Capital Punishment: Right or Wrong

[Disciple of Nagash]

I think the title says it all.

Is is ok to kill someone for a crime they have committed?

I am going to make my stance now....however I am not going to say why. I have noticed sometimes my arguments can lead others, no doubt due to my all powerful and peverted nature.

So after a few posts, I justify my stance, which is yes, I think in certain situations it is a viable course of action.

What do the rest of you think?

 

[Mello]

I say a big yes, will justify later as well.

 

[Duke Danse Macabre]

Bring back hanging.........

Some people do not deserve to have yet another chance to destroy another persons life.
There is no reason they should be given anything after certain things.
People will argue that we would be no better but I prefer prevention to reaction.

 

[Grish]

I would say yes as well, for the following reasons:

The biggest reason to say No, is there is a number of convictions that would have led to capital punishment but they have been wrongly convicted. So only yes in irrefutable evidence is given to their crime.

I also think economically it's a good idea. Money isn't unlimited; per prisoner, it costs in Canada around 80k per year. Just giving them welfare if they weren't in jail would be cheaper.

So only in rare cases, and only so we're not paying the bills of some deadbeat who will never turn around. But because courts are not infallible it would be rare.

 

[hairyjeff]

Have to say no, never. But I do believe in hard labour. The usual response is " but if it was your child/family/friend". Well, it was....and I still say no. But make the sods slave it out til the end.

 

[Danceman]

In most cases a crime is not made out of evil. It's made out of desperation. The calculated evil master-killer you see in movies are not real. Society is exclusive and we, civilised men, like to pretend we're better than everyone else. Mostly it is the average clueless joe fucking up.

Capital punishment, absolutely not. The mere thought of giving an innocent man or woman the death penelty makes me nauseous. Imagine the horror of this person, being lead into an early grave by a faulty system. That is not justice, let's not pretend that it is. It's a primitive reaction in our primate brains wanting closure and revenge. It's a sick exclimationmark of our species' bloodlust.

It is of course much easier to sort out criminals into a sub-human category and dispose of them. I guess that is what civilised men do, some anyways.

Yepp, I am very much in the camp that society itself breeds crime. Our indifference and selfishness en masse, is the cause. Responsebility, something that seems to be on very short supply these days, is not optional. I am not naive enough to believe that the position I am in is 100% my doing. It luck and through society and how it treated my parents and so on.

"For every question, there is a short and easy to understand and wrong answer", indeed.

 

[Count Darvaleth]

I'm going to be very beige and say "it depends". Here is what I feel should happen in these circumstances:

As has been said, there would have to be absolutely zero doubt of the criminal's guiltiness. He or she would have to go through several trials, and even a single jury member voting innocent would have to prompt another series of investigations and court-cases.

Second, the criminal must be dangerous enough that keeping him/her prisoner is a risk, or the crime must've been so horrific (such as extreme mass-murders or genocide) that the number of people impacted by this person is large enough that the death of the person would bring genuine "closure" to those people. Perhaps not dissimilar to the hanging of Saddam Hussein, for instance (just using this as an example, I make no side there) where many, many people were affected by his alleged actions.

Finally, it should not have to happen often at all. The crime would have to be so irrefutably wrong for somebody to be given the death sentence, wrong on perhaps an international scale. It would not be something considered lightly; in most cases, imprisonment and/or lots of hard labour would be the punishment. This is an absolute last resort to be used when so many people are crying out for the death of somebody. It sounds horrible, I agree, but how horrible must the crime have been for something like this to occur?

I definitely disagree with "an eye for an eye". Murder would not be enough for the death sentence, not by a long shot. I personally would prefer to never see the death sentence actually issued, but rather kept as a deterrent. If it were not for this preventative factor, I would not advocate the existence of capital punishment at all.

 

[Count Lasombra]

I am going to say NO.Not because I object to killing per se',but b/c I don't like the idea of validating the government's right to kill people.
Big Brother has too much power already.