Here is a death penalty candidate

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Syzygys, Apr 27, 2012.

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  1. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    Long story short:

    The asshole worked for a security company transfering money. In February he shot his coworker in the back of the head and disappeared with 2.1 million. A few days ago they found him in Florida with 70% of the money.

    Now if some idiot comes with the "maybe it wasn't him" bullshit, he acknowledged the murder on the phone to a friend, had bloody shirt found at his home, and oh yes, he had the money too.

    Now instead of a quick shot in the head (or hung by his testicles, either way) he is going to spend 50 or so years in prison, never to be released. In Pennsylvania the prosecution could go for the death penalty, but it would just delay the trial and he most likely wouldn't be executed anyway.

    So just pass him to the other world, and use his organs, so it is a win-win for society...No need for crybaby bullshit....

    The case:

    http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/24/pittsburgh-armored-car-murder-suspect-nabbed-in-florida/
     
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  3. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Envy and homicide

    I'm starting to accept that for these homicidal crime-and-punishment advocates, there really isn't any such thing as justice, but, rather, only vendetta.

    Justice and vengeance are not interchangeable words; one is societal, the other personal.

    In the end, the death penalty advocate might stand nose to nose with the murderer and find that all one can say is, "We might both be homicidal maniacs, but you are evil and I am good because I follow complicated rituals called 'laws' in crafting my killings."

    And the murderer might reply, "Yeah, but at least I did the job myself. You're just envious."
     
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  5. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    If you kill him, he might never really appreciate his mistake. The article doesn't say how old he is. He could be a young guy that happened to do something stupid.
     
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  7. Cavalier Knight of the Opinion Registered Senior Member

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    I would say there there is a good reason not to kill him, and it doesn't rely at all on any notion that he may not deserve it in the abstract. Let's assume he does.

    The problem is that we cannot design a system for "the easy cases" (people would not agree unanimously to what is an "easy" case anyway). We need to have a death penalty system that can be applied in all cases. That means that the system needs to deal with hard cases as well as easy ones.

    How do you design that system? There are two types of error to be concerned about:

    1) False executions (where an innocent man is convicted and executed, and the real killer remains at large); and

    2) False leniency (where the guilty man goes free or is sentenced to a punishment less than execution).

    We've adopted a system that skews highly against making error 1. Part of doing that is that the accused in entitled to a trial, an appeal to appellate courts, possibly an appeal to the Supreme Court (in some cases), and then habeas proceedings for those cases in which special circumstances arise (like new evidence is found, prosecutorial or police misconduct is uncovered, or other circumstances that undermine a reasonable person's faith in the validity of the judgment). Those habeas proceeds are often (incorrectly) referred to as "appeals".

    Despite that system, there is evidence that we still have a number of false convictions (like the results of the Innocence Project's carious efforts). Contrary to what some people think, it's not only DNA evidence that winds up exonerating the wrongly convicted. In fact the "science" of forensics is anything but a science (CSI and the rest are mostly bullshit), and so forensic experts are often wildly wrong. (Consider the case of the Madrid bombing where 4 qualified fingerprint experts, including 3 FBI crime lab experts, and including the FBI's chief expert, identified the bomber as Brandon Mayfield, an attorney from Oregon. They asserted under oath that they had 100% confidence that the fingerprint they found on the bomb belonged to him. Except that they were wrong, the fingerprint belonged to an Algerian.

    Yet the cost of this system already makes it more expensive to execute a person than it does to simply keep him incarcerated.

    So what are our options? We can't simply shout: "convict the right people!" or "lower costs!" without something more. If we streamline the system by eliminating appeals, or habeas proceedings, we are absolutely certain to increase the number of false convictions, as innocent people have fewer avenues to prove that innocence. If we keep the system as if, we spend more money executing people than we do to incarcerate them for life.

    Unless we (1) find a way to make people wiser (so that we really are better at convicting the perpetrators and letting the innocent go), or (2) decide that we're okay executing innocent people who wrongly convicted, and so eliminate "appeals", it makes simple economic sense to have a system where we incarcerate for life, rather than execute people.

    I don't have a philosophical problem with executions, but I do agree with the bias against killing the innocent (even if that means showing leniency to actual killers), and I am averse to spending ore money than we have to. That suggests we should not be executing people, as it's a waste of money.
     
  8. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    I think he is 23-25, that's why I said 50 years in prison. Now I would like to point out that death is a natural part of life, 50 years being locked up isn't.
     
  9. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    Why not? When there is no doubt, blast the asshole away, when there is doubt, torture him with decades in prison....

    So I see you don't have a bias against imprisoning the innocent. Nice guy you are.

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    Last edited: Apr 28, 2012
  10. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    ...and the preacher has entered the fray....

    And why can't a case/solution be both?

    And why would that be a problem? If only murderers can kill...

    By the way we are here talking about one specific case, not generally. But you tell me about 5 decades in prison and how does that effect the psyche....
     
  11. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    Completely "unrelated" story from last week's News of the weird:

    "Mark "Chopper" Read only wanted to help out his son's youth athletics program in the Melbourne, Australia, suburb of Collingwood in February, but was rebuffed. He had offered his assistance at track meets by, for instance, firing the starter's pistol for races, but officials declined after learning that Read had recently been released from prison after 23 years and had boasted of killing 19 people and once attempting to kidnap a judge at gunpoint. [The Mercury (Hobart), 2-14-2012]
     
  12. Cavalier Knight of the Opinion Registered Senior Member

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    Because there is no easy way to define the "easy" cases. "I know it when I see it" is not a good rule of law, it's just an invitation for arbitrary and capricious decision-making. What I think is an "easy case" is not certain to coincide with the cones you think are easy. That's especially true when the public is involved, as the public gets it's insights in 10 minute simplifications from the media. Almost every case looks easy from the public's perspective.

    Take the Travon Martin shooting. A large swathe of the public views Zimmerman's guilt as an "easy case", whereas I am thinking he's likely to go free given the laws involved.
     
  13. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    You know whats sad, the way people are so hell bent on revenge and blood lust that they ignore the fact that yours and our prison system is an abject failure and that Norway is such a success with no blood lust needed
     
  14. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    You seem to be responding to the act of murder, as if that's what justifies execution, but that's a relative position to take, probably even for you. When a murder occurs on the battlefield, you will probably forgive the soldier.

    So if it's not the act of murder that constitutes a singular objective criterion for justifying execution, what is left to make that determination?

    Opposition to the death penalty is the conservative stance of the liberal mind.
     
  15. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    1. Somewhere we have to draw the line. Beyond reasonable doubt is the expression.

    2. You can apply the same problem to ANY crime and then you end up not punishing anyone. How do we know for sure that X stole that $200??? Can we know it all the time 110% sure??? See?

    Clearly not a clear cut case. Unlike the crime described in the first post... How would you punish the murderer in this case?
     
    Last edited: Apr 28, 2012
  16. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    Blah-blah-blah, my heart is bleeding. I know we should close all the prisons, because for God's sake, an innocent might get punished.

    In the maintime you explain it to kid, why daddy was shot in the back of his head by his COWORKER, so daddy is not coming home anymore....

    But just out of curiosity, in the case described in the first post, what would be your punishment?
     
  17. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    I am not sure who you are addressing, but anyway...

    Well, I advocate the death penalty in other crimes, like treason, severe body damage to multiple people, serial rapist, white collar crimes when the monetary damage is very high, etc.

    So your argument that I only want in against murderers doesn't stand and the soldier analogy is simply just flawed, because there are different rules in wartime...

    By the way, if a government official knowingly takes his country to war under false pretenses, that is treason and should be punished by death. Can you find cases from the not so distant past???
     
  18. Cavalier Knight of the Opinion Registered Senior Member

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    "Beyond a reasonable doubt" is NOT a standard that ensures only the guilty are punished, so it is *definitely* not the standard (or at least not a good standard) for what are the "easy cases" vs the hard ones.

    I never said anything about not punishing anyone. I am only saying that when you execute someone, you can't unexecute them. When you imprison them, you can let them go free later and compensate them for the wrongful arrest.

    So (A) executions cost us more than incarceration because we are more sensitive to errors when we are taking someone's life and (B) executions are final and when errors are made no redress is possible. That suggests that we should favor incarceration, except where we have an "easy case"...but as I've shown (see below) there are no easy cases. Certainly the mere fact that someone was convicted, beyond a reasonable doubt, is not enough to render the case "easy."

    Exactly. It is not a clear cut case...to you (and me). It *is* a clear cut case to a lot of people who were protesting in Florida. My point was that what is an "easy" case is entirely subjective and there is no good legal test for it. The public's opinion of which cases are easy is worse than useless. Juries' opinions have proven to be fallible. Judges do no better than juries. And every time we sentence someone to death, we always think we have the right guy. Every jury that sentences anyone to death thinks it's an easy case, based on the evidence they saw, even when they are wrong and the person convicted is later shown to be innocent.

    So who do we consult to determine what are the truly easy case, where a death sentence is a no-brainer? There is no one, and there is rule that can be set up that would differentiate the easy cases from the hard ones. If we tried to set up a rule, it would, inevitably, be misapplied.

    The only rule that works to separate the easy cases from the hard ones is "I know it when I see it", and the truth is that we DON'T know it when we see it. We are, in this context, the public with our worse than useless, semi-informed, easily media-manipulated, opinions.
     
  19. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    i also say don't kill him.
    instead, life in solitary confinement 24 hours a day in a 4 by 6 foot cell.
    his food to be delivered by some form of robot.
    no amenities whatsoever, books, TV, radio, mail, personal visits.
    in other words let him rot alive.

    edit:
    i would also find pictures of all the people he has wronged and plaster them all over the walls.
     
  20. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    ..,and here is the sadist argument.

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    What does society gain by that? If he is NEVER going to be released, that is incarceration for 5 decades, he will be insane in 20 years, specially if we apply your kind of imprisonment. A bullet to the head would be way more merciful, not to mention cheaper and if we add organ donation 5-10 people's lives could improve.

    Let's make an experience. Go to the closest dogpound, pick up the cutest 2 years old puppy. Then for the rest of its life, keep it in a CAGE, and let him out onlt for 1 hour a day. Report back how he is doing after 6 months.

    Bottomline is: If you wouldn't incarcerate a dog for life, why would you do that to a human???

    There is a reason why in certain countries there is no lifelong sentence....

    So let's compare our punishments:

    1. Yours: cruel, causing the individual severe psychological damage by torture for a long time, costs a lot, society gains nothing, compared to mine version.

    2. Mine: Painless, cheap,quick and helps society by having a few donatable organs...

    Again, death is a natural part of life, incarceration for life isn't...
     
  21. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    I don't care if you come up with another REASONABLE standard, as long as we apply a standard instead of throwing out the death penalty, because you can't come up with a definition for clear cut cases.

    Your argument implied it. That's what most anti-DP people don't get: If we don't use the DP because we can never be sure of guilt (not true by the way) that argument also works for ANY crime, because when can we be sure of anything? So if you don't want to use the DP, the logical next step is not using ANY punishment, because we wouldn't want to punish the innocent, right?

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    I understand, but it also works for long term punishments. Can you give back someone's lost 20-30 years? Money can not buy lost youth, family, missed children, etc.

    We just have to make the standards higher. There are plenty of dangerous surgeries were the outcome is not a good one, nevertheless we don't stop doing dangerous surgeries. We just try harder.

    I understand. Nevertheless you can not guarantee that innocents won't spend incredibly long terms in prison or even die there. So what do you do against it? What if tomorrow I show you a case where an innocent spend all his life in prison and died there? Will we close all prisons then???

    Only because the US justice system sucks. It doesn't have to be that way.
    So in countries where this argument isn't true you are alright with the DP?
    Also, why don't we make DP cases cheaper?

    It is a he said, he died case, it is not clear cut by any reasonable standard.
    My quoted case is clear cut.

    You can ask me or any reasonable individual...

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    Also, this argument works against ANY crime.How do we know who is 100% guilty? What's the meaning of life? Is there intelligent life out there? Why is the sky blue? Big questions....

    Come on now, there are plenty of circumstances and evidences when a case is clear cut.
     
  22. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    Anyhow, I mentioned it years ago, there are only 2 kind of arguments against the DP:

    1. Stupid ones. They can be refuted easily.
    2. Sadist ones. (logically sound, although immoral) Personally I don't mind torturing people if they deserve it, but a quick death is usually more human than lifelong imprisonment, what gives very little to society...
    And if someone is for torture, we can torture them for a little while, then execute them, it doesn't need to be a long time.

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    Oh yes, Cavalier, what did you say, how should we punish the OP's murderer?
     
  23. steampunk Registered Senior Member

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    Well you haven't heard mine. If someone has done something so profoundly terrible that we as society need permanent separation, then so be it. But death is an injustice to victims.

    If you kill them (immediate execution), it is impossible to get any societal compensation. You are doing an injustice to the people they have offended.

    If you punish with this present abject prison system (death penalty or life imprisonment), the tax payers are charged outrageous taxes. Again, you punish the people who have been offended.

    We could make prison self-supporting through new designs, but if we remain hell bent on making prisoner's life hell, we would be building a hotbead of negative psychology and emotions that would bring down the quality of their work, dramatically increase the attempts at prison breaks and riots. This would work against being self-supporting and most likely be an economic failure.

    The real answer is to make prisons self-supporting and get over the need to make a prisoner's life hell. We then would get the highest level of cooperation and would bring about financial self-sustainability and create the fullest opportunity for society to be compesated.

    We need something like Norway, but totatly self-suppporting. Go to youtube and type: Norway Prisons. I think we need white and blue collar business inside prison's. But it should not be a capatilist's exploitative opportunity which only results in a tax payer expense. You should consider Australia. Austrailia was once a dumping ground for prisoners. They had the basis for a self-supporting system. They've done pretty good for themselves, those evil convicts.
     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2012
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