for or against?

why or why not?

..against

does not reduce murder rate,

another wrong does not make a right,

violence begets violence,

courts make mistakes, can't undo,

is an abused power, especially in totalitarian regimes.
..

I agree but theres one case that I dont know how I would react. If you find out this scum bag abducted and raped your 14 year old daughter for 2 weeks and then killed her... what would you do?

..^put 'em away for life..study them to find possible treatment of such conditions..more expensive, sure, but in the case of some psychos death is the escape they want..

I think the issues are firstly, like nem888 says, it doesn't prevent crimes and mistakes can be made. It's easy enough to say that someone who does something atrocious should be killed... and who knows, maybe they should (I'm not sure) but if say 10,000 people are tried and executed then it seems quite likely that amongst them will be someone who was wrongfully convicted. That innocent person was then murdered. I don't see how that can ever be justified. Also is someone who executes a murderer not also themselves a murderer? I guess it is a shame if someone ends up spending life in jail for a crime they never committed, but that is a matter of compromise. The compromise being the individuals right to not be wrongfully executed versus societies right to be protected from people who pose a danger. Executing people for crimes seems to be based more on an attitude of revenge than on an attitude of prevention or treatment.

At least if someone is in prison for life and new evidence comes to light which clears them (not unknown by any means) then they can be freed. State sanctioned killing is not so easily reversible and is also not a power we should be happy for the state to have in my opinion, too easily abused. Plus the fact that we don't legally kill people also sets a a certain civilised forward looking example to society as a whole.

Seconded.

There are plenty of alternatives. I do not accept physical violence of any kind and I strongly oppose incarceration, a form of mental violence, unless it is absolutely necessary.
State-sanctioned murder is exactly that, murder sanctioned by a state. Wiping its feet on human dignity and the right of life.

Unacceptable. Unforgiveable.

Against. People do things in accordance to how they are. They do not choose to be the way they are, they are born that way. If someone commits an atrocious act, to them it may be an acceptable thing to do.

I think future focus should be on finding the root causes, within the person, that make such actions acceptable to them, and finding a way; if possible, to rehabilitate this way of thinking.

I don't know how this will or would be done. For now, I think incarceration is the best way to treat such crimes until we know how to treat these problems. I don't know, I guess it's a subject that opens up a whole load of other debates.

Peace

Macre

its a pretty difficult question

if one could kill all the bad people then the world would soon be devoid of such entities

on the other hand, bad people are usually better at killing


the solution of my fantasies:

legions of kind hearted assassins with good judgement of character!


Or a turn on the interdimensional adjustment wheels for our world and adjust karma for immediate action. Do something bad, get fucked up immediately! That would sort it kind of but give less time to evolve for the bad peoples as they would not have much room for error anymore.


Anyways, back to reality. I dont have a clue if its right to kill other people or not.
Not nice, but many people are not nice either so id toss a coin and smoke em.

Good im not involved in such kind of decision making...

Civilised countries have already sorted that question out.

That seems like a kinda flawed way of looking at it. It assumes that people are either "good" or "bad" and that this is something inherent in their nature. That's not the case, people are a product of their conditions and circumstances in someones life can easily lead to them doing something bad even if they have lived a productive and otherwise "good" life. For them to be labeled as "bad" they need to commit the act, therefore killing them after the fact solves nothing in regards to stopping bad things from happening.

Also you are ignoring the fact that somewhere between 3 and 4 hundred thousand people are being born everyday, so killing all the bad people (or rather, killing all the people who have committed acts of badness) would only solve the problem very briefly... it wouldn't solve it at all really.

There are always going to be people who commit murders (or other extreme immoralities) because with nearly 7 billion people on the planet there is absolutely no way of expecting everyone to be well and stable all of the time, all we can really do is try to work on the conditions that cause these types of actions to arise, and setting a precedent of violence by killing anyone who acts immorally does nothing to help the societal conditions in my opinion.

It is even more complicated than it already seems, but I am against.

I think there is a very important distinction to be made between killing and the death penalty. Both seem hideous, but I can place myself in an hypothetical situation where I would perfectly able to kill -other than in strict self defense, that is- and probably feel in peace with my intuitive concept of justice, my inner ethics or call it however you want.

If someone raped and killed my little daughter with no remorse, even after the first emotional ordeal, wiping the culprit off the face of the earth, to make sure no one else will suffer because of them, would make absolute sense. Justice and vengeance would merge. Same would apply to some acknowledged, heinous psychopaths, unrelated to my loved ones. But social mechanics and personal views are very different things.

Death penalty is institutionalized killing. It means giving the state the power to kill legally. If our society, our governments and our legal systems were a model of efficiency, devoid of corruption, and with consistent ethics, the debate would be different. Although, if our social system was not flawed as it is, we would have a lucid, global understanding of life - and most likely an effective prevention and education system that would make the debate hardly necessary.

But our society is deeply flawed, our governments corrupt and law is fallible. So, even without having to enter the slippery discussion of the right to take life from others, death penalty is a big mistake we cannot afford. It is anachronistic and obscene, and won't help us move forward.

I'm against...

To start lets define murder shall we..murder can be defined as "the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human". Now, unlawful killing, is there lawful killing? and if so how do you legalize killing (I understand how it was legalize for capital punishment but rationally, come on)?

If we were to ignore the legal part capital punishment would totally fit the bill for murder thus...

... i think it would more than double the murder rate as people are being "murdered" for crimes other than murder.

Also as others have said, courts make mistakes. I mean they convict "beyond a reasonable doubt"... That means beyond any reasonable doubt that a reasonable person would have .. Who is to say whats reasonable or for that matter who is reasonable? Obviously not law makers (though i cant deny some laws are good, others are just bunk)...

Just my thoughts

I'm against capital punishment on the basis that we in Western society like to refer ourselves as 'enlightened'. We even named the 18th century period the "The age of Enlightenment" as the basic constructs for science were laid in those time.

We have animal right groups that successfully managed to get laws passed that protect animals against more and more cruelty and the 'organic' food industry is growing tremendously.

The state forbids that we the Citizens end our own lives or aid others in ending theirs. We are not allowed to choose our own time of death to die with dignity or in a humane way. Aiding others will lead to persecution and failed attempts into being forced into mental healthcare.

The constitutions of Western countries speak of freedom and safeguarding them, including the right to live and owning one's own body. Taking someone's life against their will is a direct violation of those strongly held up principles.

Removing someone from society to protect society from them, yes. If a person is unable to function within society by violating those basic rights of others then they should be removed from society. Enlightenment means we even then respect their basic human rights in the least intrusive way.

Bump for the recent "botched execution". <- guy wasn't paralyzed; he said his whole body was burning, he was seizing up, etc. After they gave up trying to kill him, and tried to reverse it, he died of a heart attack.


I conditionally support it in certain instances as an alternative to life imprisonment, if the person was videotaped in the committing of the most heinous, brutal, violent crimes against victims that hadn't provoked the attack), But I want it to be applied equally across racial and economic lines, and ideally, the "prisoner" should be able to decide life in prison, versus a [maybe-one-day] "humane" lethal injection.

I do not disagree.


For those who support the death penalty (which I conditionally do), which drug is most painless & humane?

(Highly uneducated guesses: plant-cannabinoid overdoses [isolated and/or in combination with other plant-cannabinoids], valium, opium, heroin, meth)

Is there a way that the person receiving the punishment doesn't convulse, seize, & experience more than "the mere extinguishing of life" ?

Are they intentionally making it more physically painful than it needs to be?

I don't know, I might very well make a stupid angry decision fueled by rage which blinds my judgement, sacrificing my humanity to satisfy my irrational need for vengeance.

If you want to kill another human, no matter what they did, then you are not sober of mind, and should not be able to make any such decision, nor should anyone else. Even a man of law should not be able to give an order of execution on their behalf.

Unfortunatly, it is not that easy. I've been against murder as a punishment, even against punishment at all. I still am, if i have to speak from my mind. I know that it is no good. That it is not the best way to handle things. But well, you HAVE to experience something like River of Thoughts outlined to see the other side of the coin. Really, trust me on this.

I am against. Personally, I would choose a death sentence over life imprisonment in a heartbeat. People like this...


...do not deserve an easy way out.

I agree that more focus should be put on treatment and prevention of the conditions which lead a person to commit such atrocities.

Random thoughts:
If you take something from society, you need to give something back, this may be in the form of life of servitude building and fixing things.

I also feel that most crimes should not be punishable by prison time.

I think our society forgives too much white collar crime.
Aka, give a man a gun, he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, he can rob a country.

I do not think that i would be sacrificing my humanity by wanting to avenge a loved one. It is a perfectly normal reaction. Whether it is rational or not is another question. Revenge does not reverse the crime but maybe it is a necessary survival tool. "Hurt my family and i will hurt you". What about karma? Isn"t that a form of justice based revenge? Maybe giving up the desire for revenge can be spiritually powerful because we transcend what makes us human.

I don"t agree with capital punishment. If 1 in 25 death row inmates in the US is innocent then it is one too many. Killing 24 guilty inmates is no justification for this. Also it doesn"t make sense to me that someone who commits murder should get murdered by the state in a cold and calculated manner. I think hot headed revenge is far less morally repugnant.