Frankly I find it barbaric and think it should be abolished
The guy who first came up with abolishing capital punishment had an idea: what if, instead of killing convicts (which makes us seem barbaric and instigates rebellion), we imprison them for life and make them work as slaves? Dying can be noble, but wasting away doing prison work takes away all dignity, so other criminals will not be tempted to emulate them.
This was one little step in the long progress that lead to the fine-tuned fascism machine the USA is today.
What I’m trying to say is, capital punishment is bad, and it looks especially bad because it’s flashy. It distracts us from other forms of punishment, which are just as inhumane (if not worse), but go unnoticed.
So capital punishment absolutely needs to be abolished, but that is only the first step of many.
I can assure you that it didn’t go unnoticed in most civilized countries that put reintegrating above punishment.
I am not, on general principle, opposed to it. I do believe that there are some people who pose significant danger to others with no hope of rehabilitation, which basically leaves 2 options - locking them up forever, possibly in solitary if they’re dangerous enough, or killing them, and in many cases I think the later may be more humane.
But, and I’m not going to go into all of the details because there’s a lot, but I have basically no confidence in any of the systems we have in place to use that power in a fair way that can’t be abused, and I’m skeptical that such a system could ever be implemented
So in actual practice I oppose it.
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
Maybe it’s my psych degree, but I refuse to believe that any human is completely irredeemable. While many mental illnesses cannot be ‘cured’ in a traditional sense, they can be treated and even incredibly dangerous people can heal. When you kill someone, you remove their chance to heal forever.
There’s just no excuse for capital punishment. It’s a vile practice done for the benefit of other people’s perverted sense of justice.
No need to make it all official. Just withdraw all opportunity, community, and support for your troublesome minority of choice. Then, call it freedom; they’ll die on their own, eventually, and you can blame them for not being sufficiently resourceful.
i’m ok with executing CEOs who poison children because they cut costs on maintenance or safety checks etc.
if you have the resources of a state and you’re not in a precarious position you should be able to Puyi most criminals.
If a person is going to continue being threat to the lives/wellbeing of others, they should be kept away from others.
If you lack the resources to keep them in an institution indefinitely, then killing them is the way you keep them away from others.
For example, a person who isnt in their right mind committing homicide because the voices in their head tell them to should be institutionalized by the government.
Whereas a billionaire pedophile should probably just be killed because they can bribe their way out of any institution/law so murder is unfortunately more likely to prevent future harm than attempting to institutionalize them
I feel like a billionaire pedophile can afford to buy a fall guy to take the death penalty for them.
Then why isn’t he paying a fall guy to take the original charges?
I mean, that was implied. CoughEpsteincough
I like guillotines. I wouldn’t use them against the 99% though.
A good (not for-profit) criminal justice system is built upon the idea of reintegration. If you 100% cannot reintegrate a(n ex-)criminal, then sure, relieve society from that burden.
EXCEPT that you can never be 100% sure of either guilt nor lack of reintegration, so lifelong internment is the only solution.
To quote Gandalf: “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it.”
While in some types of crime I would absuluteley use it (mass murderers, child rapists etc.), the problem with it is that you can’t take it back. There have been and will be cases of innocent peolpe eho get convicted. If they are imprisoned they can be released and given restitutions. If they are executed they are basically murder victims. Thus I think it shouldn’t be used, because humans are not all-knowing.
Some people commit such horrific crimes that they are too dangerous to be among people & a waste of funding to deserve continued life.
4% of Americans on death row, with it’s admittedly low bar compared to the rest of developed countries, are innocent. So how many people who haven’t committed horrific crimes are you okay with killing so you can kill the people who have committed horrific crimes? And given that we already spend vast amounts to reduce that amount to 4%, often more than life imprisonment would cost, only to continue to have that 4% innocence rate, how much more are you willing to spend so we can kill less innocent people? Or do you think we should just spend less on confirming their innocence so we can save some money on killing those people who committed horrific crimes, thus ensuring we have more innocent people being killed, as well?
I’m really sick of hearing that argument every time this topic comes up. The criminal court system needs to sort their shit out. There should NOT be innocent people in prison or on death row. That’s ridiculous. And since there is still apparently that 4% out there, I say again: the criminal justice system needs to sort their shit out.
This is actually a topic that boils my blood because can you imagine being completely innocent of something, then a police interrogation breaks you down because for some reason he’s certain that you committed the crime, you docile-ly comply with the process because surely the truth will prevail and this will all sort itself out, right? Right?? 😭
The closest I’ve ever experienced to this was 1) once when I was 7 years old a group of bully kids across the street were accusing me of something I absolutely did not do, they even got their mom involved and I became a pariah, and it still sickens me how they could make up lies accusing me of something I didn’t do.
And
- Be me age 18 a regular babysitter for a certain family, the dad always had to come pick me up in their car because I didn’t have a car. Their car was a nice black sedan of some certain snooty make/model I never even consciously registered in my mind because I don’t care about such things.
Paragraphs now because long story
One day after he picked me up, we arrived to their house, he pulled into his garage as always, he walked into the house first and I opened the back car door and got the baby out and carried the baby into the house and babysitting began as usual.
Maybe the following week or a few days later, I was at home and he came to pick me up again, this time both he & his wife came and they said they wanted to talk to me. A big deal that the wife came too because she was the alpha in their relationship. Cut-throat lawyer-type business lady. They were looking very serious. Something was awry.
They said that their neighbor had reported that I took their car because he saw me getting out of the car and opening the car door and getting the baby out. My mind went through what the heck he could be talking about and of course it was that time Travis picked me up and I opened the car door to get the baby out, but that’s all the nosey meddling neighbor saw, he apparently didn’t see the dad get out of the car first and go into the house before the baby & I did.
I adamantly explained that to the mom & dad, and they didn’t want to believe me but finally Debbie said “Either what you say is true, or you’re a really good liar.”
Huh! I’d rarely felt so helpless. How could I be suspected of something that not only did I NOT do, but also would never have any thought or inclination whatsoever of driving their car without their permission while they’re gone. I didn’t even have a driver’s license or any desire to drive. Never even crossed my mind.
And how could they not wholeheartedly believe me based on what I just told them? Their meddling neighbor must’ve been very powerful to convince them of such a thing.
It’s a terrifyingly helpless feeling to be falsely accused of something, like the entire earth is moved from beneath your feet and you have nothing to stand on, and like everyone you’ve ever known & loved suddenly suddenly turns their backs on you for no reason at all, and you’re cast into outer darkness alone & lost. Now I understand why people get lawyers!
And looking back I couldn’t even imagine, nor even to this day driving someone else’s car without their permission?! That’s ridiculous! The thought has never even crossed my mind, that would be a terrifying feeling to basically be stealing someone’s car, that’s awful. And such an unstable feeling to be suspected of doing something you didn’t even do! I hate it very much.
Anyway our conversation was brief and my babysitting commenced uninterrupted but that day their three year old toddler boy had been appointed the task of clutching the car keys tightly the whole time I was there, even while he was napping 🤦🏼♀️ That’s fine, just makes me sick in my stomach that they think I would use their car keys to drive their car while they’re gone. Makes no sense to me. I was babysitting. I had nowhere else I wanted or to go. At 18 I was just a kid myself.
Anyhoo since SOME humans are awful, EVERYONE becomes a suspected criminal 🤦🏼♀️ I hate it a lot.
Your comment is the ultimate response to the situation. You’ve personally experienced the problem with imperfect witnesses and malicious actors compounded with incomplete knowledge, yet still insist these very human problems can be solved if you throw a big enough bureaucracy at them. And in your cases, you were perfectly innocent. Imagine if you had been less so. Exactly how do you propose we do that, given that many of these people are less than perfect paragon of legality, with a solution that can’t be reversed? And now you want there to be no mistakes made before the death penalty, as well!
I understand your frustration. There are horrible things in this world. Some of them happen in the halls of justice. Making those horrible things irreversible will not improve it.
Exactly how do you propose we do that,
Because that’s the entire purpose of the criminal Justice system, having an impartial judge and 12 people and lawyers to work it out and figure it out, you would think all those people could come to the right conclusion!
What maddens me is that the criminal justice system considers inadmissible as evidence, not allowed to use our instinctive skills like body language reading, intuitively knowing when someone’s lying or telling the truth, instincts, etc to contribute to coming to conclusions. In my opinion muddles the whole system because they need evidence and then you get people like OJ Simpson’s & Casey Anthony’s lawyers who literally let them get away with murder, lawyers find all these legal loopholes to let these people literally get away with murder and something really needs to be fixed. Intuition and common sense need to be allowed in the courtroom.
Please forgive my poor sentence structure, but you get the gist of what I’m saying.
I get what you’re saying, but you still haven’t shown any reason why a different system, built around fallible people, wouldn’t also send innocent people to death row. Trusting people’s intuition won’t change that, although it might change the mix of innocent people sent to death row.
How do you capital punishment? Like this:
!PUNISHMENT!<
should be applied to everyone whose net worth is over 1 billion
“We kill people who kill people, to show that killing people is wrong”
It’s fucked. NO ONE, at all, ever, has the right to take the life from someone who does not want to die. Not the government, not murderers etc. It’s hypocritical.
You are going to run into a self defense deadend there.
The problem with “self-defense” is that it is often a “pre-emptive self-defense”, which is indistinguishable from aggression. Especially when it becomes a question of personal self defense using lethal weapons.
So someone who is abused is the real aggressor if they finally end the abuse by ending the abuser? I certainly don’t think so.
The fault is society for allowing the situation to get to that point. Desperate people do desperate things. Its foolish and cruel to look down on your pedestal and declare life is black and white and a person who takes a life never has a reason.
There are times when it is horrible but not acknowledging the complexity is exactly how you get people who look the other way when the killing is obscure in a system of policies. Say how we kill thousands a year through poverty or homelessness. Those deaths are not seen as horrible because it’s slow and painful, instead of quick and painful. Maybe you will come back and say you don’t feel this way but such quick snap judgment without analysis is exactly how we get here.
It would be nice if self defense often meant an abused person ending their abuser, but what it usually looks like is shooting minorities.
You are conflating a lot here.
This goes back to what I was saying ironically. The issue you are saying here is still a failure of society. Obviously someone killing a minority because they are a minority is not a act of self defense.
Its not useful for murderers, since most murder isn’t a risk vs reward calculation, but I could see it being used for white collar crime and political corruption severe enough to cause multiple social murders.
