Capital Punishment

As defined by wikipedia, "Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a government-sanctioned practice whereby a person is killed by the state as a punishment for a crime. The sentence that someone be punished in such a manner is referred to as a death sentence, whereas the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution. Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes or capital offences, and they commonly include offences such as murder, mass murder, terrorism, treason, espionage, offenses against the State, such as attempting to overthrow government, piracy, drug trafficking, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, but may include a wide range of offences depending on a country."


Do you think that the death penalty should be abolished? Why or why not?

If no, what crimes should be punishable by death?

Do you live in a jurisdiction that has the death penalty?

I don't believe in capitol punishment. I don't think any human being has the right to decide when another human being dies. As a Christian, I believe that's up to God and therefore I perceive the killing of any individual, regardless of any sort of criminal background, immoral. I believe that every life is meaningful. In my homeland Canada, capitol punishment is illegal.

I am 100% opposed.

The death penalty is an uncivilized and barbaric practice that has no place in modern society.

The U.S still has the death penalty. It varies from state to state, but I live in a state that executes people I am sad to say.

I knew someone who was actually accused of a murder, and stood on trial for their life, and was convicted. They were completely innocent of the crime. They were not there, they had been misidentified, and had no history of violence. They were later exonerated when D.N.A evidence emerged that showed it could not have been him, and revealed the identity of the real killer, who confessed to his crime. This innocent man was not executed thank goodness, but he nearly was. He also spent most of his life behind bars for something he never did.

Like the previous posts I don't like the idea of a state-sanctioned execution to begin with. Its like something we would expect from the medieval era or out of Franz Kafka's The Trial.

Second, it is applied disproportionately. Race, class, the area you are in, subjective factors can all factor into who's more likely to get the death penalty, regardless of the crime.

The most troubling part about it however stems from my personal experience and awareness that the penal system is subject to human error. You can easily research people who were incarcerated or even sentenced to death but later exonerated. The mistakes of the judicial system ruin lives, there is no need to add the possibility of also taking innocent lives to an innately flawed system. There are some monsters in the world, but it is not worth keeping the death penalty on the books for the one Ted Bundy or Hitler who comes along once in a century. We will do more harm than good with the death penalty.

In criminal law Blackstone's Ratio is that, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." This is the perspective that I hold too. Nothing is more final than when someone dies, and for the sake of the innocent I think we are better off without playing Russian Roulette with someone's life. Just to a different arguement against the death penalty to the conversation.

Capital punishment is good to have... in theory. For a crime of the order of magnitude that literally doesn't leave victims behind, a death for a life could be seen as a fair exchange. The problem is that, not only is capital punishment functionally exactly the same as life sentence in theory, both fulfilling the goal of permanently removing the dangerous subject from interaction with a society that needs to be safer, but adding capital punishment as an option to even the worse person-scale crimes makes the punishments for other, more common crimes scale so badly in comparison that you spend more resources sending guilty people to trial than getting them punished (think something like battery that would have to scale down to a couple days in prison, at most).

Most extreme ideas just don't survive that well the averageness of reality. The idea that someone has to die for having done a thing doesn't even parse that well most of the time because, what value of reparation does that give to the victims? For the kind of crimes that we'd assign death penalty it's not like we can really extract any reparation anyway, so it's more like acting in revenge. And while not that I don't like it, I just find it horribly underperformant and contested compared to the alternatives of... huh... having the taxpayers -even the victim ones- pay the culprit a restricted minimum living wage, roof, shelter and welfare for life...

...with benefits, as current practice goes. Because it's not like jails have no corruption. Heck where I am, we run awesome drug industries from jail thanks to the magic of smartphones!

Now I'm beginning to understand the point of death penalty a bit more.

Even then... death penalty is too limited. There are truly outstanding situations like society-wide or even cross-society crimes, things like genocide, severely endangering of public health or societal welfare that could merit the death penalty simply because the benefits outweigh the risk of the culprit managing to escape -or worse, distributing their methods and ideals in prison. But IMO? By the time you are dealing with that kind of issues, you are well past the limits of us plebeians' justice system and have walked more into a different business that is handled with a vastly different toolset.

I don't agree with capital punishment.

It's better that a guilty criminal suffers in prison.

I do however, believe that a life sentence should mean life not 25+ years. To me that would be a much better solution for these states that still have capital punishment.

But without capital punishment, prisons will inevitably get filled up, then what? Better to just execute murders and the like, and without mercy, as they showed none.

Capital Punishment sounds like a massive waste of resources both on the social and individual side just to satiate the distorted desires of justice of a corrupted society.

tigertron said:

It's better that a guilty criminal suffers in prison.

I do however, believe that a life sentence should mean life not 25+ years. To me that would be a much better solution for these states that still have capital punishment.

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Is it right to punish an old person further who spend his life in prison because he commited a crime during his youth, when he was living in the wrong environment, hanging out with the wrong people?
Is it right to further restrain someone who has been in prison for so long, he's lost all connection to the outside world and his body has lost all strength to do anything that could harm anyone?
Those 25+ years exist as a number for a reason. Just because you might hate someone for a crime doesn't mean that this person does not have any chance to change.

MissingNO. #2 Master said:

But without capital punishment, prisons will inevitably get filled up, then what? Better to just execute murders and the like, and without mercy, as they showed none.

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The majority of criminals are convicted for rather petty crimes and let out again after a short amount of time. The amount of criminals who commited severe crimes is rather slim in comparison. In order to fill up all the prisons we'd need a sudden surge of individuals turning murderer and committing crimes all over the place. An occurance that seems fairly unlikely to me.

You also have to consider that there already are a lot of countries/states without capital punishment and they're all doing fine.

Seliph said:

Capital Punishment sounds like a massive waste of resources both on the social and individual side just to satiate the distorted desires of justice of a corrupted society.

Is it right to punish an old person further who spend his life in prison because he commited a crime during his youth, when he was living in the wrong environment, hanging out with the wrong people?
Is it right to further restrain someone who has been in prison for so long, he's lost all connection to the outside world and his body has lost all strength to do anything that could harm anyone?
Those 25+ years exist as a number for a reason. Just because you might hate someone for a crime doesn't mean that this person does not have any chance to change.

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It's better than capital punishment.

Personally, if you commit a crime that warrants 25+ years imprisonment, then I don't think they should be allowed back into society. However, that depends on the nature of the crime.

VisionofMilotic said:

As defined by wikipedia, "Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a government-sanctioned practice whereby a person is killed by the state as a punishment for a crime. The sentence that someone be punished in such a manner is referred to as a death sentence, whereas the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution. Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes or capital offences, and they commonly include offences such as murder, mass murder, terrorism, treason, espionage, offenses against the State, such as attempting to overthrow government, piracy, drug trafficking, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, but may include a wide range of offences depending on a country."


Do you think that the death penalty should be abolished? Why or why not?

If no, what crimes should be punishable by death?

Do you live in a jurisdiction that has the death penalty?

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Complicated answer. In general, I support the Death Penalty. In practice, its a bit more iffy. As you stated, innocent people can be sent to death row.

Crimes that should get the death penalty. Multiple counts of murder. Multiple counts of rape. Production of child porn. Harming children for the sake of pedophilia. High level drug trafficking. Not something a street dealer can get charged with, I mean, tons of cocaine kind of deal. Treason and the like, terrorism (but that would likely be covered under multiple murders). Anything that consists of "torturing" people. Like this guy.
https://news.yahoo.com/family-murde...vbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDVUlDMV8xBHNlYwNzcg--

Maybe even some so called "white collar crimes" if the impact is big enough. "Your embezzlement destroyed x companies and ruined millions of lives and their pension plans are just gone. We've already seen x number of suicides and your actions have caused a ripple effect in the stock markets." or "you poisoned the ground water and thousands are sick and the death toll will be unknown for years" or " your cost cutting measures lead to a catastrophic failure and the mess will take years to clean up."

I'd personally support making it a death penalty crime to try and frame someone for a crime if you are a cop or prosecutor.

Venia Silente said:

Capital punishment is good to have... in theory. For a crime of the order of magnitude that literally doesn't leave victims behind, a death for a life could be seen as a fair exchange. The problem is that, not only is capital punishment functionally exactly the same as life sentence in theory, both fulfilling the goal of permanently removing the dangerous subject from interaction with a society that needs to be safer, but adding capital punishment as an option to even the worse person-scale crimes makes the punishments for other, more common crimes scale so badly in comparison that you spend more resources sending guilty people to trial than getting them punished (think something like battery that would have to scale down to a couple days in prison, at most).

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Problem is that a life sentence doesn't permanently remove a dangerous subject from society. People do escape or do harm others in prison, be it guards or inmates.

Most extreme ideas just don't survive that well the averageness of reality. The idea that someone has to die for having done a thing doesn't even parse that well most of the time because, what value of reparation does that give to the victims? For the kind of crimes that we'd assign death penalty it's not like we can really extract any reparation anyway, so it's more like acting in revenge.

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Its not about reparations or revenge for a lot people who support the DP. Its about saying as a society, "WE WILL NOT TOLERATE THIS AT ALL! And anyone who does this will be put to death for it."

...with benefits, as current practice goes. Because it's not like jails have no corruption. Heck where I am, we run awesome drug industries from jail thanks to the magic of smartphones!

Now I'm beginning to understand the point of death penalty a bit more.

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Jails are pretty great for some people.

Even then... death penalty is too limited. There are truly outstanding situations like society-wide or even cross-society crimes, things like genocide, severely endangering of public health or societal welfare that could merit the death penalty simply because the benefits outweigh the risk of the culprit managing to escape -or worse, distributing their methods and ideals in prison. But IMO? By the time you are dealing with that kind of issues, you are well past the limits of us plebeians' justice system and have walked more into a different business that is handled with a vastly different toolset.

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Some of that turns into a wetworks issue by the gov't. "this person needs an accident." Like the Israelis going after the Munich terrorists. Israel - "Prove we killed those terrorists. "

MissingNO. #2 Master said:

But without capital punishment, prisons will inevitably get filled up, then what? Better to just execute murders and the like, and without mercy, as they showed none.

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Problems with this statement:
1) Prisons are being overcrowded with or without capital punishment.

2) Overcrowded prisons isn't solely dependent on crime rates, but the prison system in general, but I won't get into that here.

3) Capital punishment takes a very long time, and it is expensive. The U.S. likes to make sure that when capital punishment occurs, it is done to make sure that the right person is subjected to the punishment and subjected in a way that is not cruel and unusual punishment. Death penalty sentences go through multiple appeals that ends up costing thousands of dollars. Studies have shown that life in prison costs less than capital punishment.

I live in California, so yes, the death penalty is still a thing here. Personally, I am against the death penalty. Mostly for the reasons listed above, but its racist and ableist roots also make me really uncomfortable.

I'm against the death penalty for a few reasons. In list format

1. As has happened multiple times in the past, sometimes people are wrongly convicted and then killed by the state for crimes they didn't commit. It's true that advances in DNA technology, surveillance and the like do help limit this kind of thing but even that isn't totally infallible because of human error, corruption and a couple of other things.

2. Cost: It costs more to kill someone than to keep them in prison.

3. A part of the prison system is meant to rehabilitation and while punishment should absolutely occur, we shouldn't forget that. I won't say every criminal can be rehabilitated of course, that's far from the truth, but a better prison system would drastically increase the number or criminals that could be successfully rehabilitated.

4. Speaking off, US prisons are overcrowded because your legal and prison systems suck, not because not enough people are being killed off.

5. If you commit the kind of crimes that net you the death penalty, death is too easy a punishment for you.

Interesting development that I have been meaning to post. There is a moratorium on the death penalty in the state of California, Governor Gavin Newsom has prohibited any executions while he is in office, which gives a stay of execution to 737 people who were awaiting death. I think that is hopeful news.

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1QU099

I don't support capital punishment for multiple reasons. One, even though I'm not religous myself, I have a moral and philosophical objection to taking another human life, even if the person did a horrific crime. Secondly, death isn't really a good enough punishment for these people instead of being locked up in a cell for decades. Finally, I feel like the punishment is used when the person had not committed the crime in question.

I feel like a death penalty discussion is something that only becomes truly of note when we discuss the limits to which our beliefs go - for those against the death penalty, is there a point where you believe you could stomach it? Why?

gimmepie said:

2. Cost: It costs more to kill someone than to keep them in prison.

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I don't personally feel educated enough on the overall topic to give a reasoned argument yet but I found this fact interesting - do you have any idea around the scale of the difference and why this is?

Squirrel said:

I don't personally feel educated enough on the overall topic to give a reasoned argument yet but I found this fact interesting - do you have any idea around the scale of the difference and why this is?

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Below is a quote from DeathPenalty Focus, an admittedly biased source but one of many.

It seems like common sense that it's cheaper to execute someone than to house, feed and take care of them for the rest of their natural life. But there are a lot of unavoidable costs that make a death sentence far more expensive than a sentence of life without parole.

Most of these costs result from the unique status of the death penalty within the US justice system. Because it's the only truly irreversible form of punishment, the Constitution requires a long and complex judicial process for capital cases, including several levels of mandatory review after a death sentence is issued. The appeals process takes decades to complete.

Studies of the California death penalty system, the largest in the US, have revealed that a death sentence costs at least 18 times as much as a sentence of life without parole would cost.

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Her said:

I feel like a death penalty discussion is something that only becomes truly of note when we discuss the limits to which our beliefs go - for those against the death penalty, is there a point where you believe you could stomach it? Why?

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The only real time that I could stomach it is that if the crime was revolting enough and if we have enough proof to view the perpetrator is guilty. Otherwise, I couldn't really stomach it.