where it should be "well, you should have thought of that before you committed a crime", it's more like "oh, sorry about that; we didn't know".

 

There are more reasons, but I think it boils down to there being no consistency in sentencing, no apparent "tier" of sentencing lengths dependant on the crime committed and that the rights of the criminal appear to take precedent over the rights of the victim.

[Guest John Hancock]

Where's the mess in that though? All of those cases are about laws being too soft, human rights abuses, and an over emphasis on offenders rights, none of that really demonstrates a lack of consistency, it demonstrates a consistent lack of severity, or a punishment structure that you disagree with (self defence > burglary, white collar freud > theft, to use your examples). That's not a mess, it's a system that you, and me, and lots of other people, disagree with, but it's a system with a set of rules that it follows, that's not at all the same as a system where quality of evidence is used as the basis of sentencing which would be unimaginably undefinable and convoluted.