Originally posted by Stealth Moose
Also, having reviewed the posts in my absence, I'd like to point out a few things:- Murder is illegal killing. Justified homicide is not murder. State executions are also not murder. Misusing terms tends to create an aura of moral impurity around what is otherwise an act to protect one's self or others, as opposed to an act merely to hurt others period.
I don't recognize executions as legal, nor is it legal here and several countries. Where you're from? Executions are legal but not where I'm from. The law is obviously a subjective entity so I recognize capital punishment as murder. It is an illegal and premeditated act, which qualifies it as murder, to me.
Also, "justified homicide" isn't appealing. I'm not even sure if it's possible to justifiably kill another human being. "Well, he did rape and kill someone else."
- Rejecting the death penalty for the flaws of the legal system is like banning cars because of drunk drivers and old people; it ignores addressable flaws in one part which necessarily affect the moral weight of the other.
I don't see the similarity. Cars are a practical application used for transportation and can be abused, like running over someone to murder them or driving inebriated and killing a whole family. This is not proper usage of a vehicle.
When you decide to execute someone, even if they're innocent, you haven't misused anything. You've executed someone, which was the purpose of what you'd been doing, except innocent people die as a cause.
Even then, it leaves no room to review any potential future evidence or new findings. When a convict is imprisoned and serving time, they can be found innocent or maybe their charge/involvement was not as primary and/or severe. You cannot do this when you kill an individual.
- Executions are only expensive because they are kept alive for almost two decades, and we pay for their legal defense, upkeep, health care, cable, internet access, whatever. A rope and a chair is pretty easily reused. If the evidence is truly overwhelming, the criminal truly reprehensible, and the case subject to review, an execution should take place. We have a social contract to respect and aid one another; you don't think twice when a soldier has to kill an enemy combatant doing XYZ, but a child raping murderer must not be slain?Does not follow.
Also, don't even get me started on soldiers and war killings. I'm wholly against that as well. Others here who have agreed with me may not be but I am entirely against it.
Violence and murder aren't solutions, no matter how bad the crime is. The moral and logical justification standing as, "They did something really bad themselves so let us do it back" is not substantial enough. Using murder as a tool to keep people away from society isn't substantial enough either. This is why we have prison, among other reasons. Rehabilitation is also a primary/strong factor. I mean, there are other variables as well, such as what I had mentioned earlier.
We don't teach children that got beat up really badly to go seek vengeance and beat up the other child responsible. When someone damages something really expensive that we own on purpose, we don't go and damage something they own and call it equal. It has no net result. It does not alter the action that came before it.
Capital punishment is the same.
With that argument put forth, I've noticed you see this less as a means to give them what they gave but more as a method to keep them away from society permanently and even out of life permanently.
If these people have served time, gone through rehabilitation and shown promise, or had new evidence showcase that they were wrongfully convicted, these are enough for me to consider death as an unworthy application.
Most arguments against boil down to some vague "All life is precious argument" (As they use anti-bacteria soap and eat plants and animals)
Yeah, I don't know if I'd go that far. I support the reasoning that human life is more valuable than the latter organisms you've mentioned. I understand that animals, bacteria, etc. are important but I do not argue that they're as inherently valuable as humans.
I'd cry every single time I ate a steak and I don't fucking need that. Well, probably not, but it's the thought that counts. Sort of.
Second, the number of people executed is less than those who die from falling off of ladders, being crushed by vending machines, or killed every day in major US highways.
This is a really shoddy argument. This implies that people accidentally dying as a cause of using practical devices is the same as the purposeful killing of an innocent individual using devices that, well, purposely kill people.
More individuals dying from falling off a ladder or being pwned by a vending machine is obviously still tragic and horrible because people are dying and I hear dying sucks. However, this is an apple to the orange of using a system that already unjustifiably kills (in my opinion, obviously) to FURTHER do so by eliminating additional lives, like the innocent.
If you don't havr consequences, rules become inconveniences to be exploited.
True, but "consequence" isn't a synonym for "death." Harsh crimes are worthy of harsh consequences but I do not think it calls for something as permanent and as final as death. Also, countries that have the death penalty implemented do not show a drop in the rate of these "harsher" crimes.
So, it's not like the system is going unexploited simply because death is a known consequence of a severe crime. If someone is mentally unstable or committed enough, that is irrelevant.