Now watch in awe as I lighten the mood with some demonic lesbian shenanigans.
You may thank me in hugs.
Now watch in awe as I lighten the mood with some demonic lesbian shenanigans.
You may thank me in hugs.
Originally posted by Nephthys
Now watch in awe as I lighten the mood with some demonic lesbian shenanigans.You may thank me in hugs.
I'm like 30 pages in and aside from hilariously oversized boobs, I haven't seen any demonic lesbian sex.
Fail.
Did you just dismiss the entire field of ethics out of hand?
Nope. I dismissed arguments against the ethics of actually killing folks who deserve it, because most of those arguments are based on the sanctity of life; the criminal's or life in general. Neither one of those is incredibly defensible as an argument.
this is me arguing a point god ****ing dammit. Anyway, the cost of the DP is primarily derived from the elaborate and protracted process of appeals; the actual implementation of punishment is not so expensive as the actual decision to go ahead and end a life.
**** you for making me post when I should be studying go to hell
Problem with the judicial system, not the death penalty. Hence, death penalty still logically valid. Judicial system kinda broken.
love you
You're gonna make Raging Gideon get all hot and bothered now.
Because, last I checked, coherent and binding ethical systems exist that do not rely on absolutist Divine Command Theory or on the strawman of subjectivity against which I suspect you are reacting.What. The. Hell.
Nah, you just assumed that I was dismissing it out of hand. You can sit down in your computer chair now. Put the fire axe down.
Problem with the judicial system, not the death penalty. Hence, death penalty still logically valid. Judicial system kinda broken.
Edit: what if the argument is not that the folks don't deserve it (the bullet in Hitler's brain was well spent) but that as a society we don't deserve the consequences that naturally follow? I'm more concerned with the inevitable execution of an innocent and the damage that will do to our society than I am with the miscreants themselves. (But that's not to say I am not concerned about the miscreants at all; even bad people are still people!)
but that as a society we don't deserve the consequences that naturally follow? I'm more concerned with the inevitable execution of an innocent and the damage that will do to our society than I am with the miscreants themselves
Please clarify because it seems like you're against the death penalty simply based on the possibility that we may execute an innocent. Ever wonder why people spend decades on death row?
Originally posted by Dr McBeefington
Please clarify because it seems like you're against the death penalty simply based on the [b]possibility that we may execute an innocent. Ever wonder why people spend decades on death row? [/B]
Didn't you hear about the governor of Texas barring investigation into a Death Row inmate's case recently? The gist was that the ACLU (or some such) thought they could prove post mortem innocence, thus providing the silver bullet to bleeding heart liberals everywhere. I'd google it but my google-fu is weak tonight and I can't be bothered.
Originally posted by Zampanó
Well Mordin, I'm sure you won't mind explaining how a political institution is separate from the actions it takes. Politics is one area where it doesn't pay to stick with theoretical concepts.
This is really obvious.
Example: putting your hands over your eyes isn't morally bankrupt. Doing it while driving a bus-full of kids over a cliff is. The act itself isn't ethically questionable, it's the implementation. So the real argument shouldn't be "is the death penalty wrong?"; it should be "how can we better organize the judicial system so that all punishments are correctly meted out?"
Arguing that the death penalty is unjustifiable because of a broken judicial system is an argument against the judicial system, kind of like how arguing against cars when used by drunk drivers is arguments against drunk drivers, not cars themselves.
The real world makes it impossible to separate our very fallible court system from the punishments it enacts.
Perhaps, but that's another argument.
Edit: what if the argument is not that the folks don't deserve it (the bullet in Hitler's brain was well spent) but that as a society we don't deserve the consequences that naturally follow? I'm more concerned with the inevitable execution of an innocent and the damage that will do to our society than I am with the miscreants themselves. (But that's not to say I am not concerned about the miscreants at all; even bad people are still people!)
Actual deaths caused by the death penalty are few.
First random example: Executions last year.
If I were to argue for the death penalty without revising the current judicial system, I would say this:
The benefits outweigh "accidents" just as having cars benefits society to the point where driving collisions are within acceptable levels. Because potential death of the innocent doesn't prevent production of certain goods (i.e. some medicines can kill, cars are inherently dangerous, peanut allergies are severe, etc.) it could be argued that a judicial system which might kill X amount of people per year needs to be put into perspective before it can be considered truly impacting (X being those proven innocent after the fact).
Considering the amount of people executed last year is 41, this means X could be anything between 0 and 41 itself. The idea that more than a third or even half of those are innocent seems unlikely, so to keep things "realistic", we should not entertain the concept that more than say, 7-8 could be in question. And even this, I feel, is an unreasonably high number of "wronged innocents" to consider.
This is an extremely small number of people potentially effected, while the net benefit is that hardened criminals who cannot be easily contained nor rehabilitated would be removed from society permanently.
Additionally, you could argue that a system which attempts to make absolute judgments on its citizens' lives with the intent to protect others is no different than allowing cops to carry lethal firearms, nor allowing it to control a military or national guard. In situations where the government ordains that people must die for the greater good because they pose an imminent threat or a national security threat, no one bats an eye. But if they are sentenced to die in a court of law, suddenly folks feel a moral obligation to cry out against death itself, even if deserving? I don't follow.
Lastly, 364 people died from falling in construction of buildings in 1997. Should we stop making buildings? At what number of deaths is a certain act permissible if it allows society to function?
Kudos to Ronnie Gardner for getting the firing squad, btw.
Originally posted by Dr McBeefington
I'm not googling that either and I hate the ACLU.
And the ACLU is well meaning. Hooray civil liberties!
So the real argument shouldn't be "is the death penalty wrong?"; it should be "how can we better organize the judicial system so that all punishments are correctly meted out?"
</snip>
Originally posted by Dr McBeefington
I'm not googling that either and I hate the ACLU.
And the ACLU is well meaning. Hooray civil liberties!
So the real argument shouldn't be "is the death penalty wrong?"; it should be "how can we better organize the judicial system so that all punishments are correctly meted out?"
</snip>
Lastly, 364 people died from falling in construction of buildings in 1997. Should we stop making buildings? At what number of deaths is a certain act permissible if it allows society to function?
The ultimate flaw with your analogy, I think, is that you are viewing simple human loss of life as the ultimate and only drawback, while there are a plethora of other costs. The issue is more complex than simple death count. (If we were going simply by number of deaths, the auto industry, big tobacco/tomacco, and various military contractors would be in the crosshairs.)
Originally posted by Zampanó
[B]Blackstone's ratio is the line "I'd rather a thousand guilty men go free than imprison one innocent."
And the ACLU is well meaning. Hooray civil liberties!
Originally posted by Zampanó
Blackstone's ratio is the line "I'd rather a thousand guilty men go free than imprison one innocent."
This sounds unreasonable. It's generally the case that society ethics differ from individual ethics in that they are balancing the greater good. The needs of the many over the needs of the few, etc. The consequences of allowing say, a thousand guilty men go or possibly escape puts society in larger jeopardy than one potentially innocent man being killed.
This doesn't mean we can't be individually sympathetic to the individual who was in the wrong place at the wrong time of course, but I would like to point out that the role of the government in this case is protection of society as a whole. The individual should have rights of appeal and means to produce evidence of his innocence; I'm not arguing a police state. But on the flip side, if he is proven beyond a reasonable doubt by a court of law and potentially his peers, it stands to reason that he should face the punishment if he is unable to counter the verdict using evidence, new or old.
If you are against the death penalty because of the potential mistakes of the process, than you must also be against long term imprisonment for the same reason; innocent people locked up from their families and futures, subjected to battery and rape by other inmates, constitutes just as much of a crime as having an individual killed sometime in the future. Add to that the idea of most prisons experiencing hepatitis C and AIDS outbreaks, and it becomes more of a death penalty than you may think.
Imprisonment and all its unholy glories isn't inherently better than being killed, regardless of innocence or guilt. Both are heinous punishments when applied to those who don't deserve them.
I don't disagree. I also think that an important part of the question is "how effective are our punishments for accomplishing our goal?"
Are you talking deterrence or just the concept of removing dangerous criminals from society entirely?
There is a fundamental difference between an incidental cost (the loss of life during construction) and an activity with an output of that cost. The construction workers were entropic loss, friction on the way to an output. An executed criminal is the end goal of a long process of appeals.The ultimate flaw with your analogy, I think, is that you are viewing simple human loss of life as the ultimate and only drawback, while there are a plethora of other costs. The issue is more complex than simple death count. (If we were going simply by number of deaths, the auto industry, big tobacco/tomacco, and various military contractors would be in the crosshairs.)
Okay, so here's my question to you then: what negative additional costs come about because of the death penalty? Chiefly, the act itself?
Also, what argument to you have for simply keeping them in prison for life? How does this benefit the wronged innocent? How does this cause less collateral damage among affected families? How does this make the wronged family of the victim feel, should that person truly be guilty? Why is it imperative that we as a nation should choose to restrain those who have wronged us as a whole in the worst possible way, but we cannot deprive them of life itself? Is the quality of life of the imprisoned somehow better than being dead? By what virtue?
The idea of imprisonment versus death penalty isn't concluded with mishaps and ratios. What arguments can be provided?