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Capital Punishment

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by AwesomGaytheist, Nov 5, 2013.

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Are you for or against the death penalty?

  1. For in all cases

    2.9%
  2. Against in all cases

    50.5%
  3. For in certain cases

    41.7%
  4. No opinion/other

    4.9%
  1. AwesomGaytheist

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    I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I'm wondering what your opinions on the death penalty are.

    There's so many different aspects to look at it from, and I've gone kind of back and forth from neutral, to for, to against, back to neutral, and then to against. I think I've found a stance I can comfortably occupy, and that is for it only in certain cases. Two years ago, a man in Georgia named Troy Davis was executed for shooting a cop to death in 1991. The catch was that there was, in my opinion, too much doubt. The murder weapon was never found and seven out of nine eyewitnesses later recanted and said the police had coerced them into telling them what they wanted to hear. His sentence should have been commuted to life in prison, IMO.

    But I think that in the most disgusting, extreme, and depraved cases, a death sentence is just. Take, for example, the Cheshire, Connecticut home invasion murders. Two junkies decided to rob a doctor's house for money to buy drugs with, and when they weren't satisfied with their take, they beat the husband half to death, held the family hostage overnight, kidnapped the wife and forced her to clean out her bank accounts, raped the 11-year-old daughter, raped and strangled the wife, then doused the couple's two daughters in gasoline and burned them alive as well as burning the house down.

    There's not enough hell in this world or after death if there is one to adequately punish those clowns. But the problem with the death penalty is the cost.

    If you do it right, where the condemned gets every appeal, because this is someone's life we're talking about here, then you end up like California, where in the 35 years since voters reinstated capital punishment, there have been 13 executions, while there are currently 731 people on death row. In fact, after the death penalty was reinstated in the Golden State in 1978, the first execution wasn't until almost a decade and a half later, in 1992. And executions in California have been suspended since 2006, when a Federal Judge ruled both lethal injection and the gas chamber cruel and unusual due to the amount of suffering the condemned endures.

    I think the way Texas executes people, where if it weren't for several Supreme Court decisions, they'd probably execute you for shoplifting, is wrong. Murder in and of itself should not be an automatic death sentence.

    Another factor is which methods are humane and which aren't. Not even 80 years ago, we still had public hangings in America. Hangings, beheadings, and firing squads were used in the past, and now there's a debate over whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual. Currently in the States, the primary method is lethal injection, but that is changing rapidly. In California, you get to choose between injection and lethal gas, and in Virginia, you get a choice between injection and electrocution.

    The thing that gets me though is the fact that while a doctor is present to pronounce death, he has no part of an execution otherwise, because of his Hippocratic Oath, that he would not intentionally/voluntarily harm or kill anyone.

    So what should we do about this?
     
  2. timo

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    I'm against in all cases. There are too many known cases where innocent people were wrongly convicted. Jail time can be made up for. Death is irreversible. In my opinion we cannot take the risk of an innocent person being executed.

    Besides that, death seems like an easy way out. I'd much rather see someone spend their entire life in jail with no possibility to get out (which also is the cheaper option).
     
  3. chercheur

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    I don't believe it's the government's right to deal out death, or anyone else's. The crimes committed to be considered worthy of this punishment are heinous and exemplify the primitive, animal element within society; responding in kind - with more murder (because that's what capital punishment is, essentially, homocide) only stoops to that level and stands in the way of progressing beyond that type of act.

    Other forms of punishment are adequate. I think it's perfectly fine for some of these evil people to spend the rest of their lives in a cell - however, taking their lives would be using two wrong and hoping for a right. That's not justice, it's revenge.
     
  4. Miss Loopy

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    I say an eye for an eye, and no, I don't care what Ghandi said :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
     
  5. Mike92

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    I am for it in certain cases.
     
  6. AtheistWorld

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    In theory I have no objections to it, but in a country lke the USA that has the prison industrial complex, along with a racist agenda of incarcerating minorities to enrich its own wallet, the risks is too great. I'm against it right now only because the approach America has to capitalist punishment is born from cruelty, has a proclivity of marking the poor and minorities to death, is centered on a classist system that enables actual murderers to walk away free, an entire justice system born from the minds of the dissolute.

    In a Maoist/Marxist-Lenininst government I would be all for executing people who deserve it. Some people don't deserve to live, including rapists and child molesters. Those types have incorrigible behaviors that can't be cured, and it would be ridiculous to expect the government to let them live and pay for them to live.

    An ML government would devoid of corruption, and we differentiate 100% with the profit-driven agenda behind America's prison system and consequently you can be certain that people wouldn't be getting punished unless they were blameworthy of whatever the crime is.
     
    #6 AtheistWorld, Nov 5, 2013
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2013
  7. Hexagon

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    Against in all cases. Although, I feel compelled to mention, if prisoners want to take their own life, they can.

    -People can be wrongly convicted
    -Government shouldn't have that power
    -I honestly believe people deserve second chances (though of course, sometimes imprisonment is necessary to protect the public)
    -I think its wrong to take a life (except in defence), and though we may be dealing with people who've taken lives, it doesn't mean we should.
    -Can be used by governments to punish political opponents and dissenters.
    -I don't believe in imprisonment as a punishment, so why should I believe in death as one?
     
    #7 Hexagon, Nov 5, 2013
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2013
  8. Techno Kid

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    I'm against the death penalty in all cases. I also think it's possible to rehabilitate almost all criminals.
     
  9. Siarad

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    Against in all cases -

    a) Far too many cases of mistaken execution - even one mistaken execution should be enough to debunk the death penalty argument on its own. Every mistaken execution is a murder.
    b) Whatever their humanity it is very damaging to ours.
    c) I have worked with too many circular cases of abuse/hurt to believe in evil people - only evil behaviours. Back to point b) - if we execute someone who has committed dreadful acts as a result of dreadful acts being done to them- what does it do to us?
    d) To execute another we have to dehumanise them, see them as completely 'other' than us. We are very naive if we believe that we could never commit dreadful acts. Think of all those 'ordinary' family folk in Nazi Germany who did what they did when they had the chance.
     
  10. AtheistWorld

    AtheistWorld Guest

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    The liberalism in this thread is strong.

    ---------- Post added 5th Nov 2013 at 10:44 AM ----------

    Then what should we do with criminals? I guess anarchits want to let them repeatedly kill others and not face justice? Seriously, this makes no sense - can you explain?
     
  11. DMark69

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    I would have to say that it should be used in certain cases. 1st degree murder, and murder of a police officer, or other public official count in my book. Especially if you add hate crimes to it. Some that I think should have received death but didn't are:
    the shooter from last friday's LAX shooting (at least not yet)
    Matthew Shepard's killers (Wyoming would have, but the Shepard family took it off the table)
    Those are just a few examples.
     
  12. Falklands Sheep

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    There are some cases in which there is no excuse. There are people out there who have no remedy, and killing them is the only way to bring justice.

    I would leave the capital punishment for extreme cases, where it's clear the suspect is guilty. If a person kidnaps another, tortures, rapes and brutally murders the victim, he/she doesn't deserve to live. Not in my book.

    I, however, do not condone the current methods of execution. I don't trust the "lethal" injection. A good volley of lead chunks can do the work.
     
  13. Hexagon

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    As a punishment. I said above that it is sometimes necessary to imprison to protect others. What I mean to say is that I don't think imprisonment, and that kind of punishment in general can be used to rehabilitate people.
     
  14. AtheistWorld

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    Oh, now I get you...
     
  15. biggayguy

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    I'm for it if the person is a self-proclaimed serial murderer or rapist. If there is compelling DNA evidence I'm for it. However, I think the more cruel punishment is life in prison without possibility of parole.
     
  16. redneck

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    I do believe it is justified in some cases. How like the wack jobs have went through a school/theatre shooting people. Or the bombing at boston. These people have definately forfited their right to live. This assumes that they actually live long enough to go to jail before they kill themselves or get shot by the cops. As far as 'cruel and unusual punishment' goes if you are killing someone is any method really worse than another? I personally beleive these people should be locked in a room with no windows, given food in a method that they cannot have human contact in any way, and a pistol with one bullet should be placed in the center of the room. When you hear the shot go scrape up the body.
     
  17. AtheistWorld

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    I don't think the Boston Bomber should die.
     
  18. Sparklet

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    Against in all cases, but not because I'm humane or anything. Quite the opposite actually - I believe that in some cases it's too humane to let them die just like that. Rapists, serial killers, terrorists and others don't deserve an easy way out.
     
  19. AtheistWorld

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    What if we were to bring back old methods (guillotine, electric chair, burning) while also implementing foreign methods like Ling Chi, The Five Pains, Cement shoes, and so on.

    I really think you would like Ling Chi, because that's an extended process of applying agony to the offender. Like you say, it'd be wrong for them not to pay, but why must we keep them alive? Do you think they should be tortured as long as they're alive?
     
  20. redneck

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    If you help set off a bomb killing 3 people and injure 250+ others, then yes you have forfitted your right to live.