Wanting Death Penalty

[vz71]

So you would advocate for the death penalty to prevent the possibility of rehabilitation?

No one suggested this.
I would advocate the death penalty when there is no other means available to protect society from this individual.

Regardless, your argument is specious. Any criminal up for the death penalty could instead be given life without the possibility of parole.

Not always. And we have no guarantee that the criminal can no longer harm.

Were we truly able to keep criminals locked away forever where they could no longer harm others, the argument may be considered specious. But there is no such system available.

 

[vz71]

I have yet to read a single intelligent argument for the death penalty being applied in a practical way in a developed nation.

I guess that settles it then.

 

[J_the_Centrist]

I agree that there are certain things in life that some people have to decide for themselves but I don’t think the death penalty is one of them. It seems like we fundamentally differ in the way we see killing in the first place. Killing a human being is huge. It is devasting to kill a human being. Killing a human being is a traumatic event and could thus negatively affect the health of those who witness it or are closely involved in the event in one way or the other.

So the death penalty is not a matter of opinion in my view. Personally, I am not sure I can be closely associated with someone who supports the death penalty because just looking at the person and thinking about the fact that he or she desires that people should be killed rather than confined, would trouble me.

I don’t not believe there is still any legitimate reason to use the death penalty in this age.

Sadly, there are people who change their views when they find themselves in some unfortunate situations. For instance, someone who is normally against abortion turning to abortion in the case of an unwanted pregnancy. Or someone who has always opposed gay marriage changing his or her view on the subject because their offspring is gay. Changing views on core beliefs is a sign of weakness and a potentially dangerous path to take.

If someone eradicates my entire family, I don’t see how killing that person would bring justice to me / bring back my family to life. I believe justice will ultimately be done by the one and only true judge at the right time.

I don’t think that you understood what I meant, just as another poster who I will be replying to after this post. I agreed with you that the death penalty is an abhorrent and barbaric practice, BUT I can understand why OTHERS are in favor of it! In addition, it does not matter what “day and age” we are in, people will continue to have differing views of what justice actually is, as well as what is moral and immoral. No one should be forced to believe ANYTHING that goes against their conscience, whether it be gay ‘marriage,’ abortion, or anything else and yes I am talking about people from both sides of the debate.

I am very happy that you and I have no reason to want to establish the death penalty for personal reasons, God be praised for that. However, your assumptions on how you would react if some heartless person murdered anyone near and dear to you are just that, assumptions. I could very easily make the same claims, but if it actually were to happen the truth is that we don’t know how we will react. That is all that I am saying and yes, personal experiences do and have always played a role in people changing their minds on certain issues.

Even if, by God’s grace, we both reacted as our beliefs dictated, we cannot expect others to react that way.

 

[vz71]

No innocents have ever been executed- Stupid and wrong.
Am I forgetting any?

You are forgetting proof.

You have specified that innocents have been executed.

Please provide the specifics. Prove it.

 

[Fairwinds]

I guess that settles it then.

it settles questions about his reading skills.

 

[Forkfoot]

You are forgetting proof.

You have specified that innocents have been executed.

Please provide the specifics. Prove it.

No. That’s a stupid argument. The fact that dozens of people have been ***ruled *** to have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to die based on new evidence since the DP’s reinstatement means that there cannot possibly have been zero people who didn’t fall through the cracks in a system where that could happen. Those who were lucky enough to get their sentences overturned did so because new evidence came up that disproved/cast doubt on their conviction or proved that they didn’t get a fair trial. Not everyone gets lucky. You would have to literally believe that there was a supernatural agent acting to protect the dignity of the death penalty and protecting innocents from being executed, which would of course be idiotic.

In short, with all the demonstrably wrongful convictions we’ve had for capital offenses, there is no way we haven’t unjustly sentenced people to die. No way. It has been proven that our system is far too flawed for that to be possible.

 

[Forkfoot]

And for the record we’re unlikely to *ever *have a proven case of a wrongful execution, since our system is already highly invested in not proving wrongful executions. From earlier in this thread:

deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty

ole wikipedia has some useful information as well .

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution

Statistics likely understate the actual problem of wrongful convictions because once an execution has occurred there is often insufficient motivation and finance to keep a case open, and it becomes unlikely at that point that the miscarriage of justice will ever be exposed. In the case of Joseph Roger O’Dell III, executed in Virginia in 1997 for a rape and murder, a prosecuting attorney bluntly argued in court in 1998 that if posthumous DNA results exonerated O’Dell, “it would be shouted from the rooftops that … Virginia executed an innocent man.” The state prevailed, and the evidence was destroyed.

 

[J_the_Centrist]

*Capital punishment comes to be regarded as barbarous in an irreligious society, that is shut within earthly horizons and which feels it has no right to deprive a man of the only good there is. *(Romano Amerio)

*The mounting opposition to the death penalty in Europe since the Enlightenment has gone hand in hand with a decline of faith in eternal life. In the nineteenth century the most consistent supporters of capital punishment were the Christian churches, and its most consistent opponents were groups hostile to the churches. When death came to be understood as the ultimate evil rather than as a stage on the way to eternal life, utilitarian philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham found it easy to dismiss capital punishment as “useless annihilation.” *(Cardinal Dulles)
Ender

The consensus on the death penalty in Europe is irrelevant to me! The people of Europe have voluntarily turned their backs on God and YES they have done that and are beginning to suffer the consequences for doing so, just as we will if we allow secular repressives to take over here. European society is no less authoritarian today than it ever was. Legislation on what constitutes free speech (hate speech), complete government control over children’s education (nevermind the parent’s (name removed by moderator)ut) indoctrinating them, socialist economics that keep and encourage people to remain in poverty, and on and on. Europeans have embraced ALL of these authoritarian controls on their personal lives, just ask the parents who sought asylum here in the U.S. because the German government will not allow them to teach their children according to their own values. The Europeans are living in a jail cell that, for the moment is sealed with golden (or perhaps silver) bars and they like them. So I can unapologetically say based on these and other reasons, LET EM’ ROT! I don’t wish anyone harm on anyone, but this is something they chose for themselves.

The death penalty and it’s opposition, of which I am unashamedly declaring right now, has NOTHING to do with one’s religious affiliation, but rather with one’s conscience. The death penalty is just plain wrong and immoral to me, that’s all. I would never tell anyone that they HAVE to agree with me and I believe that European opposition to the death penalty has more to do with a change in the authoritarian ideology that has always been prevalent in Europe and still is today, than it has to do with anything else.

Prove me wrong!!!

 

[vz71]

No. That’s a stupid argument.

It is not stupid to expect people making bold assertions to back them up with facts.

The fact that dozens of people have been ***ruled *** to have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to die based on new evidence since the DP’s reinstatement means that there cannot possibly have been zero people who didn’t fall through the cracks in a system where that could happen.
Those who were lucky enough to get their sentences overturned did so because new evidence came up that disproved/cast doubt on their conviction or proved that they didn’t get a fair trial. Not everyone gets lucky. You would have to literally believe that there was a supernatural agent acting to protect the dignity of the death penalty and protecting innocents from being executed, which would of course be idiotic.

No, it is idiotic to make bold assertions without having proof at hand.
It is perfectly reasonable to demand proof.

In short, with all the demonstrably wrongful convictions we’ve had for capital offenses, there is no way we haven’t unjustly sentenced people to die. No way. It has been proven that our system is far too flawed for that to be possible.

Your logic is faulty. One does not demonstrate the other.
It is an appeal to probability.
This is the same argument that also fuels alien sightings. It is hardly presentable as proof.
What would demonstrate a wrongful death sentence is exactly that. No more, no less.

 

[Forkfoot]

You’re not going to see a system invest time and money in making itself look bad and forming the perfect argument against a punishment that it itself just carried out. You will never have the “proof” you’re demanding. And you know it.

 

[Forkfoot]

I could see myself having no objection to the death penalty in a just society where only the guilty are convicted and your odds of acquittal aren’t directly influenced by the size of your bank account. But we do not live in such a society. Hopefully someday we will.

 

[vz71]

. You will never have the “proof” you’re demanding. And you know it.

You cannot back your own assertion?
Then I suggest you retract your statement.

No innocents have ever been executed- Stupid and wrong.

 

[vz71]

I could see myself having no objection to the death penalty in a just society where only the guilty are convicted and your odds of acquittal aren’t directly influenced by the size of your bank account. But we do not live in such a society. Hopefully someday we will.

So you don’t consider the actual guilt of the criminal but instead the perceived flaws of the system when deciding the justness of the death penalty?

 

[Forkfoot]

You cannot back your own assertion?
Then I suggest you retract your statement.

The astronomical odds are that innocents have been executed. That’s not “an appeal to probability”; it’s just a fact.

 

[Forkfoot]

So you don’t consider the actual guilt of the criminal but instead the perceived flaws of the system when deciding the justness of the death penalty?

Guilt as determined by whom? The very flawed system I’m speaking of?

 

[Forkfoot]

I think you’re missing my point here, vz. The fact is that people have been wrongfully convicted of crimes many, many times, because our system is not perfect. I’m not saying people shouldn’t be tried and punished, I’m saying the death penalty is the one punishment you can’t take back. You can’t dust the guy off and say “Oops, sorry about that, this was one of those times our flawed system convicted the wrong person” and send him on his way.

 

[BlaineTog]

No one suggested this.
I would advocate the death penalty when there is no other means available to protect society from this individual.

Yet you said “it is the rarest of exceptions that a criminal will actually serve their entire sentence.” The only two ways a prisoner can avoid serving their full sentence is if the sentence is somehow commuted, or they escape custody (or they die in prison, but I don’t think that’s what you meant). How many prisoners on death row have escaped custody in the developed world? Do you have data to show that our prisons are sieves incapable of holding their occupants?

Not always. And we have no guarantee that the criminal can no longer harm.

There is never such a guarantee. There’s no guarantee that a given upstanding member of society won’t some day pick up a gun and start shooting people, yet we don’t kill those people. There’s no guarantee that some kid arrested for shoplifting a pack of gum won’t become a burglar, yet shoplifting doesn’t carry the death penalty.

Our prison system is horribly flawed in plenty of ways, but it’s pretty good at keeping people from escaping. If we can’t trust our maximum-security prisons to hold our prisoners, the proper response in this day and age is to fix the prisons so that they’re no longer full of holes, not to kill everyone who might someday escape if they’re lucky enough to have their cell wall struck my a meteorite and cracked open. The death penalty is for times and places where you can’t hold them and know they’re going to kill. It is a measure of last resort because the prisoner is as much a child of God as you or me.

 

[Forkfoot]

I can’t believe people are still trying to use the “we don’t know that we executed anyone innocent” argument. Yes you do. You know that you know that, and I know that you know it too. Stop insulting everybody’s intelligence by pretending otherwise.

 

[april32010]

The death penalty is wrong and the Church is against it. I have a pamphlet on it right here. No one, not even the government, has the right to take another humans life or decide when they should die. Even if they committed the most haneous of sins it isn’t right to kill them. Remember two wrongs don’t make a right. If we stoop to the level of the murderer and murder him, how is that justice? We just go down to his level and don’t accomplish anything. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. No one should take another persons life. Everyone deserves life and being in prison alone with your conscience is bad enough

2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. (2306)
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm—without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself—the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”68

 

[april32010]

I think you’re missing my point here, vz. The fact is that people have been wrongfully convicted of crimes many, many times, because our system is not perfect. I’m not saying people shouldn’t be tried and punished, I’m saying the death penalty is the one punishment you can’t take back. You can’t dust the guy off and say “Oops, sorry about that, this was one of those times our flawed system convicted the wrong person” and send him on his way.

many,many ? exaggeration