Your views on the Death Penalty

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Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

(It's Gandalf, btw.)

I don't really mind the death penalty. If someone did something like kill 30 other people for fun, that's a clear cut case for me. But things aren't always that simple, and drawing the line between something that deserves capital punishment and something that doesn't can be very problematic.

The death penalty has it uses. Unfortunately it is some times executed against innocent people. Penal colonies would perform the same function with the possibility of correcting an error.

ruveyn

The death penalty acknowledges murder as a valid solution. It is no suprise, then, that it doesn't work very well in deterring the same.

I'm for it.

Even when the innocent are executed?

ruveyn

To punish which crimes? And, what is the optimum number of people (or optimum percentage of the population) to execute annually?

Should executions be public? How do you feel about public floggings?

Yes, public hangings!
Have the gallows in a city park and make an event out of it.
You know; vendors selling food and drink, a local rock band or two, a drawing to for someone to have the honor of pulling the lever.
A rip roarin' good time for the whole family and serving justice at the same time.

Hanging? Meh. I have my heart set on lapidation. Ideally on the central plaza, with stands all around to let people watch the action.

That's the way that executions used to be celebrated, and still are in some parts of the world.

I believe capital punishment is a barbaric practice. I think it's best to err on the side of life. Also, capital punishment has several flaws:
1. Some people on death row have been exonerated based on new evidence or DNA evidence.
2. Capital punishment discriminates against minorities and the poor. Such people can rarely afford the best legal representation.
3. Not all states allow capital punishment, such as Wisconsin. Other states allow it, but it's never used. One state, Texas, accounts for a large percentage of executions in the US.

This could be said about every punishment, so it doesn't really work as a refutation of capital punishment.

Yes, for the worst of the worst. None of the moral arguments against it really make any sense to me unless it's about the possibility of innocents getting put to death.

i have never given much thought to the death penalty. i am not interested really in how people treat each other. i do not feel a part of the human race in most ways, and i see their activities as a collection of behaviors that i do not really understand.
my understanding of human behavior is similar (in resolution) to my understanding of the social structures of bee hives or flocks of gazelles or prides of lions.
they do as they do whether i approve morally or not. surplus cubs may be killed by the father, and worker bees are born to be slaves, and gazelles abandon anyone who is a bit slower.

i think that the tendency of animals that live in groups (social animals) to turn on and kill members of their own species if they feel threatened by them in any way, is an instinct that is pandemic through all species.

in early human history before effective incarceration practices were developed, if someone was discovered to have killed another person in the tribe without justification (self defense being the only consideration), then they would have to have been eliminated to ensure the safety of the local environment, just like a lion that has developed a taste for human flesh must be dispatched. there must have been much less moral apprehension in exacting the verdict in those days

these days, it is possible to enclose them so that they pose no further threat.
is it still without moral apprehension that one is chosen to be killed?
is there the possibility of rehabilitation? who knows. 100,000 years ago, one could not take the chance, and there would be no opportunity for redemption.

if a rogue has been seen to be a rogue, but now seems not like a rogue, then it is not certain that he is not still a rogue.

i am talking about incontrovertibly convicted killers only (except self defense killers).

i do not have the hugeness of soul that i would need to decide the correct course of action pertinent to punishment, so i would never endorse a death penalty (if the person is safely ensconced in a secure location).

i do not think that anyone in a calm state of mind has the authority to decide the fate of another life.

if the entire earth's stock of appropriate professionals suddenly agreed to try to build a real living mosquito, they would never achieve that aim even if they had access to unlimited supplies of money.
but people (like me (i am a person)) just splat them when they land on their bodies.

so to unthinkingly swat a mosquito despite the fact that earths people can not create a replacement, is like snuffing out a life of a criminal who is an individual in a way that no one else will ever be.

do i live with a damaged conscience? or do i live with an itchy bite?

Oops. I thought it looked wrong.

That rarely is the case. Most guilty verdicts on homicide are based on circumstantial evidence and that is not always sold. Recent investigation showed that in Illinois about 5 percent of the people sentenced to life or to execution for murder were innocent of the crime for which they were convicted.

Are you happy to put 1 on 20 to death for something they did not do.

Anything decided by a jury is iffy.

ruveyn