Do You Support The Death Penalty?

[moremojo]

All I can is I'm saddened and sickened by the bloodlust that some members here are displaying towards their fellow human beings. Those who would gleefully seek the violent deaths of some members of society deemed criminal or immoral by that society are no better from a moral viewpoint than the objects of their homicidal loathing.

[serious crayons]

The study is over 16 years old now.  Considering health care fo inmates as they get older gets exponentially more expensive, the economy has not gotten better and technology has advanced, I would like to see a newer study.

Well, there's only so much research I'm willing to do to support a post on a message board (even at BetterMost!), but here's what I found in two minutes of googling the terms "cost execution imprisonment 2005" (figuring 2005 might be the most recent stats available):

2005 Los Angeles Times  Study Finds California Spends $250 Million per Execution

Key Points

# The California death penalty system costs taxpayers more than $114 million a year beyond the cost of simply keeping the convicts locked up for life. (This figure does not take into account additional court costs for post-conviction hearings in state and federal courts, estimated to exceed several million dollars.):

Not really.  The less people to guard less people on death row means less overhead for the penal system and thus...[shrug] my focus as a taxpayers can be on social services and not providing room, board, health services, entertainment, conjugal visits what have you for convicted murderers.

I don't know what this means, or how it contradicts what I said. If executions cost more than imprisonments, then executing people means fewer tax dollars left over for social services. Period. No doubt it is galling to see one's tax dollars being spent to support murderers, and maybe you'd rather spend your money killing them. But what matters is the total cost. The government doesn't have a single fund that either goes to prisoners or poor people. It has one big pot that is divided up in a lot of different ways: schools, roads, law enforcement, etc. Spending less on one thing means more available for all of the others (or lower taxes).

Also, they have been permanently taken out of society and will never be a threat to anyone else.  Yes, accidents do happen.  Serial killers, rapists and child molesters do accidentally get released from prison.  The death sentence puts that possibility to rest.

And innocent people do accidentally get executed. Eliminating capital punishment puts that possibility to rest.

All I can is I'm saddened and sickened by the bloodlust that some members here are displaying towards their fellow human beings. Those who would gleefully seek the violent deaths of some members of society deemed criminal or immoral by that society are no better from a moral viewpoint than the objects of their homicidal loathing.

Scott, I'm obviously anti death penalty, but this strikes me as harsh. To want someone who has committed a horrible crime to pay in a similarly horrible way is, I think, perfectly understandable human nature. Yes, the law should be rational, and restrict those baser impulses. But I do not morally equate them with whatever impulse leads to torturing or murdering innocents.

And let's face it, to characterize people who are executed as "members of society deemed criminal or immoral by that society" is unrealistically mild. We're talking, as previous pro-death-penalty posters have said, about people who torture children to death and so on. Yeah, I'd deem that pretty darn immoral.

[moremojo]

Katherine, your invocation of the words "baser impulses" says it all. Yes, it is understandable to have a reaction of fear, loathing, and violence to that which inspires fear and loathing. But this is not a morally superior stance in relation to that which inspired the feelings. I stand by my assertion that it is equally immoral to seek to harm another human being, even a human being who beforehand has harmed yet others.

There seems to be a perennial human impulse to scapegoat people, render them less than human, and treat them accordingly. In Nero's Rome, it was the Christians; in late Ottoman Turkey, it was the Armenians; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jews. At this contemporary juncture of history, people deemed to be "terrorists" or "pedophiles" are especially vulnerable to this kind of treatment. But I posit that people labelled "terrorists" or "pedophiles" (or what have you) are just as human as everyone else, and do not deserve to be viciously attacked and murdered, all in the name of moral righteousness. Jesus said to notice the beam in one's own eye before decrying the mote in your neighbor's.

[souxi]

All I can is I'm saddened and sickened by the bloodlust that some members here are displaying towards their fellow human beings. Those who would gleefully seek the violent deaths of some members of society deemed criminal or immoral by that society are no better from a moral viewpoint than the objects of their homicidal loathing.

As far as I,m concerned, a peadophile has forfitied the right to be classed as a human being. So if that makes me guilty of displaying "bloodlust" then I,m quite happy to be guilty thanks.

[souxi]

This was a famous case in the UK some years ago. Read this and try and convince me the bastard who did this was human.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/465986.stm

[moremojo]

The behavior of Cooke and his cohorts was reprehensible, and society certainly has a responsibility to protect itself from such people. But of course they were/are human--so was Hitler, so was Pol Pot, so was Stalin. The term 'humanity' doesn't just encompass those things within our species that we like--it also includes those things that disturb us or can even destroy us. By recognizing these elements as being real, and acknowledging their perpetrators as human beings rather than folklore-level bogeymen, we can protect ourselves better and cultivate the more enlightened world that progressives and liberals supposedly endorse.

As inflammatory as it may sound, even though I understand the impulse to punish someone like Cooke, if that punishment entails violence worthy of a lynch mob, than the punisher becomes, in my eyes, no better than Cooke.

[loneleeb3]

Here's a shock, I'm for it.
Until you have a family member that has been brutally murdered you can't know what it's like and I have had 2.
I think it's a load of crap that these people should be sent to prison for life or less. They sit in an institution where they get fed, healthcare and cable TV. They get a facility to work out they get to continue their education if they so choose and they are alive. What happens to the victim? They rot in a grave. Their familes are devastated and never recover. I'm not saying prison is a picnic but it sure beats rotting in a grave never having to opportunity to live your life to it's fullest extent. Prisoners get to have family visits and in come cases conjical visits. Victims families get to go to a grave.
These people made a choice to murder another human being. They stole the most precious gift someone has which is their life. They destroy families and the schock waves extend far outside of the family.
The punishment should fit the crime and I don't even thin lethal injection does that.
Their death should be painful and hard just like what they inflicted on their victims. Then the punishment would fit the crime.

[souxi]

Here's a shock, I'm for it.
Until you have a family member that has been brutally murdered you can't know what it's like and I have had 2.
I think it's a load of crap that these people should be sent to prison for life or less. They sit in an institution where they get fed, healthcare and cable TV. They get a facility to work out they get to continue their education if they so choose and they are alive. What happens to the victim? They rot in a grave. Their familes are devastated and never recover. I'm not saying prison is a picnic but it sure beats rotting in a grave never having to opportunity to live your life to it's fullest extent. Prisoners get to have family visits and in come cases conjical visits. Victims families get to go to a grave.
These people made a choice to murder another human being. They stole the most precious gift someone has which is their life. They destroy families and the schock waves extend far outside of the family.
The punishment should fit the crime and I don't even thin lethal injection does that.
Their death should be painful and hard just like what they inflicted on their victims. Then the punishment would fit the crime.

Here here. Well said, I completly agree with you.
                 

[moremojo]

Richard, I am very sorry to learn of your tragic losses. You do have the capacity to speak from experience on this issue rather than the abstract angle from which those like myself approach it.

But I must still respectfully disagree with your stance. One way of reasoning out my argument could go like this...with every execution, the executioner arguably becomes a murderer in turn--he/she certainly becomes a killer, with all the moral anxieties that that term should invoke. Where does the cycle end? It can only logically end when the state no longer forces people into this position.

And I cannot condone the sadism, however latent it might be, in the attitudes I am reading of in this thread. Gleefully killing a gleeful killer makes one in turn a gleeful killer. Where is the morality or honor in that? I know I am setting myself up here for potential enmity or reproach, but I feel it is my responsibility as a citizen and a human being to acknowledge my observation, however inflammatory it may be, and to condemn it.

[loneleeb3]

Richard, I am very sorry to learn of your tragic losses. You do have the capacity to speak from experience on this issue rather than the abstract angle from which those like myself approach it.

But I must still respectfully disagree with your stance. One way of reasoning out my argument could go like this...with every execution, the executioner arguably becomes a murderer in turn--he/she certainly becomes a killer, with all the moral anxieties that that term should invoke. Where does the cycle end? It can only logically end when the state no longer forces people into this position.

And I cannot condone the sadism, however latent it might be, in the attitudes I am reading of in this thread. Gleefully killing a gleeful killer makes one in turn a gleeful killer. Where is the morality or honor in that? I know I am setting myself up here for potential enmity or reproach, but I feel it is my responsibility as a citizen and a human being to acknowledge my observation, however inflammatory it may be, and to condemn it.

Scott, 
Feel free to disagree with me anytime! 
If we all shared the same opinion it would be a very boring world!!
In respose, I myself find no glee in the carrying out of that punishment. It is a sad situation for the family of the beast who comitted the murder. His mother still loves him, his children still need him. However, he made a choice to commit a heinous crime. The punishment for said crime is death. An executioner carrying out a sentance mandated by our courts is not a killer.
He is doing his job. The criminal is the one whom the sentance is being carried out upon. There are consequences to actions, I learned that very early on. These monsters either didn't learn that or don't care.
Housing them feeding them and taking care of them is not justice.
here is the definition of Justice
jus·tice (jsts)
n.
1. The quality of being just; fairness.
2.
a. The principle of moral rightness; equity.
b. Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness.
3.
a. The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.
b. Law The administration and procedure of law.
4. Conformity to truth, fact, or sound reason

Is it fair to the victim and theie family if the muderer of their loved one gets to live out their life in an institution where there every need is met? Is it morally right for that same situation to take place.
We have good decent people barely getting by in society who would love three hot meals a day, a hot shower, a bed to sleep on at night, cable TV and other amenities. Why should our tax dollars got to provide that for animals who kill our family members? What have they done to deserve that? I would much rather my tax dollars go for that then to house a killer.
I'd rather people make the right decisions and take resposibility for their own lives but if tax dollars have to be spent I'd rather them be spent on the poor and needy than murderers!
To say they are in prison and it's a horrible place is true but to be on the street or in a delapitated house with no electricity, food or comfort is worse because those people didn't break the law to be in their situation.