Capital Punisment: Justice or Murder?

These titles in the debate corner always make me think of news programmes discussing current events and so on.

But anyway onto the point.
Capital punisment is (if you may not know) the 'execution' of someone who has commited a usually major crime or a number of major crimes.
Now in many countries this is an illegal course of punisment, however, in as many countries (or certain states in a country) this is a legal action.

What I wonder is, do you believe it to actually be a good course of punisment for certain 'vile' criminals or just plain murder?

 

I actually made a thread about this, a long time ago. Starting up a new one is probably better, since mine is now on page 4.

My opinion from the original:

I'm still pretty much sticking by that. Capital punishment should be reserved for those who are, for all intents and purposes, unreformable. It's either that, or keep them in prison for the rest of their lives, and life imprisonment is quite expensive.

 

^Nail on the dot.
In addition, people who commit dangerous crimes like holding someone hostage or shooting someone non-fatally who get a life sentence, and escape prison and do it again, should get the death penalty to keep us safe.

 

The problem is if we screw up and sentence an innocent Joe Bloggs, we can't stick Joe Bloggs' head back on, straighten his neck, say "sorry mate" and let him go on his merry way. He'll be dead.

Now I know you can say "Cut and dried cases only" but every case where a person is found guilty, they are deemed to have done the deed. If there's reasonable doubt (meaning the guy is left alive so the case can be reopened), they'd have to let the person go free, because the prosecution clearly doesn't believe that they did it beyond reasonable doubt. You have to leave people alive so they can appeal.

As for them escaping, surely your money would be better spent on more secure prisons?

 

No prison is completely secure. Someone can always find a way to escape. As for convicting innocents, DNA evidence has come a long way in the last 20 years. All the stories you hear about DNA evidence being overturned - they're all from the early days of DNA studies. I would say that in the next few years, the amount of false positives will doubtlessly be drastically reduced.

 

Reduced, but not removed entirely. Also, it's not just DNA. A person may falsely confess under pressure, or a witness may give false evidence. As long as there is the potential for error, we have a responsibility to leave the case open.

I'll take a few escaped serial killers over a false execution. We must not sacrifice innocents in order to take down killers. We must instead focus on prison security. We can't perfect prisons, but we can improve them. An escaped felon is not as bad as a miscarriage of justice resulting in execution, because a felon can be potentially recaptured before harm is done (and they won't want to draw attention to themselves). With an execution, there is a very small timeframe to get in an appeal, and justice cannot be done if the person is dead.

 

A good example of this was a guy who was released from jail after 20 years for the alleged murder of a woman. He confessed to the crime but later retracted the statement. The police jailed him anyway even though he was diagnosed as being a compulsive liar. Turns out that new DNA evidence shows that it wasn't him. Now, if the UK still used the death penalty for murder he would have been dead and buried for 20 years =/

However, the reason I don't like capital punishment is because I think a lifetime of torture in prison is better than a simple death.

 

Protip: When debating, don't mention stuff like that. xD

When you say torture, do you mean Guantanamo Bay torture, or just the torture of losing your rights?

 

I assumed he meant the torture of what prison should be - a bare cell with minimal interaction with others. Unfortunately, prison is a pretty sweet ride right now, especially for the lower classes.

 

The point of capital punishment, in my mind, is not as a deterrent, it's to keep the dangerous homicidal maniacs, terrorists, serial rapists, etc off the streets and stop them from hurting any more people ever again while not spending a fortune on their cushy prison sentences. It's more expensive to keep someone in a modern prison for life than it is to kill them, and the outcome is the same - they die in prison.

And surely your not suggesting that they let the most dangerous criminals in the country out of prison, so they can just pick up where they left off?

 

My point is that people who commit terrible acts should be punished according to what they've done. Killing them gives them an easy way out, whereas giving them a life of pain and suffering seems to be a much for just and fair punishment.

 

Two problems:
1) Prison is no longer a life of pain and suffering. the prisoners get padded beds, free time in a yard, and cable television, along with numerous other comforts.
2) Life imprisonment is ridiculously expensive, and it's the taxpayers who eventually end up paying to keep serial killers and rapists alive. It's much cheaper to simply execute them.

Now, if both of these problems can be resolved, then and only then will I condemn the death penalty.

 

I agree with Teal'c on this, most extreme cases of crimes should be drawn out and suffering. And it is true a lot of 'human rights' demand that people be treated with humanity, but it's not a punisment if your living the same life you have, but in a barred up prison. I hate how human rights has stopped us from making certain decisions, such as 'real' punisment for 'real' convicts, some people do need harsh lessons to learn from their mistakes.

And to state, most prisoners do not escape whilst inside prison but at courthouses and other, more public places. DOn't think people will get out of jail so easily.

 

I know. I mean, when you violate others' rights, why should you get to keep any but the most basic of your own? Why should you be entitled to comfort, if you took a sniper rifle to 5 people's heads, or went on a rape spree? I'll say what I said before - lock most, if not all, criminals up in a small concrete cell with a food slot in the door, a metal bed without a mattress, a toilet, and a small slit of a window. let em out into a yard where they can stretch for maybe an hour a day at most. Give 'em bland, tasteless food and simple water for sustenance. That's all they get.

 

I don't believe it's right at all. Ending someone else's life isn't going to bring the other person back. No matter how major the crime was, they should just make the criminals rot in prison which i believe is worse beause death is the easy way out.

 

That's the thing though. Criminals don't rot in prison, they flourish. Somehow prison has become a good place. Read above.

 

yeah but i still think killing someone isn't the right way to do things.

 

Why not? If you put an end to someone's life prematurely even though they never did anything to you(or even if you did), you don't deserve a life. You deserve the same premature death you gave to the other person.

 

Also, not to be too practical, but it's a lot less costly to the taxpayers to execute a criminal, rather than have him live in prison for the rest of his life, no matter how bad/good it is, at the taxpayer's expense. As I keep saying - the end result is the same - he dies in prison.

 

I think that the death penalty is good and all, except for when it ends up happening to an innocent person, or someone who actually wants it. Not for nothen, but when you go on killing sprees and stuff, and you actually let yourself get caught instead of suicide or something, then I honostly can't see a person being afraid of teh death penalty.

Otherwise, I say that it's just fine. Someone has to do it, right? Better then someone getting out of prison and making some new victems to put on his record.