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Death penalty, for or against?

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The_Walrus
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18 Oct 2013, 4:40 pm

Moviefan2k4 wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
I do also think there's a moral issue. Not hypocrisy, I just don't think killing is right, and you're removing the possibility of reform. I find it strange that those speaking in favour of it are also those who wear their Christianity on their sleeves when rehabilitation and forgiveness is a central theme of Christianity, particularly in the modern day.
Forgiveness does not equal the absence of consequences...and we as humans aren't nearly as forgiving as God. Some people who killed many have become truly repentant for their crimes, even accepting Christ while in prison...but does that mean we should set them free? How do we know their redemption is true, when we can't know their hearts as God does? There's a difference between honest repentance, and just looking for a "get out of jail (or hell) free" card.

By their works?

It is true that humans do not have God's capacity for forgiveness, but shouldn't we at least aspire for it?

Dox47 wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Of course, you can never have back time you spent in prison, but you can be given a large sum of money so you can live a life of luxury for the rest of your time. Kinder to kill them? I think that's ridiculous.


Many states have laws on the books that effect, compensating the wrongly imprisoned $50,000-80,000 per year of incarceration (Texas, surprisingly, is at the higher end). Of course, prosecutors try to wiggle out of paying this by blocking the complete exoneration sometimes required to collect, an action for which I'd happily apply the death penalty personally.

I don't think that's enough, personally. They should get the wage of the highest paid state employee for the length of their incarceration, and then a comfortable wage for life.

(Assuming a very long sentence here, 20 years or so. For 10 years I think that's fair, but for life rather than 10 years. For two years, it's probably fair)



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18 Oct 2013, 4:40 pm

It seems that most of the extra costs are incurred before the conviction, not during appeals:

http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issu ... nalty-cost
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 546AASeozS

So it's not an inherent cost of execution, but of the process those jurisdictions choose to put around it. The defendant probably has little choice in this. Again, I don't know much about the process, so perhaps it is all necessary and useful, but I suspect it was more likely added for political reasons. That is, legislators knew that far from everyone is comfortable with the death penalty, so they "wrapped" it in all this extra process to make it more palatable. Perhaps they themselves weren't as comfortable with executing people as they said. This is all based on the assumption that death is the worst thing that can possibly happen to a person, which I find ludicrous, considering that it happens to every single person.

Yes, you can pay financial compensation to the wrongly-imprisoned, but how much is enough? As a thought experiment, consider how much money you would take to go to prison for a year. What about for 20 years? In addition to the actual prison time consider all the indirect damage (psychological, career, social, relationship, etc.) and the compensation of $80,000 per year seems laughable.

OK, saying that to kill someone is kinder may have been over-generalising. :) I still think that's true in some cases, but probably not in all. My basic point is that the cost of a wrongful conviction is huge even without death penalty and the death penalty doesn't necessarily increase it much, if at all.


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Moviefan2k4
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18 Oct 2013, 4:51 pm

The_Walrus wrote:
It is true that humans do not have God's capacity for forgiveness, but shouldn't we at least aspire for it?
Yes and no, in different ways. Jesus did say that we are to love God with all we are, and love others as we do ourselves...but we must also accept that our best attempts at righteousness are nowhere near God's nature or standard.


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18 Oct 2013, 9:05 pm

Because it is proven that innocent people are wrongly convicted, I do not favor the death penalty. It gives them a chance for new evidence to emerge and life in prison is sufficient to satisfy justice for those actually guilty.