The Death Penalty

[Black Mage]

Lately, I've been reviewing a few topics, some new, and some old. It has occurred to me, that quite a few people support the Death Penalty, here.

 This intrigues me, and I'd like to know why many of you support this way of thinking. Or don't support it. I really would.

 My personal belief is against the death penalty. I know my reasons, and right now, I'm interested in all of yours. I will post my own thoughts a bit later.

 Please, this is a serious topic, and I would prefer people to refrain from acting immature. When posting in this topic, leave any quarrels, arguments, and dislike for others elsewhere. Thank you, and I hope we can have a great conversation. Take care.

Edited by - Black Mage on 6/28/2003 12:13:50 PM

[The Big Boo]

Ah, an intellectual disscussion. Here I go: Personally, I'm kind of torn. On one hand, I know the people sentenced have done something bad and may deserve to be punished, and keeping a person in jail for X many years is very costly, and might not be enough to make the person learn. On the other hand, the person sentenced may have some kind of unknown problem with their brain that makes them do something bad, like kill someone, and this problem is still unknown to science, so no one knows that it really wasn't the murderer's fault but the diseses'. (Confusing!) Also, killing is against many religious teachings, and against many people's moral standards. So really, I'm undecided. I guess I just won't vote.

[King Boo]

Hmmm,yes.It depends on what the people think,when a judge says they get the death penalty,they should let the people vote,not the jury.it is up to the people,not me,the people.

The wind....
It is blowing....

[Insane Steve]

Yay! A mature discussion thread!

Anyways, I am for the death penalty ... for ANY felony conviction. I mean, yes, the definition of a felony is (I think) any crime with a minimum sentence of 1 year. So why such an extreme view? Well, keep in mind 3 of my beliefs:

1: I believe humans cannot be changed by ANY means.
2: I don't value the "sanctity of human life" very highly. At all.
3: I believe the state of our judicial system is dreadful.

Ok, let me explain why each of these affects my viewpoint.

1. This one is obvious. We'll use a common example for all three points. Say a judge gives a murderer ... say, 20 years for a ... murder. (How redundant.) Now, after this 20 (Ha!) years, the murderer is released.

With my view, I truly believe that he'll try and kill again. I read that 6% of murderers released murder again. That's a whole lot of innocent people getting killed.

2: Human life... to me, I value it less than I'm guessing 99.99% of the world's population. A lot of people say it is "wrong" to kill others. Yes, right. And it is just as "wrong" for the murderer to kill someone else. MY view is simply... let the fool see what it's like to be killed.

3. Now, take the 20 year sentence again. Knowing our judicial system...

1: The mudrerer will appeal, and get 8 years afterwards for no reason
2: The murderer will serve about 23 months due to "good behavior"
3: Murderer murderers again.
4: Repeat.

See? By executing them all... We remove the legal maze. We deter crime.

But what about the other felons? The car thiefs, the rapists, etc.? They also cannot be rehabilitated. And they will also recommit their crimes. And it's even worse with these individuals! They sometimes get 8 or less months!

Remove the legal maze. Execute the felons.

(Yep. I know I'm getting a whole crap load of flak for this. Just like on the Religion thread.)

Congratulations! You have just been blessed by the wisdom of Steve.

[Chupperson Weird]

I don't know what to think people should do. I can't say it's the right thing to do, but honestly, I can't really say I think it's the wrong thing to do. I think a better solution would be to send a group of criminals somewhere they'd have to work to survive, and perhaps live out the rest of their lives there, with no way to do harm to anyone but their fellow criminals. If one decides to kill the rest, so be it, and only the murderer has blood on his hands. But I figure that's not going to happen. But I know if I was the guy he knocked off, I'd be pretty mad, if I was still alive. So I don't know. No one has the right to kill anyone else, but it's already been done, so what to do?
I know one thing though... they shouldn't let the people have cable TV and workout rooms and electric guitars... that's like a luxury hotel instead of a place to hold criminals. What idiots run the country.

[Lizard Dude]

I'm for combining IS's and CW's ideas. The solution is simple. Send all felons to live with each other on some island or something away from society.

BUT!

How to pay for it?
Televise it. Reality TV really brings in the moolah and who wouldn't want to watch felon death matches on an exotic island?

And our country has somehow become very good in relation to most other countries, so don't discount our leadership too awfully much.

“I’m a stupid fatty and I love to play with my Easy Bake oven!”

[Insane Steve]

You know, it's funny. I was discussing this issue at work today, and I came up with almost the EXACT same idea Lizard Dude did. Ship off the murderers to some secluded place, stick a bunch of cameras there, maybe a few knives and a handgun, and let nature take its course. Pay per view! I'm sure Budweiser would snap up advertising rights in an instant.

...

Ok, I apologize to Black Mage for this post. This discussion has gone from serious and intelligent to not serious and a bit ... dumb. My serious view is in the aforementioned post.

Congratulations! You have just been blessed by the wisdom of Steve.

[Black Mage]

 No, no, don't apologize to me. It's possible to be serious, and comical. Don't worry about it.

 And, I don't think you'll be taking any Flak for your thoughts. This isn't a debate, after all.

 Lets see. As I stated earlier, I'm against the Death Penalty. I'm not sure to what extent I can put my feelings into words, however, I will try.

 Humans. That is what we are. We make mistakes, everyone does. Some mistakes are small, some are rather large. But, it's undeniable, Humans are imperfect.

 With that as a basis, we can move on to people and their mistakes. What causes people to do such things? Are they born evil? Persuasion? Pressure? Or even, a momentary lapse of judgement? Which, if any, could it be?

 Well, I don't believe people are born evil. However, the other three go hand in hand. People make bad decisions. Everyone does. The extent to which, depends. On what?
Well, it can be a variety of things. I would say their upbringing, for one. Morals, but that ties in to their upbringing. None the less, some people make worse decisions than others.

 This of course, leads to a large variety in crimes. Petty theft, to Man Slaughter. One is obviously worse than the other. However, the punishment is different, as it should be.

 One thing I don't understand, no, disagree with, about the Death Penalty is the hypocrisy it embodies. To punish a Murderer, for murder, by murdering him, how is that justified? I use this quote a lot, but it fits this situation quite nicely: "An eye for an eye, and the world goes blind."

 Another thing I fail to understand: Who are we to judge such a person? We cannot always understand all of the circumstances. I agree, no one has the right to take another's life, ever. To punish one with what they're being punished for, it just doesn't make sense to me. I'm talking in circles. What I guess I'm trying to say, is that we, as human beings, have no right to judge whether another human being deserves to live or die.

 Such are my beliefs. I respect all of your opinions, whether or not you support the Penalty, and only think better of you all for sharing. Thank you, and Take Care.