Prescriptive grammarians should remain confined to fictional, humorous digressions in David Foster Wallace novels, where they belong.
Discussion: Death penalty
- Thread starter James R
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Prescriptive grammarians should remain confined to fictional, humorous digressions in David Foster Wallace novels, where they belong.
Sure there is. Actually, when one says such a thing I tend to say the exact opposite that most of the time it is without a doubt (by the way that is a legal expression showing that THERE IS such a thing).
Most serial killers were without a doubt guilty. When there are human remains in your freezer it is kind of hard to explain...
Also as I already pointed out in the Debate, this is an anti-punishment argument, not just an anti-DP one. If you truly believe that crap you shouldn't punish anyone...
(after all there is always the possibility that the person's brain was overtaken by alien's personality changing waves, thus he wasn't responsible for the acts)
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Sure there is. Actually, when one says such a thing I tend to say the exact opposite that most of the time it is without a doubt (by the way that is a legal expression showing that THERE IS such a thing).
Most serial killers were without a doubt guilty. When there are human remains in your freezer it is kind of hard to explain...
Also as I already pointed out in the Debate, this is an anti-punishment argument, not just an anti-DP one. If you truly believe that crap you shouldn't punish anyone...
(after all there is always the possibility that the person's brain was overtaken by alien's personality changing waves, thus he wasn't responsible for the acts)
really?
so there is no possablility that say the wife could have put them there? or the children? or that when you went to the butcher you THOUGHT he had wraped up a leg of lamb (which turned out to be a leg of person). There is ALWAYS another possability, wether its reasonable or not is beside the point, its NOT BEHOND ANY DOUBT
Really.
The difference between making a mistake in applying the death penalty, and making a mistake when applying any other penalty, is whether you have a chance to make reparations to the wrongly punished afterwards. If you execute someone and then realize it was a mistake, there's nothing you can do to make it up to him. But you can release someone from prison and pay them a bunch of money, which will go at least some distance towards repairing mistaken imprisonment.
superstring01
Moderator
None. Well, none beyond the same doubt that I have that there will be gravity tomorrow and that we aren't just figments of someone else's imagination, that is. There is no doubt in cases like Dahmer, Manson, Bundy and the BTK. None whatsoever, despite your attempts to show otherwise.
Precisely. Which is why, in specific cases like the men I mention above, they deserve to die.
~String
...that you actually torture an innocent person with a long term prison sentence. With the DP there is no pain and torture, even if it is mistakenly applied.
Also, what do you say to a 70 year old who spent 40 years in prison innocently? That here is a couple of millions, buy Viagra? That doesn't bring back his wasted years...
Let's face it, there is simply not one good argument against the DP, otherwise somebody would have come up with it by now. I am still waiting for that good one...
Which is not "none," no? There's some real, non-zero level of doubt associated with those assertions, even if a reasonable person would not let it affect his decisions.
Sure there is. Those could all have been faked by some crazy Freemason plot, or something equally wild. It could be that none of those people, or their crimes, even exist - it's all just some media conspiracy. I mean, has anyone here actually laid eyes on any of those guys or their victims?
There is no reasonable doubt about their guilt, certainly. But there is no such thing as "zero doubt," even for events which you directly witness. It could always be that your senses failed you.
I can agree that all of those men were, beyond a reasonable doubt, guilty of horrendous crimes. And death is a fitting punishment for them, except where mental illness is a factor. But that doesn't mean there cannot be any doubts, however unreasonable, of their guilt.
And yet, most people would prefer a long prison sentence to execution, given the choice. Defendants routinely go to great length to avoid death sentences, even when the likely alternatives are long prison terms.
So it seems there are worse things than torture, if we can call imprisonment that. Like death.
Perhaps not, but it still leaves him a damned site better off than if he were dead, or still in prison and without the millions of dollars.
Maybe you simply lack sufficient acumen when it comes to distinguishing good arguments from bad.
It would explain your obliviousness to good arguments, and persistant advancement of bad ones, at least....
Okay, then as I said: execute only those that are "beyond a resonable doubt".
And further, we can devise ways and means whereby we can commute sentences based on good conduct for inmates, and so innocent people would never be executed because they would always, presumably, carry good conduct. And criminals that refuse to co-operate would be executed, but they should be anyway.
all criminal santions are "behond reasonable doubt" and we still have cases like the lindy chamberlin case. Everyone "knew" she was guilty but she was in actual fact telling the truth, a dingo DID take her baby and she was innocent. That ALONE should be enough to end any use of the death penalty
And yet there is no shortage of people defending the practice even knowing that innocent people have been executed in the past, and almost certainly will be in the future. I suppose it's easy to chalk it up as the cost of doing business so long as you can assure yourself that it could never happen to you, or anyone you care about. Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius"
But this is not a wish list, is it? Otherwise they would prefer NO punishment at all.
And some condemned criminals beg for execution because they had enough of the prison life.
Actually that was a non sequitur, it didn't follow from the premise. Death is void, void of life. They prefer tortured prisonlife to void of life, that simple.
Maybe, but an evidence would have been nice to back up that opinion.
Now people, I would like to state the seemingly obvious:
This thread is supposed to be about the debate, and not really about continuing the topic. Which is fine, in a different thread. I am guilty as charged too, because there was no real comment or constructive criticism about the debaters.
Here is what we would like to hear: Who do you think won and why. And by the why I mean examples, not just saying X won because Y sucked. THEN we could debate the brought up examples.
So far the best criticism was provided by ME (modest man I am) in the Summary of the Debate. Read that again if you don't know how to provide FEEEDBACK....
This thread is supposed to be about the debate, and not really about continuing the topic. Which is fine, in a different thread. I am guilty as charged too, because there was no real comment or constructive criticism about the debaters.
Here is what we would like to hear: Who do you think won and why. And by the why I mean examples, not just saying X won because Y sucked. THEN we could debate the brought up examples.
So far the best criticism was provided by ME (modest man I am) in the Summary of the Debate. Read that again if you don't know how to provide FEEEDBACK....
Not really. I already provided a mechanism for commuting sentences through good conduct, and there are definitely cases where they are really beyond any doubt. Ever heard of BTK?
superstring01
Moderator
You're right. Point made.
So, let's get back to reasonable doubt discussion.
~String
There are many human endeavers in which mistakes lead to death. The practice of medicine, surgery, building bridges or large buildings, space exploration. mountain climbing, auto racing, driving to work, crossing the street. Do we cease all these activities because they might lead to the death of an innocent? Or do we simply do all that we can to avoid making such mistakes?
Of course not.
We set speed limits knowing that a slower speed would be safer, but we choose to put practicality over safety. People don't wear their seat belts because it might wrinkle their clothes. They put fashion over human life. People risk their lives engaging in sports like skydiving or mountain climbing. Is not justice at least as important as any of these things?
Justice calls for punishment proportional to the crime commited. For the crime of murder, no punishment is adequate short of death. Just as with other activities where life is on the line, we must be careful to protect innocent life. But, like every other human endeaver, we do this knowing that we are not perfect.
Comparing risky, but voluntary activities to capital punishment is a real stretch. People like to engage in risky activities for the adrenaline rush, so we shouldn't worry about the criminal justice system occasionally executing an innocent person? Voluntarily taking a risk is a very different thing from the government executing people.
Not everyone agrees with your idea of justice. There are a large number of people, many of them highly intelligent and educated, who completely disagree with the idea that the only adequate punishment for murder is death. Other than your say so, what do you have to back up this contention? Very few criminals face the possibility of capital punishment, which is reserved for only the most severe crimes in this country.
There is no chance of all murder becoming a capital offense, so right from the start many (most?) murderers will never be adequately punished from your POV.
Though it very often falls short, the criminal justice system has to be held to a higher standard than other organizations.
Just for a moment, imagine it's you who faces a death sentence even though you are innocent. Would you go to your death peacefully, feeling that your mistaken execution was a small price to pay for living in a country that has such a wonderful criminal justice system? "Ah, no big deal, look at all of the people who die from hang gliding."
The idea that the punishment should fit the crime has a long history and is one of the most basic tenets of justice. To quote Immanuel Kant:
if an offender "has committed murder, he must die. In this case, no possible substitute can satisfy justice. For there is no parallel between death and even the most miserable life, so that there is no equality of crime and retribution unless the perpetrator is judicially put to death (at all events without any maltreatment which might make humanity an object of horror in the person of the sufferer)" (Kant 1887, p. 155).
That's true, but the idea that because some escape justice all should escape justice isn't very convincing.
Of course I would strongly protest the injustice of my particular case; but I doubt it would change my support for the death penalty. Of course, it's pretty hard to say how one would feel in such a circumstance. But I can also tell you I"d not be too happy being wrongly imprisoned either.
But before you say, "but they can correct a mistaken imprisonment"; I say a wrongful death sentence can and often is overturned. It's not like we execute people the day they're convicted. There's plenty of time to correct errors, and I suspect that more resources are devoted to defending guys on death row by anti-death penalty groups than to random guys sentenced to life in prison. So your chances of having a wrongful conviction overturned when sentenced to death may be better than when sentenced to life.