why I can't quite nix the death penalty entirely

[Timsup2nothin]

If we're going down that road, you might as well have inmates fight to the death with weapons in a hockey rink on live TV. Or I guess in America's case, in a steel cage or a baseball inspired diamond type of steel cage or some thing. Or maybe on an aircraft carrier.

Did something like that. No TV though, it was just for the entertainment of the prison staff.

 

[Bootstoots]

I don't understand why the US finds it so difficult to kill people relatively painlessly. The three-drug cocktails never made any sense at all - a massive dose of a barbiturate (produced by compounding pharmacy or some state-run thing if wussy Europeans are cutting off the supply) should do it rapidly, painlessly, and reliably by extreme CNS depression. Failing that, inert gas asphyxiation will do the trick very quickly as well. Probably best to use pure nitrous oxide (maybe even better, a strong anesthetic gas like sevoflurane) because it will anesthetize the condemned, which should be even more humane than something truly inert like nitrogen or argon.

That said, I'd actually prefer if we didn't have a death penalty - it's expensive, looks bad, is totally unnecessary, and so forth. But the current method and seeming inability to find something more effective is especially stupid, and I do like thinking about how best to kill people.

 

[RobAnybody]

I wonder how televised executions would influence public opinion.

This was answered by The Running Man. It was, like, the highest rated program on TV. True Story.

 

[warpus]

I don't understand why the US finds it so difficult to kill people relatively painlessly.

I think the sentiment is that it's supposed to be a punishment, or something stupid like that.

 

[bhavv]

If it was possible to give her an eye for an eye justice, the death penalty alone wouldn't cut it. You would have to do to her what she did to those kids.

And emotionally speaking in this case, Id like to see this woman stuck into several Saw (the movies) style traps and watch her squirm. But the whole point is that we base laws around justice, and not crazy human emotion that would in most cases only want to seek revenge.

 

[Perfection]

I don't understand, do you mean I'm taking the eye-for-an-eye approach and we shouldn't kill those who kills because it's wrong?

She herself believes she should be executed. You're agreeing with her.

Killing her humanely doesn't correspond to what she did at all. She tortured her children, seriously abused them before they died. Her life is over, whether it's life in prison or death. So what's the difference? My argument against death penalties has always been they are too expensive and you need safeguards, but in this case I'd be willing to forgo both.

My preference is to live in a country where we don't use violence as a method of punishment.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

My preference is to live in a country where we don't use violence as a method of punishment.

Incarceration is violence. Collection of fines is violence. Punishment, is pretty much by definition violence. Not using deadly force is a good goal though.

 

[Borachio]

Either it's wrong to kill someone (in which case the death penalty is also wrong) or it isn't (in which case why would you punish someone for killing someone else?)

The OP's point of view (which is a popular one) seems to be that people who have inflicted pain and suffering on others in the course of murdering them are somehow more deserving of the death penalty than those who, apparently, just plain murder someone (with a bullet to the back of the head... or something). I'm not sure I understand the thinking behind this. But, in any case, sadistic murderers simply don't exist in a vacuum: something, or somebody, has made them this way. Why anyone would think that the death penalty is going to help the matter, in any way, has defeated my powers of comprehension (which aren't especially powerful, it has to be said... but still...) up to the present moment.

 

[sophie]

For people who cannot be rehabilitated or show no inclination to do so, for people who commit crimes so heinous and cruel they must be separated from society to protect everyone else, the sentence of life in prison without parole accomplishes this with no further barbarism.

This. Rehabilitation, not punishment, should be the ultimate goal of the justice system.

 

[warpus]

Incarceration is violence. Collection of fines is violence. Punishment, is pretty much by definition violence. Not using deadly force is a good goal though.

No offense, but if the collection of parking ticket fines is violence, then the word "violence" loses all meaning and you might as well say that the collection of fines is a taco or a smorg or we might as well come up with a new word for actual violence, such as a punch to the face.

 

[Perfection]

Incarceration is violence. Collection of fines is violence. Punishment, is pretty much by definition violence. Not using deadly force is a good goal though.

I won't deny one can see it that way. Perhaps physical harm is a more agrreable description of what I feel should be disallowed.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Plus don't most/all of the methods use lead to some pain at least, and in some cases.. torture?

I don't get why you wouldn't just drug the guy up and have him pass out peacefully. As long as you're killing people, you might as well do that. Unless you're a bloodthirsty freak or something..

There are peaceful ways of killing people in 100% of cases, right? There are drugs that do this? Drugs that would make the guy/girl pass out, go to sleep, and die in their sleep? If you're going to have the death penalty - there you go, a civilized way to kill people exists.

Any painless surgical anesthetic that works effectively on a given person could be applied painlessly in this context, and you could use whatever brutal/fast/arbitrary method to kill after doing so and the person being executed wouldn't feel a thing. I've only been placed under such an anesthetic once in my lifetime so far. It wasn't the same thing as falling asleep...more like a time gap in consciousness.

So necessarily equating an execution to torture is false, at least these days. That doesn't mean it's a good idea though.

bhavv makes a good point regarding the relative value of execution versus life imprisonment. Especially if given nothing but a room to sit and stew in for 50+ years, that would be horrible. Sources of entertainment change that equation.

The fact that there are some inaccurate convictions is something that can't be ignored and is a strong enough case against the death penalty. But let's set that aside for a moment and ask if we would feel the same way in a world where you could somehow guarantee 100% conviction accuracy. At that stage, what punishment would benefit society the most? With a 100% guarantee, the extra-cost aspect of death penalty would be erased; it would be more costly to sustain criminals. To me, the possibility of wrong-conviction makes the exercise moot in practice, but it's an interesting thought.

No offense, but if the collection of parking ticket fines is violence, then the word "violence" loses all meaning and you might as well say that the collection of fines is a taco or a smorg or we might as well come up with a new word for actual violence, such as a punch to the face.

You make a good point with regards to parking ticket fines and whatnot, but forcibly confining someone against their will is something you could make a reasonable case as fitting the definition, at least loosely.

 

[warpus]

It's not against their will if they are a part of society and thus agree in principle to the social contract and abiding by the rules of the land.

But I will agree with you, depending on the circumstances of the confinement - solitary confinement for example does indeed seem to qualify as violence, in some ways. But regular confinement, I will have to disagree on.

 

[Flying Pig]

This. Rehabilitation, not punishment, should be the ultimate goal of the justice system.

I'm not sure that really applies here, since few people are advocating doing away with whole-life sentences - I think we universally agree that if the death penalty were abolished tomorrow, this person would still have no chance of being rehabilitated.

 

[warpus]

I'm not sure that really applies here, since few people are advocating doing away with whole-life sentences - I think we universally agree that if the death penalty were abolished tomorrow, this person would still have no chance of being rehabilitated.

But that's because the mindset of those in charge of American prisons and related American law is "Prison is punishment" and not "Prison is rehabilitation". So the system is set up for punishment and not rehab - so of course life sentences are not going to rehabilitate people. Of course those leaving American prisons are going to be far more likely to re-engage in criminal activities than previously, not less.

 

[Bugfatty300]

But that's because the mindset of those in charge of American prisons and related American law is "Prison is punishment" and not "Prison is rehabilitation". So the system is set up for punishment and not rehab - so of course life sentences are not going to rehabilitate people. Of course those leaving American prisons are going to be far more likely to re-engage in criminal activities than previously, not less.

For lesser crimes sure, reform is needed. But in contrast, Norway has one of the most advanced and progressive prisons systems in the world no? Yet Norwegian inmates like Anders Brevik will almost certainly never be released.

 

[bhavv]

Honestly I don't think that this woman deserves rehabilitation for what she did. Life in solitary confinement with no entertainment and nothing less.

I only support rehabilitation for non murder / rape cases.

 

[warpus]

For lesser crimes sure, reform is needed. But in contrast, Norway has one of the most advanced and progressive prisons systems in the world no? Yet Norwegian inmates like Anders Brevik will almost certainly never be released.

Some people you just can't rehabilitate no matter how hard you try. And that's fine. These exceptions shouldn't shape the nature of a prison/rehab/legal/whatever system.

 

[Flying Pig]

But that's because the mindset of those in charge of American prisons and related American law is "Prison is punishment" and not "Prison is rehabilitation". So the system is set up for punishment and not rehab - so of course life sentences are not going to rehabilitate people. Of course those leaving American prisons are going to be far more likely to re-engage in criminal activities than previously, not less.

Absolutely, I'm not disputing that - for example, most democracies use prisons (at least in theory) for rehabilitating criminals, for deterring people from committing crimes, and from preventing those minded to commit crimes from doing so. They also tend to use them for social engineering (keeping nasty people like them away from nice people like us) and political capital, where elections promise more prison sentences to seem 'tough on crime'. But even in the best system, we would acknowledge that some people are not going to be rehabilitated, and I assume that anyone handed the death penalty in the US is believed to fall into that category. In such cases, though, I see little point in making prison particularly unpleasant - I think prisons and the like work much better when you keep people basically happy, otherwise they become a place with several nasty, violent people sharing a living space with a few less nasty public servants.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

If we're going down that road, you might as well have inmates fight to the death with weapons in a hockey rink on live TV. Or I guess in America's case, in a steel cage or a baseball inspired diamond type of steel cage or some thing. Or maybe on an aircraft carrier.

Well, a fair number of people already compare the U.S. to the Roman Empire in decline. Why not give people bread and circuses and literal gladiator games? Oh, right. Because some of the condemned would be innocent, and then there would be a Russell Crowe-type person who would end up killing the President because the President fancied himself a warrior and wanted to impress his son... (actually that is not remotely how history really happened for that Emperor, which is why I don't really care for Gladiator).


Canada has had some awful miscarriages of justice: Stephen Truscott, David Milgard, Donald Marshall, Guy-Paul Morin... just to name a few. All were convicted of rape/murder, and all were innocent. Truscott was underage, and originally sentenced to be executed (we still had the death penalty back then). He was 14. But his sentence was commuted to life in prison, and many years later new evidence revealed him to be innocent.

Of course we've also got undeniably guilty wastes of oxygen taking up room in prison when they don't even deserve to keep breathing: Paul Bernardo, Robert Pickton, Luka Magnotta, the Shafia family... and Karla Homolka who did serve 12 years but should have had life. She's free now, but I very much doubt she's at all rehabilitated or even remorseful.

The RCMP have this noble image outside of Canada - the red-uniformed, Stetson-wearing Mounties who are invariably polite, helpful, competent, honorable, and trusted. Well, there are probably some who are like that. But there are a lot of them who are absolute scum who have no problem at all in railroading innocent people into prison, racial profiling, taking the easy way out, beating and torturing prisoners, and generally being clueless idiots.

So thank goodness we don't have the death penalty. Yes, the worst of the worst get to keep breathing. But the flip side is that Truscott, Milgard, etc. are still alive.


There's a novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley (science fiction one, naturally) in which she depicts one of the characters going on a killing spree and being caught. He's undeniably guilty, and that society doesn't have the death penalty. But its take on prison is this: The prisoner has a choice between chemical "rehabilitation" - literally altering the prisoner's mind to eliminate all capability of committing violent acts - then being retrained and put to work doing menial labor for the rest of his/her life.

The alternative is an escape-proof prison of cryogenic freezing that is perpetual. The prisoner doesn't die, and ages so slowly that it essentially makes no difference. If proof of innocence is found later, the prisoner can be released, alive, and allowed to integrate back into society. They could possibly be decades out of step with their former lives, their families could be lost or dead, but they would be alive. Or alternatively, if the prisoner is never found innocent, he/she stays frozen. The system is, of course, set up so the cryogenic units don't lose power or malfunction, and they're absolutely escape-proof. Those in freeze don't have to be fed, they don't get bored or stressed, there's no overcrowding or violence, just basically nonexistence unless they're revived and declared innocent.

So would that be a more humane way to handle those whose crimes might otherwise merit death? The technology to make this work flawlessly is something we don't yet have, and there would need to be a radical change in laws and societal attitudes against human experimentation (since this system would have to be tested on humans to see if they could be revived successfully and those remaining frozen would not age or suffer).