Why Do I Support The Death Penalty?

[VOR]

Originally posted by Thruster
The rebuttal is fatuous partly because of its circular logic. There is no judicial mechanism for review of guilt or pronouncement of innocence after an execution. The courts are done with it. Therefore, it should go without saying that no court has announced that an executed person was innocent, since American courts by definition do not make such findings.

Shhh. Critical thinking is on the Philosophy forum.

[lazs2]

Hmmm.. I must not be making myself clear.. I asked for one case where an innocent man was executed and I get... "some guys on death row were let off"

Thruster claims I am making a circular arguement..  perhaps but he is ignoring logic.

It would seem that lots of people who had been executed and were truly innocent would be found so over the years... the real killer would trip up or confess or..  new evidence.  

I don't even care that much if one out of 10,000 is executed for the wrong crime.. It is hard to find one executed that.. even if he did not commit the crime in question...  that does not deserve to be executed in any case.  and..  people die of mistakes every day for no good reason at all.  

safeguards must be met.   But after a reasonable amount of evidence is presented and it is 99.9% certain.. execute.   Is life in prison so much better?

what kind of a person would rather spend his life in prison?  Who would fear death so much?

lazs

[Chairboy]

So, still no statement that you don't think anyone innocent of the crime they're accused has been executed, Lasz2?

Crisis of confidence?

[SteveBailey]

Originally posted by Excel1
the posability of the planting of dna evidence in 2008 wouldn't be above their ilk.

Let's start with this.  Go ahead and tell me how you plant DNA evidence.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by SteveBailey
Let's start with this.  Go ahead and tell me how you plant DNA evidence.

You see what you do is you take, say, a bloody glove from the murder scene.... maybe a double homocide, and you place it just outside the guest residence of... say one of the victims has an ex-husband.  Then....

[trax1]

The problem is the death penalty is final, there is no undoing it, I would rather see 10,000 guilty get life then a single innocent man be executed, atleast with life a mistake can be undone.  Killing someone is never a good option.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by trax1
at least with life a mistake can be undone.

Tell that to Hurricane Carter.

He lost 22 years.

[Thruster]

It would seem that lots of people who had been executed and were truly innocent would be found so over the years... the real killer would trip up or confess or.. new evidence.

Google "wrongful executions".

There's too much data to distill and present here.

I don't even care that much if one out of 10,000 is executed for the wrong crime.. It is hard to find one executed that.. even if he did not commit the crime in question... that does not deserve to be executed in any case. and.. people die of mistakes every day for no good reason at all.

Aside from the disturbingly sophomoric perspective this statement exhibits I have to ask;
What ratio becomes unacceptable? Or does something become a problem only when it lands in your back yard?

[Excel1]

Originally posted by SteveBailey
Let's start with this.  Go ahead and tell me how you plant DNA evidence.

very carefully, so as not to contaminate the sample. but apart from that precaution it's no different from any other physical evidence that can be planted to link a suspect to a crime scene.

if there is some absolute reason why it would be physically imposable to plant dna evidence your going to have to explain it

[SteveBailey]

Originally posted by Excel1
very carefully, so as not to contaminate the sample.

Where do you get the DNA from? At what stage do you plant this evidence?

You have been watching too much CSI.  Planting DNA evidence isn't that simple.

So again,   besides  "very carefully" which isn't an answer at all, how do you plant the DNA evidence?

[Suave]

I have no problem with the destruction of creatures who have been proven to be inhuman. I could do it and I would sleep very well that night. I do have a big problem of giving such enormous power to the state. It is tantamount to giving up our arms. Like the libertarian presidential candidate said, "the time for the death penalty is 3:00 am at the atm".

Governments have a long history of abusing the death penalty. The government of Kampuchea perpetrated a genocide legally with their judicial system. All recipiants of the death penalty were tried and found guilty. All trials and executions were meticulously documented by government beaurocracy. No attempt was made to cover anything up, quite the opposite.

Obviously I'm not comparing our current government to the kmer rouge. But you must see that the death penalty is a tool of power too enormous to be entrusted to those who make the laws. It is an issue pertinent to the peoples freedom, of as much relevance as the right to keep arms since it really is the same principal.

I don't need to list the long number of governments who have used judicial execution as a tool to maintain power.

Now when you consider this countries frigtening trend of profiting from, and integrating into the economy, criminal activity. The prospect becomes more alarming.

The state profits from the drug trade, the state profits from human trafficking, the state profits from the penal system. Now we live in a country where 1% of the population is in prison. Anyway you slice it, there is something wrong with a country that has 1% of it's people in prison.

The war on drugs and the war on illegal immigrants is not going to go away. Quite the contrary, you will see government expansion with the pretext of combating drugs and illegals. It is not in the governments interest to win the war on drugs or illegal immigration.

And now it appears the government has noticed the growth potential of the economy of the penal system.

What happens when countries profit from criminal activity? Let's use the USSR for an example. Prisoners contributed to the economy, so what happened? They began a process of criminalization of the public to the point where basically they could imprison any given person for infractions of an ambigous and abitrary legal code.

[Excel1]

Originally posted by SteveBailey
Where do you get the DNA from? At what stage do you plant this evidence?

You have been watching too much CSI.  Planting DNA evidence isn't that simple.

So again,   besides  "very carefully" which isn't an answer at all, how do you plant the DNA evidence?

but you do agree that planting dna evidence is possible, right?

testing my knowledge ( or lack of ) of the actual mechanics of planting dna at a crime scene will not alter the fact that it is possible.  
but ill play.. i think the ingredients needed would include- bent cops, bent cops with access to both the crime scene, the suspect, his abode, car etc. as for when the evidence is planted, it's surprising what the police sometimes find after the initial search of a crime scene. and as i have already said, that apart from the added risk of contaminating the planted dna evidence,  planting an item of a suspects clothing containing his skin and hair for example is not a whole lot different from planting other forms of physical evidence, like spent shell casings from a suspects rifle. and it may add enough weight to circumstantial evidence to get him convicted.

my original point however was that dna evidence is not infallible enough to ensure that every suspected murderer convicted by the use of dna evidence is guilty 100% of the time. so far you haven't posted anything that would give me cause to change my mind.

and no, i don't watch csi. if you have seen one episode you've seen them all.

[ZetaNine]

Executions are a waste of time.

use them to cure cancer.

Go farther....and have them REALLY pay a debt to society.......use them for medical experimentation.....better restults than lab rats & bunnies..

Yes...I am serious.

[moot]

Cruel and unusual punishment?

[Sharrk]

Although I dont think that some of these people deserve to be able to use valuable resourses up such as air.

This guy is one of the reasons the death penalty is a very contencious issue for me.
It wasnt in the USA but I dont think that the southern colonials were any worse at placing guilt than in the states.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Ryan

He was no angel and he more than probably wasnt a murderer, but he was last man to swing in Australia.
I dont think he was alone in swinging for something he may not have done.