You cant hold any kind of respect for the sanctity of life and not support capital punishment at the same time.
Yes its my overwhelming respect for LIFE and my spiritual belief, that taking a life, is tandamount to taking your own,in fact your already dead.
YES we live in an age where some crimes can be proved beyond reasonable doubt,its not the 1880s
You have no respect.
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partisan Wrote:You cant hold any kind of respect for the sanctity of life and not support capital punishment at the same time.
Yes its my overwhelming respect for LIFE and my spiritual belief, that taking a life, is tandamount to taking your own,in fact your already dead.
YES we live in an age where some crimes can be proved beyond reasonable doubt,its not the 1880s
You have no respect.
"Beyond reasonable doubts" is not an adequate level of proof when it comes to justifying the act of punishing someone with death. In more or less all cases it's impossible to reach a certainty of 100% but when dealing with something as irrevocable as death that's a number that would have to be required. If we could determine that a man is 99.9 % likely to have murdered his family it's still not reasonable grounds to take his life.
If we ignore humanitarian principles and resort to reasoning alone it would be barbaric to execute anyone who hasn't been proven guilty to 100 %. If we were happy with 99.9% certainty there would still be the occasional execution of an innocent. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for murdering his children with arson - years later many specialists in the area claim that the evidence against him was unconvincing. There will always be doubt involved in crimes.
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THATS A RISK THEN. The argument can be used for pretty much anything, ive heard it twenty years ago. It doesnt mean zip to me. We have to use are brains still.
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It can't really be applied to pretty much everything. If a man is unjustly put in prison for 20 years he can receive compensations if his innocence is declared. Sure, there's probably no compensation that can fully satisfy after 20 years of unjust punishment but at least an effort can be made to redeem the unfairness of his treatment. Once you kill someone it's final.
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Once you free someone and they kill again, thats final for the innocent victim too. Meanwhile some suit is sitting in some office with blood on his hands. Babbling incoherently about 1% chance.
In uk in ten years, 30 murders have been commited by paroled murderers! How many people have been wrongly executed. Id be willing to BET even if capital punishment had been legal, there wouldnt have been 30 (not in the uk!)
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LONDONER Wrote:No, it is not a debate about capital punishment, it's a debate about whether Life should mean Life. Don't hijack it.
I agree it is not debate about capital punishment. It also isn't a hijack. There is no point in wasting the time, efforts, and resources of the (relatively) good people of society keeping people alive that earned life sentences. And there is surely no point in letting them out. Ever. So that bring us to the other solution... capital punishment.
Someone earlier said "capital punishment isn't a deterrent". Well, so be it. If the people (I use that term loosely in this situation) who would commit those crimes worthy of capital punishment are not in the least bit deterred by the threat, they are all the more deserving.
On the flip side of this, we as a WORLD need a better mental health care approach. It is unfortunate that we do no allocate the resources for such a thing. A portion (though I won't even go so far as to say a majority, because the majority is just cold blooded and self centered) of these heinous acts could be prevented if some of these people just had the proper mental care.
Now, counter to that, I believe many things in our world and acts that members of society do are designed into us by nature. I believe the major trigger is the stress of over-crowding and over-population. It causes much stress and mental anguish on each member of society, and drives them past the breaking point, often causing them to kill. This seems simply like mother nature rearing her ugly head. Because we have to remember, nature is not always pretty, but it is ALWAYS effective. And if the goal is to reduce the population, well.... having it kill itself sure is one effective way to do it.
Which brings us to your initial point, should life sentence be "life"?
I believe, no matter how you put it, if the top tier punishment for your crime is 30, 50, 70 years or your natural lifetime, you have already earned the worst your society can throw at you and should just be removed from the burden of the good people. If anything, "life" and other long term sentences are more of a punishment for the free society as a whole than they are for the criminal. I mean really, free food, free bed, free lodging, forever? And normally the perks do not stop there.... It just seems entirely frivolous to me to even *consider* giving people life sentences. Especially when all amenities are paid for by john and jane citizen.
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Then the problem lies in the inability to make sure past offenders have been properly rehabilitated NOT in the reluctance to execute people.
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Buffylo Wrote:I agree it is not debate about capital punishment. It also isn't a hijack. There is no point in wasting the time, efforts, and resources of the (relatively) good people of society keeping people alive that earned life sentences. And there is surely no point in letting them out. Ever. So that bring us to the other solution... capital punishment.
Someone earlier said "capital punishment isn't a deterrent". Well, so be it. If the people (I use that term loosely in this situation) who would commit those crimes worthy of capital punishment are not in the least bit deterred by the threat, they are all the more deserving.
On the flip side of this, we as a WORLD need a better mental health care approach. It is unfortunate that we do no allocate the resources for such a thing. A portion (though I won't even go so far as to say a majority, because the majority is just cold blooded and self centered) of these heinous acts could be prevented if some of these people just had the proper mental care.
Now, counter to that, I believe many things in our world and acts that members of society do are designed into us by nature. I believe the major trigger is the stress of over-crowding and over-population. It causes much stress and mental anguish on each member of society, and drives them past the breaking point, often causing them to kill. This seems simply like mother nature rearing her ugly head. Because we have to remember, nature is not always pretty, but it is ALWAYS effective. And if the goal is to reduce the population, well.... having it kill itself sure is one effective way to do it.
Which brings us to your initial point, should life sentence be "life"?
I believe, no matter how you put it, if the top tier punishment for your crime is 30, 50, 70 years or your natural lifetime, you have already earned the worst your society can throw at you and should just be removed from the burden of the good people. If anything, "life" and other long term sentences are more of a punishment for the free society as a whole than they are for the criminal. I mean really, free food, free bed, free lodging, forever? And normally the perks do not stop there.... It just seems entirely frivolous to me to even *consider* giving people life sentences. Especially when all amenities are paid for by john and jane citizen.
May I just ask whether you see the problems in terms of evidence and innocence since you do believe in the death penalty? I mean, you can't deny that mistakes would eventually occur (albeit in small numbers) - do you believe it's justifiable because of some greater good? Oh and also, just to clarify, are you saying that nature provides a good foundation for our morality and how we should act? Just because a method is efficient doesn't mean it's the right one. If it were we'd have to employ a long range of disturbing tactics.
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SolemnBoy Wrote:1. Cases of false accusations have occurred in the past and will continue to do so despite our scientific advances. Surely the quantity of unjustly accused individuals should decrease but there will always be room for mistakes - even if a million hideous murderers were to be executed along with 1 innocent man or woman it wouldn't be forgivable.
2. Punishing the act of murder with death creates a paradox. When endorsing capital punishment we're basically saying "We'll punish your disrespect for the lives of others by taking your own life" - it makes no sense whatsoever.
3. The existence of a death penalty doesn't really intimidate people into leading better lives. The majority of murders are either committed out of passion (in which case there's no time to think the consequences through) or gain (in which the perpetrator actually plans the murder and thus is convinced he won't be caught).
4. Rehabilitation is very much possible. This statement is NOT the same as saying "let all the murderers out of jail!" or "he said he's sorry, obviously he's learned his lesson so let him out now". It's just stating that people, in some cases, actually do change.
I'll draw your attention to the recent case of the murder of Lee Rigby (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Lee_Rigby) where there is not
a single shred of doubt as to who killed him. I don't believe in the death penaly either but these two men I believe are beyond rehabilitation.
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I've been waiting for a good meaty one like this for ages!
There are few offences in UK for which the sentence can be one of life imprisonment. Murder, Arson with intent to endanger life or being reckless as to weather life would be endangered, Robbery and Rape to name some.
A whole/natural life sentence must depend on the offender and his capacity to understand that his behaviour is wrong.
In the case of Ian Huntley who in 2002 murdered two 10 year-old girls who attended the school at which he was the caretaker, a whole life sentence is quite appropriate in my view. Huntley set about the bodies of his victims with a blow torch in an attempt to conceal their identities, he then concealed the bodies in a shallow grave in a woods.
Huntleys actions indicated that he knew that what he had done was unlawful and there would be serious consequences. Why else attempt to conceal what he had done?
In the case of Jon Venebles and Robert Thompson, I feel a whole life sentence would have been inhumane given their young ages. They were only 10 years old.
in February 1993, Thomson and Venebles abducted a little boy barely four years-old from a shopping centre, sexually abused him before battering him to death on a railway line, and concealed the body under litter on the same line in the hope that a passing train would (and indeed did!) pass over the body thereby bisecting the victim at the waste to give the appearance that James had been the victim of a terrible but fatal accident.
Again the concealment of the body, and the employment of devices to divert the blame away from themselves indicates to me that they were aware that their actions were wrong.
The difference is that one case involved an adult and the other children.
We are supposed to be moving in to a more enlightened era where incarcerating people for the rest of their natural lives is viewed as backward. A view I subscribe to.
Should a long-term sentence offender be considered rehabilitated enough to return to society he will be under very strict supervision and management. If he as much as spits on the pavement he can be recalled to prison.
A sliding scale of tariff would be a better option based on reports from probation, social services and forensic psychiatry services and based on the offenders age. Starting at ten years and going up to thirty but never any further.
Moreover, a sentence should be passed by a judge and not decided by a politician who may be influenced by public feeling and a desire to be re elected.
Sentences, whilst currently decided by a judge are often not served fully due to factors of parole and an automatic entitlement of a one-third reduction in any sentence in return for an early plea of guilty.
Leave it to the learned judges and temper the sword of justice with mercy and compassion.
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