Author Topic: Do You Support The Death Penalty?  (Read 166220 times)

Offline Lynne

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #240 on: November 14, 2007, 03:02:45 am »
Wow - we have really generated a lot of thoughtful discussion here.  Thanks so much for everyone sharing their candid opinions.  There's so much here I want to respond to, but I don't really know where to start, especially without singling out opposing viewpoints and being contentious.

Two thoughts are at the foremost of my mind, though.

First, why do we think that children are inherently safer in the hands of older women?  I think that's a pretty big assumption and doubt we really can find reliable and recent data to back it up.  I've read somewhere that more and more violent crimes are committed by women.  I think it's much more likely that women are only in recent times being tried and found guilty of their crimes instead of getting softer treatment from the so-called justice system....I have no data to support this, but it's a gut feeling  - maybe I'll go see if I can find some data.

Secondly, I really take issue with Del's point about striving for a more ideal society being foolish:

Of course, I'm not saying that we just ignore them.  But inequalities in a system run by falliable humans are inevitable.  To strive for perfection is a worthwhile goal, but it's also a foolish one because there is no such thing as achievable perfection.  We should try to make something the very best that we can but we will never reach perfection.  Mistakes, as they say, are the cost of doing business.  You play you pay.

Agree.  That's also why the authorities instruct parents to tell their children that if they ever get lost or need help and a family member isn't available and the child has to turn to a stranger for help, they advise that the child seek out a female stranger.  The older the better.  These women are least likely to offer the child any harm and will likely stay with the child until she is assured that the child is safe.

With respect to the quote I highlighted, 'Damn, that's harsh.'  That's not the kind of world I want to live in - no way, no how.  I'll reiterate - in my view of the world, I'd rather a guilty person go free than one innocent person be put to death.  The end.  I agree that we all have our own individual concepts of what we consider morality; it is the consensus we reach from these concepts that form what passes for law in our society and has been since the beginning of civilization.  It is a constantly evolving process and it is our RESPONSIBILITY (imo) as members of the human race to constantly question, requestion, and adjust -- or what's the point?!

Check out this website for The Innocence Project:  http://www.innocenceproject.org/know/Browse-Profiles.php

Two hundred and eight people exonerated to date.  Each and every one of these people have a story and that story is no more nor less than the story that each victim of crime has.  And I'm sure that's only the tip of the iceburg - cases with high enough profiles and where there was enough scientific evidence still available to have cases reopened.  I'd wager thousands upon thousands are still imprisoned wrongly.  Penalties (death and otherwise) are not applied fairly across racial, gender, or socio-economic lines.  There's plenty of evidence out there to support that.

AS far as I can tell there is no evidence that the death penalty deters crime.  There's evidence in California that the 'three-strikes' law actually increases homicides because when a criminal has two strikes, he or she does not want to leave witnesses to incriminate him or her for the third.

I'm probably repeating myself (I do that!  ::)) but I'd rather my tax money go to early intervention programs to keep people from lives of crime in the first place - food, shelter, medical care - especially mental health care, education, jobs.  For the small percentage of sociopaths who won't be deterred from violence, I'm OK with imprisoning them for life.  I'm not willing to give up this ideal just because 'perfection' is not practical - I'll gladly settle for a 95% success rate.
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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #241 on: November 14, 2007, 05:03:27 am »
well, here is the thing...I do think there are some cases that are SOO clear cut...so beyond doubt that the person should be executed...our quintessential mass murderer, Jeffery Dahmer for example...but what galls me is these guys dont' GET executed...they get life in prison....

that gets to me. and is one of the reasons I object to the death penalty the way it is applied now

I could support it under some circumstances...but they would have to be very narrow and a lot more rare than now. I think it should be saved for extreme cases...(I think we are in agreement on that?)
         I apologize to Delalluvia, and any other person that says they believe we need the death penalty for certain types of
criminals..  I didnt mean to select myself alone as a student of this side of the arguement.


« Last Edit: November 14, 2007, 06:38:49 am by injest »



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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #242 on: November 14, 2007, 06:41:23 am »
         I apologize to Delalluvia, and any other person that says they believe we need the death penalty for certain types of
criminals..  I didnt mean to select myself alone as a student of this side of the arguement.




that's ok!! It is hard to keep track after a while....we kinda wander off the beaten track in conversations like this. Please don't feel alone...there are always people on both sides of the argument (otherwise this poll would be a lot shorter) and I know for me I get off topic and am NOT good at being clear about where I stand...

Dagi

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #243 on: November 14, 2007, 09:02:07 am »
Thank you for this post, Gary.

Offline souxi

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #244 on: November 14, 2007, 09:27:27 am »


        I dont like being generalized, and talked about like im not in the room....because I happen to be the soul
opposite person on this parade.  I am not talking about all the criminals...I am only mentioning it in regards to
less than 1/2 of 1% of the entire criminal population that have done murder and mayhem...The ones in spite
of all the talk to the contrary...are not rehabilitatable.  The evil ones...the compulsive one..many of whom dont
have the ability to control their own iimpulses.  Some of them choose to die rather than fight for the appeals,
and court cases...They cannot stand themselves, and know that their mind is so screwed up they dont have
the ability to stop...Its not for everyone, to have this happen to them....Many of these people have killed lots
of people, and when they get in prison continue to do the same...what can society, do to protect the other
members of their society, in or out of the system....??  You cant just say oh well never mind........

You are quite right. There are, some people in this world, who simply cannot be rehabilitated. I don,t know if any of you have heard of Fred and Rosemary West, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, Peter Sutcliffe(the Yorkshire Ripper) Robert Maudsley, Ian Huntley, Roy Whiting, Jeremy Bamber....there are probably many many more. NONE of these monsters could EVER be rehabilitated. In fact, with the exception of 6 I think, the others are dead. Now just in case you havn,t heard of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, google them, and read about what they did then tell me, that if we had still had the death penalty in the UK, they wouldn,t have deserved it. I,d have pulled the lever myself. I,ll tell you all something else too. When I heard Myra Hindely had died, I cheered. I hope she rots in hell for the evil she commited. Does that make me a bad person? Well if it does, then so be it. There are just some crimes in this world that are so henious, that the death penalty is the only option. Why the hell should scum like that be given a clean bed to sleep in every day, when their victim gets a cold grave? I don,t beleive in the death penaly for ALL crimes, for but ones as henious as the ones I have mentioned, in my opinion, they would have deserved it.

Offline souxi

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #245 on: November 14, 2007, 09:32:13 am »
Here you go...read this. If this doesn,t bring tears to your eyes nothing will.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moors_Murderers

Do you know something else? To her dying day, that evil lying bitch swore she didn,t know where Keith Bennets body was buried, and Ian Brady refuses to tell the police. Oh sure he,s been back to the moors to "help" the police look for him...he says he can,t remember. Crap. He just wants to torment the poor boys mother. She,ll probably go to her grave never knowing where her son is buried. He,s on Saddleworth Moor somewhere, and that bastard Brady knows where. I can only hope that when he dies, it,s in agony. Bastard. >:( >:( >:( >:(

moremojo

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #246 on: November 14, 2007, 11:02:35 am »
Yes, you did come across as pretty defensive.  Sorry, but I don't like women to be generalized especially when you are going on about the problems in this world and include women in sharing the blame for it when the majority of the blame for much of the violence in this world is clearly on the male of the species.  Sorry if you took this personally, but so did I.
Sorry, but women don't get off the hook on any of these issues and problems. Who gives birth to all the men? And who raises them?  Who marries the men, often enabling them or looking the other way, or even actively supporting them? Who bears these men's children? Women are slightly more than half the species, and they fully participate in the human story, for both good and ill.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #247 on: November 14, 2007, 11:15:23 am »
First, why do we think that children are inherently safer in the hands of older women?  I think that's a pretty big assumption and doubt we really can find reliable and recent data to back it up.  I've read somewhere that more and more violent crimes are committed by women.  I think it's much more likely that women are only in recent times being tried and found guilty of their crimes instead of getting softer treatment from the so-called justice system....I have no data to support this, but it's a gut feeling  - maybe I'll go see if I can find some data.

Experts routinely advise parents to instruct their young children that if they ever, say, get lost in a shopping mall, they should find a woman and ask her for help. Preferably a mother. Even male security guards aren't necessarily safe -- security guards sometimes have criminal records. Women are much, much less likely to commit violence on an unknown child (I said in an earlier post that physical abuse of children is the one kind of violence for which women's rates are higher than men's, but this mainly involves their own children, and again most likely because they spend more time with them).

Has it ever happened? Of course. But statistically, it's much rarer. Yes, I read the horrible details about Myra Hindley's crimes. Like most women convicted of killing a stranger, she was the partner of a man (very few women murder strangers on their own). And even so, she is an anomaly. When you think about your own experiences hearing news stories about abductions and murders, how often are they committed by women, as opposed to men?*

While in college I studied the German-American Christian theologian Paul Tillich. ... In his seminal work Systematic Theology Tillich points out that love is something more than mere emotion.  In a philosophical sense it is far more important than that, and he defined it basically as the drive toward the reunion of the separated.  ... Existential anxiety is really the key to understanding why people do awful things to one another.

Thank you, Gary, for explaining this. Tillich sounds interesting, and I may go to the link you posted and read more. We all have different philosophies and theologies that to us have the ring of truth. From what you've said, I don't think Tillich's views would necessarily mesh with mine. Maybe our backgrounds partly influence this process. You were raised a fundamentalist Baptist; I was raised in a very secular household (even my grandparents -- on  either side -- were not churchgoers). However you or I may have come to question the teachings of our childhood, we're probably seeking different things.

One thing I want to clarify -- and this may not contradict anything you said, but just for the record. To me, the absence of love is not hate. I don't love heinous killers, or necessarily hate them. Still, it's hard to read the account of Myra Hindley's crimes and not have some kind a strong emotional reaction. I guess I'd characterize it more as horror and despair.

Do I think Myra Hindley is evil, in the sense of being fundamentally different from all other humans? No. On the other hand, do I think that if you took any random person off the street and put them in her circumstances, that pretty soon that random person would be helping her partner abduct, rape and murder children? No, I don't. If I did think that, I'd be even more despairing about humanity than I already am.

Quote
According to the New Testament, Jesus told us to love our neighbor, he told us to love our enemies, and he told us to turn the other cheek.  These are the things a person of faith would do. And that’s because to have faith is to be at one with the world, to accept the world, and everything in it.

Well, I probably don't have faith. I tend to be more of an empiricist. So I really don't accept the world and everything in it -- the heinous murders, the tsunamis and hurricanes that kill lots of innocent people. The best I can do is to try to focus on the good things that happen and that people do.

* Update: In the part of my response regarding women and violence, please note that I'm not saying this to attack men or proclaim women superior or anything like that. Those just happens to be the facts. Maybe the difference will disappear as our culture changes -- that is, if the violence differential is cultural rather than biological (I believe it exists cross-culturally, but I don't think anybody can say exactly what causes it).

« Last Edit: November 14, 2007, 01:08:41 pm by ineedcrayons »

Offline souxi

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #248 on: November 14, 2007, 01:27:01 pm »
Sorry to disagree with you hun, but Myra Hindely, WAS evil. You only have to look the mug shot taken of her when she was arrested to see that. She had the blackest most evil eyes I,ve ever seen on a person, Ian Brady too. What they did to those children, especially what they put poor 10 year old Leslie Anne Downey through was EVIL. Anyone who can torture an innocent defencless child, whilst sexually abusing them and taking photos, and recording her pleas to be allowed to go home to her mummy, has got to be evil. Some people are just born evil and them two WERE. I,ve said it before and I,ll say it again. If hanging had still been legal in the UK then, I,d have pulled the lever myself, with pleasure. She,s down "there" now, stoking her fire with her pitchfork which is exactly where the evil bitch belongs. Long my she rot/burn in hell, and when the other half of the scum duo dies, I hope he rots/burns in hell with her. In cases like that, where there is NO doubt about who did what, as there wasn,t with them two, the death penalty is the only option, imo. Bastards the pair of them. >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( >:(

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Re: Do You Support The Death Penalty?
« Reply #249 on: November 14, 2007, 01:30:25 pm »
I would be extremely wary of judging a person's moral character on the basis of their eyes, or any other external, physical trait. History is replete with people being demonized and victimized precisely on the basis of such dubious assumptions.