Death Penalty?

[HAL]

Come on. Define free.

[stui magpie]

FWIW good pragmatic article on the Death penalty.

[Tannin]

^ I suppose I should care, but frankly ... shrug.

Thin end of the wedge and all that, but would it not be better to focus our concerns and energies on some other people both less guilty and more likely to benefit from our activity?

(Never mind the deserving/underserving-victim debate - which I'm not going to get into - but if nothing else, just on practical what-results-can-we-achieve? grounds

[David]

I might have said this before, but I wonder if we need to be doing more to lobby our good friends in the US to get rid of the death penalty. They'd probably laugh in our face, but some international pressure has to be brought to bear. As Stui's article suggests, it'd likely have a substantial influence on other countries that still practise capital punishment.

[Tannin]

A bit different in the US. There, the death penalty is applied in a grossly disproportionate and horribly unfair way. For the exact same crimes, you are far, far, far more likely to be given death by the USA if you are poor, black, or disabled than if you are well-off or white.

Now compare that terribly unjust situation with the one in Indonesia, where justice is ....

.... er .....

Sorry, as you were.

[Mugwump]

[think positive]

[pietillidie]

I reckon my option of allowing the perpetrator to trade off punitive measures for servitude-based compensation is still the right solution. The main issue is administering it without it costing even more, but even if it costs about the same it still holds the various contradictions in tension in my view.

In cases where the victim doesn't want anything from the perpetrator, the latter still has a debt to society that needs to be paid anyhow.

Accept a sentence of tough but humane and productive labour to compensate the victim and society, or be administered a much worse alternative. Tough labour compensation is about setting right, even if insufficient in the case of murder. Punitive measures and the death penalty set nothing right, trap us into stooping to violent derangement ourselves, stimulate the violent mob looking on, and offer no productive redemption or genuine expression of guilt. Moreover, the deterrent aspect would still exist for calculated murderers who have enough mental capacity to reason consequences (which, of course, differs from the crimes of the mentally incapacitated at this stage of scientific knowledge).

It's just an idea, so don't stone me. Moreover, in twenty years when we finally have to concede that we have been killing the mentally ill and people with damaged frontal lobes (which most people in the field surely know, but won't admit publicly as they're scared of being economically and socially punished for "defending" people so mentally ill and unsavory there's no benefit in it), we have made a serious ethical effort to hedge against the science, rather than yet again stooping to criminally ignore it and doing the old trick of hiring a PR agency to pretend "people back then didn't know any better".

[1061]

[David]

[1061]

[Member 7167]

Only in the most extreme case and only when there is absolutely no doubt to the individuals guilt. Any case where the conviction has been solely based on circumstantial evidence should exclude the individual from the death sentence.

There are some individuals who have no tangible redeeming aspects to their personality, are repeat offenders and have no regard or respect for the rights or needs of others. I would rather see the funds needed to house, confine and feed these people put to better use within those parts of the community that need the greatest help.

[David]

[1061]

[David]

I don't know how to put this gently, but ... no, Sex and the City 2 is not quite a faithful representation of the Muslim world (or any part thereof).