Our BetterMost Community > The Polling Place

Do You Support The Death Penalty?

<< < (11/79) > >>

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:

--- Quote from: delalluvia on October 19, 2007, 08:42:55 am ---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.
--- End quote ---

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):


--- Quote ---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.):
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---

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).


--- Quote ---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.
--- End quote ---

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


--- Quote from: moremojo on October 19, 2007, 09:24:42 am ---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.
--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: moremojo on October 19, 2007, 09:24:42 am ---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.

--- End quote ---

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

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

Go to full version