# Capital Punishment



## autisticdragonkin (May 29, 2016)

Capital punishment also known as the death penalty is an issue which has been very significant in the USA for the past few decades. Most countries in the world have abolished it or do not have executions despite it being officially still present.

The arguments about capital punishment are diverse with some arguing that it is too humane and others arguing that it is too cruel and others focusing on the fact that in the USA it is extremely expensive due to the excessive appeals and other arguments that it is cheaper

Personally I am in favour of capital punishment because I think that it allows for more effective deterrence and cost reduction as well as eliminating the possibility of escape.I think that the american system is just based around getting out anger and due to the presence of too many appeals makes the death penalty too costly and  thus the american government should either abolish it or liberally apply it to everyone who would get a life sentence and performing the execution within a day of the end of the trial

I do not support public execution nor do I support impractically painful forms of execution as I think that execution should be entirely based on practical deterrence and cost reduction but it might be wise to make the execution method vivid enough in order to exploit the availability bias.

I think that wrongful execution is just simply less of an issue that many people think as long as it is seen as a punishment for a life of crime rather than for an individual crime as well as an incapacitory measure


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## AnOminous (May 29, 2016)

There's no conclusive evidence whatsoever that it has any deterrent effect, and may in fact devalue life by encouraging the use of revenge killing as an acceptable thing.


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## autisticdragonkin (May 29, 2016)

AnOminous said:


> There's no conclusive evidence whatsoever that it has any deterrent effect, and may in fact devalue life by encouraging the use of revenge killing as an acceptable thing.


Can you provide links about it not being deterrent

I am mostly supportive of it for the purposes of cost reduction though

EDIT: also what would count as it being deterrent for these studies


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## Ti-99/4A (May 29, 2016)

autisticdragonkin said:


> Can you provide links about it not being deterrent


People still commit murder where the death penalty is still available.


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## Sperglord Dante (May 29, 2016)

I like it on principle, but it unfortunately doesn't work in reality because of the appeal system. Or so I've heard. One thing nobody's been able to explain to me is exactly how can a deathrow inmate appeal considerably more in the ten or so years he's going to be behind the bars than a prisoner condemned to 20-50 years? Doesn't that mean the system is ultimately unfair to lifers?


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## Joan Nyan (May 29, 2016)

It's not used enough.


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## Hat (May 30, 2016)

The death penalty is older than the Bible and is specifically established by God Himself as a punishment for murder. There does not need to be a "deterrent effect" at all; some people simply deserve to die and it is the duty of the state to dole out such punishment in public.


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## autisticdragonkin (May 30, 2016)

I think that the deterrence argument is overrated and we really should do executions in order to save the cost of feeding the prisoners as well as prevent them from committing further crimes. Those two things are enough to warrant it even if it has no deterrent effect but it needs to be done without appeals preferably within 24 hours of the guilty verdict being passed and should not be given to first time offenders


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## Jubileus (May 30, 2016)

At the risk of seeming shallow, I'll preface with this because I can't resist and I think it's probably true: ITT we have a few people who apparently have never known/met/dealt with prosecutors, detectives, or judges.

Disclaimer: obvious U.S. criminal justice system lens view here.

In a world where detectives stuck to the acquisition of data about a case, prosecutors stuck to the exercise of seeking justice rather than acquiring bottle caps/belt notches, judges weren't just promoted from the pool of prosecutors, and juries were actually reasonably intelligent, informed, and versed in the law, I would still have misgivings about the death penalty because mistakes happen.  You can pull a guy out of a cell and pay some manner of reparations even you are not able to give him his life back entirely; so far as I know, you can't reliably resuscitate somebody from a lethal injection, electrocution, beheading or what have you.

We don't even life in that fairy castle, though.  Detectives alternate between laziness and zeal and forensic "science" is still at least 50% quackery when you don't have the technicians screwing with the results because of lazy corner-cutting, lack of adequate funding, or even occasionally out-and-out malicious intent.  Prosecutors are concerned with promotion ladders and many times with future political advancement, and so to them "winning" is awfully important when they ought to be concerned with ensuring the right person is held accountable for crimes (and fun fact to add murkiness: it's not at all uncommon for police and prosecutors to be so entwined that they share a single union between them, even in large municipalities).  Judges largely are the endgame position for a lot of these prosecutors and tend to have a great deal of sympathy toward them because of this, overlooking mistakes of process that are supposed to be our safeguards and often making whole new ones themselves because of biases from years of being on that side of the bench.  And juries are largely pulled from the population that's generally not bright enough to figure out a way out of jury duty let alone the intricacies of a legal system.

And you want these folks to be able to levy a penalty with such finality and irrevocability as death?

I'm not against the idea of execution as a criminal penalty itself because of some sort of humanitarian concern of needing the perfect painless execution method or whatever.  I'm against it being used by the "criminal justice" complex as we know it, because they don't wield their powers responsibly even when it isn't a matter of death as it is.  With reversible/reparable penalties there's at least a possibility for making right what does go wrong.


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## TowinKarz (May 31, 2016)

I'm not morally opposed to it, as long as it is the sentence of a proper standing court that gave the defendant his/her Due Process before imposing it. 

I really do think that if you commit a crime heinous enough, there's no reason we shouldn't , proverbially, take you out back and put you down like a rabid animal.

But, practically, I find it a relic that's outlived any usefulness it may have had.  I wouldn't be surprised to see it end within my lifetime, the immense cost and political nastiness the issue has become wrapped up in hopefully will be judged not worth it.  Really, it's only used as a political bone, a way for elected officials to show how they're tough on crime by supporting it or calling for it.  And there have been enough innocent people on death row exonerated in the past decades by new forensics for me to wonder if it SHOULD be an option because, as above state,  it's the only penalty you can't take back if you get it wrong.

We have nominally one of the fairest justice systems in the world, but, it is NOT perfect, and I'm really not comfortable with that imperfection when the DP is an option. 

Some people forget, as Justice Robert Jackson once said, courts are infallible because they're final, not final because they're infallible.


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## Joan Nyan (Jun 1, 2016)

On a related note, police should use lethal force more often as well. If police used lethal force against anyone they witnessed committing a violent crime, so much money would be saved on trials and prisons, and so many innocent people would be protected from violence because a dead person can't be a repeat offender.


autisticdragonkin said:


> should not be given to first time offenders


Why wait until they've killed a second person? Executing first time offenders would protect more innocent people.


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## 女鬼 (Jun 1, 2016)

I'm not in favour of the death penalty because it's irreversible. As long as justice isn't infaillible, it's not a good thing because the risk of executing an innocent person is unacceptable. If there's a judicial error, you can always release someone from prison or compensate them finiancially, but you can't un-kill someone who's dead.


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## QI 541 (Jun 1, 2016)

Anyone who's actually seen the courts in action wouldn't have enough confidence in them to give them the power to decide whether someone should live or die.


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## autisticdragonkin (Jun 1, 2016)

Jon-Kacho said:


> Why wait until they've killed a second person? Executing first time offenders would protect more innocent people.


I mean that someone should have commited at least 2 felonies (or commited one as a juvenile) to be executed. They don't both have to be murder but I think that even murder is not a justification for death penalty, only lifestyle criminality is so a trial would not even be about whether the person commited the crime but about whether the person deserves to live


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## *Asterisk* (Jun 1, 2016)

AnOminous said:


> There's no conclusive evidence whatsoever that it has any deterrent effect, and may in fact devalue life by encouraging the use of revenge killing as an acceptable thing.


It's pretty self-evident this isn't the case. The highest murder rates in the world, by far, occur in countries without capital punishment, and without life sentences. Fucking Iran alone has as large a volume of contraband drugs going through it as Colombia, Venezuela, or Mexico. They have failed states on their East and West borders, and for the entire 21st century, they've had about the same murder rate as we here in the US.

This isn't the ultimate statement on the matter. Just because something's an effective method doesn't mean it should be carried out if the act itself is too repulsive. We'd never have graffiti problems or corner drug dealers in this country again if we caned anyone caught doing it on sight while every now and then lopping a dealer's head off in a town square, but I don't want to ever see the US become a "guilty, regardless of your innocence" country any more than we've already wound up.

I still support the death penalty. There are too many people in the world who're too rotten to warrant tolerating their existence. Especially real estate moguls with hideous choices in hairstyles.


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## AnOminous (Jun 1, 2016)

autisticdragonkin said:


> I mean that someone should have commited at least 2 felonies (or commited one as a juvenile) to be executed. They don't both have to be murder but I think that even murder is not a justification for death penalty, only lifestyle criminality is so a trial would not even be about whether the person commited the crime but about whether the person deserves to live



Anyone who has committed murder has committed at least one other felony on the way there.  Any prosecutor with a pulse could manage to bring more than one felony in any murder case.


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## Really makes you thunk (Jun 1, 2016)

I think the death penalty is good, but _ONLY _for the most depraved, morally-reprehensible and irredeemable criminals- with charges that would rack up to many lifetime sentences. And ONLY if it's completely conclusive that they were the ones behind it.

Mass war-criminals, genocidal dictators, serial torturers, people who curl in the Squat-rack, those kind kind of people, y'know?


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## ScrewTheRules (Jun 12, 2016)

At the risk of isolating myself from my fellow left-wingers, I am actually pro-capitol punishment, at least under certain circumstances. Specifically, only in the case of serious, violent crimes (i.e. murder) and only repeat offenders, and by repeat offenders I mean people who've been to prison previously. I believe in second chances, but I do not believe in third, fourth and fifth chances, and if prison didn't rehabilitate somebody the first time round it certainly won't the second time. I do also think there needs to be no reasonable doubt and indisputable evidence (by indisputable I man something like DNA, or CCTV footage), and there should be a time period during which an appeal can be launched, and the methods used for execution should, ideally, be humane.

I am horrified that there are people calling for _more_ lethal force from the police given America's current problem with police brutality. NOBODY should be executed without due process, and lethal force should only be used on somebody who is armed and poses a threat to others, and only when an attempt has been made to deescalate the situation non-violently. Innocent people are currently being kill by police officers in the United State - whether you consider the victims good people or not is irrelevant, they were still innocent - and you think more police brutality will some _stop _innocent people being hurt?


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## autisticdragonkin (Jun 12, 2016)

ScrewTheRules said:


> At the risk of isolating myself from my fellow left-wingers, I am actually pro-capitol punishment, at least under certain circumstances. Specifically, only in the case of serious, violent crimes (i.e. murder) and only repeat offenders, and by repeat offenders I mean people who've been to prison previously. I believe in second chances, but I do not believe in third, fourth and fifth chances, and if prison didn't rehabilitate somebody the first time round it certainly won't the second time. I do also think there needs to be no reasonable doubt and indisputable evidence (by indisputable I man something like DNA, or CCTV footage), and there should be a time period during which an appeal can be launched, and the methods used for execution should, ideally, be humane.
> 
> I am horrified that there are people calling for _more_ lethal force from the police given America's current problem with police brutality. NOBODY should be executed without due process, and lethal force should only be used on somebody who is armed and poses a threat to others, and only when an attempt has been made to deescalate the situation non-violently. Innocent people are currently being kill by police officers in the United State - whether you consider the victims good people or not is irrelevant, they were still innocent - and you think more police brutality will some _stop _innocent people being hurt?


We also need the prisons to focus on rehabilitation and deterrence. They cannot be purely rehabilitative such that people will be completely indifferent to them, a rational person should consider not commiting a crime to be more valuable then commiting a crime to go to prison but once someone gets out of prison they should be able to reintegrate into society and be less likely to commit crimes. I think that repeat offenders are a failure of the criminal justice system but still should be euthanized for the safety of others (they don't deserve it but others are better off with it so they are not executed per se). I only support actual capital punishment in the rare case where someone gains so much from comitting a crime that its worth is equivalent to the worth of the rest of their life or more and I cannot think of a modern example of such a crime


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## ScrewTheRules (Jun 12, 2016)

autisticdragonkin said:


> We also need the prisons to focus on rehabilitation and deterrence. They cannot be purely rehabilitative such that people will be completely indifferent to them, a rational person should consider not commiting a crime to be more valuable then commiting a crime to go to prison but once someone gets out of prison they should be able to reintegrate into society and be less likely to commit crimes.


I'm not going to disagree with you.


autisticdragonkin said:


> I think that repeat offenders are a failure of the criminal justice system but still should be euthanized for the safety of others (they don't deserve it but others are better off with it so they are not executed per se).


Call a  spade a spade a spade; that's not euthanasia, it's execution.



autisticdragonkin said:


> . I only support actual capital punishment in the rare case where someone gains so much from comitting a crime that its worth is equivalent to the worth of the rest of their life or more and I cannot think of a modern example of such a crime


There was an arms dealer taken down recently in Birmingham, can't remember the name. Honestly a lot more people turn a profit on crime than you'd realise, it's just most of them a pretty damn careful not to get caught; the fame isn't worth life in prison.


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## autisticdragonkin (Jun 12, 2016)

ScrewTheRules said:


> Call a spade a spade a spade; that's not euthanasia, it's execution.


I guess I could just call it incapacitory execution as opposed to deterrent execution


ScrewTheRules said:


> There was an arms dealer taken down recently in Birmingham, can't remember the name. Honestly a lot more people turn a profit on crime than you'd realise, it's just most of them a pretty damn careful not to get caught; the fame isn't worth life in prison.


I do think this is the case but for the most case just losing everything you own and going to prison for an extended period is enough to counteract the incentive (of course probability needs to be taken into account for this so some of them might require execution)


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## Lachlan Hunter McIntyre (Jun 18, 2016)

Prison exists to rehabilitate criminals and to teach them how to operate in society at large. Be productive members of humanity. The abolishment of the death penalty means the people who would otherwise be killed off now have to live in prison the rest of their lives. They cannot ever be returned to society, but without capital punishment there is nowhere else for them to go. Thus creating an ever-increasing need for more prisons and more people to run them. Making a larger and larger need for financing to house criminals that cannot ever return to society. 

It is stupid and a waste of taxpayer money to provide housing for a serial killer just so he doesn't get the chair. There should be no life sentence. If you cannot be redeemed, you should be culled. It is unethical to put additional strain on both the economy and human resources just to keep an evil person alive.


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## Marvin (Jun 18, 2016)

Harakudoshi said:


> It is unethical to put additional strain on both the economy and human resources just to keep an evil person alive.


Not if you think the death penalty is equally (or more) unethical.


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## Lachlan Hunter McIntyre (Jun 18, 2016)

Marvin said:


> Not if you think the death penalty is equally (or more) unethical.


Although I can understand that argument, what's more unethical. A mass murderer allowed to live out his life with free food and health care living off your and my money? Or using that money to actually help those that can be helped to be reintroduced to the populace?


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## Marvin (Jun 18, 2016)

Harakudoshi said:


> Although I can understand that argument, what's more unethical. A mass murderer allowed to live out his life with free food and health care living off your and my money? Or using that money to actually help those that can be helped to be reintroduced to the populace?


It quite possibly might be the former, if you think that way.

Death is pretty absolute, and arguments relating to it get pretty absolute as well.


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## Lachlan Hunter McIntyre (Jun 18, 2016)

Marvin said:


> It quite possibly might be the former, if you think that way.
> 
> Death is pretty absolute, and arguments relating to it get pretty absolute as well.


Death is absolute. Exactly. Most people don't deserve to die. But someone who kills for fun? Eats a person's organs for fun? Slaughters innocent people just to see if they could? They're some of the very few who do deserve to die. They are owed no sympathy.


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## Marvin (Jun 18, 2016)

Harakudoshi said:


> Death is absolute. Exactly. Most people don't deserve to die. But someone who kills for fun? Eats a person's organs for fun? Slaughters innocent people just to see if they could? They're some of the very few who do deserve to die. They are owed no sympathy.


It's not about sympathy. It's about principles. Some people legitimately believe that killing someone is unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances. It's not the most uncommon belief.


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## Lachlan Hunter McIntyre (Jun 18, 2016)

Marvin said:


> It's not about sympathy. It's about principles. Some people legitimately believe that killing someone is unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances. It's not the most uncommon belief.


And I truly don't understand that. Because otherwise they're just going to rot in prison for the rest of their life. Taking up space that could be used to HELP someone who can be helped. Prisons have finite area. And every cell dedicated to someone with a life sentence is a cell that can't be used to re-integrate someone. So more prisons have to be built. Which puts an even greater stress on infrastructure and the economy. And people question the for-profit prison system.


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## Lachlan Hunter McIntyre (Jun 18, 2016)

Marvin said:


> It's not about sympathy. It's about principles. Some people legitimately believe that killing someone is unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances. It's not the most uncommon belief.


But hey, at least you don't have to have icky thoughts about a dead human.


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## Marvin (Jun 18, 2016)

Harakudoshi said:


> And I truly don't understand that.


Dude, people believe in god. Opposing capital punishment is one of the least bonkers beliefs people hold, especially considering all the flaws in the legal system.

And when you consider the numbers, death row inmates aren't remotely clogging up prisons. Shitty laws, particularly ones involving drugs, are what are clogging up prisons. Death row inmates aren't even a line item on a state budget.


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## Tony Fuckin Abbott (Jun 18, 2016)

I've always liked the concept of an eye for an eye, The death sentence should be reserved for murderers and they should have the same fate as the people they killed if not worse


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## Lachlan Hunter McIntyre (Jun 18, 2016)

Marvin said:


> Dude, people believe in god. Opposing capital punishment is one of the least bonkers beliefs people hold, especially considering all the flaws in the legal system.
> 
> And when you consider the numbers, death row inmates aren't remotely clogging up prisons. Shitty laws, particularly ones involving drugs, are what are clogging up prisons. Death row inmates aren't even a line item on a state budget.


Every single person on death row is a detriment. Even if it's only one, that's one space that could be used to help someone who can be helped. Death row should be like a production line. Hell, could build a big room you stick them in and gas them all at once. Tell them it's a shower, pump it full of carbon dioxide. They'll black out before they die, they'll never know it's happening. The concept of being on death row for decades is retarded.


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## AnOminous (Jun 18, 2016)

Harakudoshi said:


> It is stupid and a waste of taxpayer money to provide housing for a serial killer just so he doesn't get the chair. There should be no life sentence. If you cannot be redeemed, you should be culled. It is unethical to put additional strain on both the economy and human resources just to keep an evil person alive.



The system is vastly inefficient and there would be no way to make it more efficient that did not involve deliberately and knowingly executing a certain percentage of innocent people, or at least people whose crime doesn't merit being killed by the state.

Spending millions to determine whether some random drug dealer who shot another drug dealer should be put away for life or executed is just not an efficient use of money and resources.

It's unethical to waste money just so someone's modern enactment of _lex talionis_ can be satisfied.



Harakudoshi said:


> Every single person on death row is a detriment. Even if it's only one, that's one space that could be used to help someone who can be helped. Death row should be like a production line. Hell, could build a big room you stick them in and gas them all at once. Tell them it's a shower, pump it full of carbon dioxide. They'll black out before they die, they'll never know it's happening. The concept of being on death row for decades is retarded.



If killing innocent people is so terrible that the only proper punishment is death, then anyone willing to work on death row should be put to death themselves.


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## Lachlan Hunter McIntyre (Jun 18, 2016)

AnOminous said:


> The system is vastly inefficient and there would be no way to make it more efficient that did not involve deliberately and knowingly executing a certain percentage of innocent people, or at least people whose crime doesn't merit being killed by the state.
> 
> Spending millions to determine whether some random drug dealer who shot another drug dealer should be put away for life or executed is just not an efficient use of money and resources.
> 
> ...


Simple. Abolish life sentences. Anyone with a life sentence or something that is functionally a life sentence (like 200 year sentence) should instead be culled. Move the dregs to make way for the people who can be helped. And the 'innocent person wrongly convicted' just speaks to the reforms that're required for the judicial system in America. The abolishment of the death penalty because of 'morality' and muh feels is retarded. They showed no sympathy, so why should we? The families of those killed should be the ones to pull the trigger. Hell, we could make it a sport. Drop them in a cordoned off area with no supplies, and let some people pay to hunt them down like the beasts they are. Would make for great pay-per-view. What's wrong with a little blood sport, anyway?

Should've never gotten rid of barbaric capital punishment. Yeah, it's disgusting. But it worked. Most people wouldn't steal if they knew if they got caught they'd lose a hand. Wouldn't murder if they knew they'd be drawn and quartered. The only ones that'd even try are the ones who don't deserve to be alive anyway.

Burn people at the stake. Have them impaled in the spirit of Vlad of Transylvania. Scare people into not doing shit. And those that still do it? At least we're weeding out the evil people.


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## AnOminous (Jun 18, 2016)

Harakudoshi said:


> Simple. Abolish life sentences. Anyone with a life sentence or something that is functionally a life sentence (like 200 year sentence) should instead be culled. Move the dregs to make way for the people who can be helped. And the 'innocent person wrongly convicted' just speaks to the reforms that're required for the judicial system in America. The abolishment of the death penalty because of 'morality' and muh feels is retarded. They showed no sympathy, so why should we? The families of those killed should be the ones to pull the trigger. Hell, we could make it a sport. Drop them in a cordoned off area with no supplies, and let some people pay to hunt them down like the beasts they are. Would make for great pay-per-view. What's wrong with a little blood sport, anyway?
> 
> Should've never gotten rid of barbaric capital punishment. Yeah, it's disgusting. But it worked. Most people wouldn't steal if they knew if they got caught they'd lose a hand. Wouldn't murder if they knew they'd be drawn and quartered. The only ones that'd even try are the ones who don't deserve to be alive anyway.
> 
> Burn people at the stake. Have them impaled in the spirit of Vlad of Transylvania. Scare people into not doing shit. And those that still do it? At least we're weeding out the evil people.



Seriously?  A triple post?  Use the fucking edit button please.


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## Vitriol (Jun 18, 2016)

autisticdragonkin said:


> Just let them die through starvation and you remove all the ethical issues since you are not actually killing them (they can pay for food with their own money so that ethical issue is not the case either)


This kind of autism is what got you a Shallow Thoughts ban the first time. 

I realise you enjoy pushing the limit but your posts are becoming so retardedly and deliberately inflammatory im considering a permanent shallow thoughts ban.

This is your final warning.


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## Strelok (Jun 19, 2016)

Vitriol said:


> This kind of autism is what got you a Shallow Thoughts ban the first time.
> 
> I realise you enjoy pushing the limit but your posts are becoming so retardedly and deliberately inflammatory im considering a permanent shallow thoughts ban.
> 
> This is your final warning.



Why did you unban him in the first place. This is the guy who tried to use math to prove polyamory was more efficient or something retarded like that.


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## The Great Chandler (Mar 26, 2017)

I remember seeing a John Oliver on this. He claimed that capital punishment is "more expensive than life sentences" and used 'statistics' to back it up. I'm not sure if that's true.


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## TowinKarz (Mar 26, 2017)

I don't doubt it, but that's mostly because death sentences are rarely carried out at this point due to it being a political hot potato and requiring years of legal wrangling to get the final go-ahead.  A "condemned" defendant is just as likely to live out their life in prison, and they still have to eat, be guarded and see the doc like everyone else, with the appeals process and cost of administering the actual execution only making it worse.


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## MMMMMM (Mar 26, 2017)

The Great Chandler said:


> I remember seeing a John Oliver on this. He claimed that capital punishment is "more expensive than life sentences" and used 'statistics' to back it up. I'm not sure if that's true.



This is actually true, it's been known for a while.  Basically the consequences of fucking up and executing the wrong guy are pretty severe as you can imagine, so everybody involved has to work more to ensure their work is to the highest standard.  You definitely don't want to be the guy who gets blamed for an innocent man on death row.  Then there's the cost of death row itself, and the execution chamber etc etc.

Of course, you could cut some corners and make it cheaper, but then you'd be sending more innocent people to death.

The biggest argument against capital punishment IMO is that it's percieved as a solution, it's how you "fix" society.  But society improves dramatically when that's taken off the table, because now the money can go to preventing crime instead of chasing after it.


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## TowinKarz (Mar 26, 2017)

I don't think you can, in good faith, make an argument that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on crime, either.  Deterrence only works on minor stuff anyway and providing an incentive for the law-abiding to stay that way because they have too much to lose.  You don't cheat on your taxes because you could lose life savings AND go to jail.  You don't steal a newspaper because you get a reputation as a shoplifter means nobody will serve you AND you end up with with fines and having to do community service.

Deterrence works in those situations.

But the death penalty, in it's current form? You pretty much have to kill someone to get it, and if you're plotting to kill someone, you've crossed the line of being able to rationally weigh pros and cons.  Besides 400 some odd things were punishable by death in Merry old England, from stealing an egg to beheading the King, and somehow, that didn't stop either of those things from happening.....


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## DoctorJimmyRay (Apr 13, 2017)

I never could reconcile the fallible nature of human legal judgements with the finality of a death sentence. A person proven innocent after 10 years in prison can get a hefty compensation. A corpse can't be revivified. An innocent man or woman being executed for a crime they didn't commit is, in my opinion, the height of judicial cruelty. I cannot believe it's more preferable to ensure that the guilty be put to death at the expense of a few innocent people's lives, rather than the inverse. On that point alone, the death penalty should be set aside. 

That being said, I don't think it should be outlawed. Despite its objectionable nature, there are some people who just need to die. I'm talking about the worst of the worst of the worst. People who are so utterly dangerous and unrepentant that it's safer for everyone else involved if the guilty were put to death. 

So I'd say it should be set aside, as a rule, but not abolished. Instead, it is to be used when there is no hope of redemption of any kind combined with a dangerous criminal nature that cannot be mitigated by confinement. Only then should it start to be considered as an option.


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