Over at Retrospectacle, Shelley has decided to ask us all a nice, simple, uncontroversial question:
“Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if its conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty?”
Yeesh.
Actually, though, this is relatively easy to answer. I’m going to put my comments after the cut, though, to build suspense….
Ooooh– suspense…
I’m going to do a slight spin on the time-honored tactic of denouncing the question as completely uninteresting. This might be an interesting question to consider, if I believed that we had the ability to make an absolute and infallible determination of guilt or innocence in criminal cases.
Our legal system being what it is, though, it’s not even close. As far as I’m concerned, the death penalty isn’t even on the table. It’s so far off the table that it’s in a different room.
War is a red herring.
It always amazes me when “small government” people favor the death penalty. Talk about the ultimate in bureaucratic power!
Then there’s the whole “power corruptes, and power attracts the corruptible” thing.
This is an easy one.
Government has no business killing ordinary citizens, for the reason Chad suggests. However, as in the case of Bill of Rights, the rules may be waived by prospective government employees. The logical conclusion is that capital punishment shoul d be imposed only on government officials, preferably only for egregious abuse of government authority.
People usually counter, when I mention this, that the most egregious possible offense must always be to have been employed in the previous administration. That makes makes orderly transfer of power after elections awkward, and thus less likely to occur at all.
Bush won’t be executed, but we can dream.
Hmmm, death penalty, death and body mass index. Is this some aspect of physics I missed in school? I thought there might be something in one of these about the claim that someone could measure a loss of 21 grams at the “moment” of death, as if that has to be the soul, not water vapor, not poor measurement. At least that would be something empirical. Instead this must be under the heading of “uncertain” in the title of this blog.
I notice at Retrospectacle that the comments are 100% against the death penalty, if I read through them correctly. Meanwhile opinions about war are mixed. They are such different situations, one being the killing of a defenseless, though usually guilty enemy of the people, the other sometimes being a matter of national self-defense. So perhaps the question is something of a setup.
Personally I oppose the death penalty in all cases for practical and moral reasons. None of those reasons have convinced the majority of US citizens to believe likewise. That’s something empirical. So should people have contempt for that, knowing smugly of their own superiority or should they think about why people feel a sense a justice in killing murderers, but feel no need to maim doctors who maim their patients or anything else some partisan says they should do as a way of arguing about it?
I have an answer to that, too, but at some point quantum mechanics is easier to understand.
Hmmm, death penalty, death and body mass index. Is this some aspect of physics I missed in school?
Clearly, you’ve never experienced a Ph.D. qualifying exam…
Given: A perpetrator who abducted and raped 15-year-old Mary Vincent then cut off both her forearms with a hatchet. She survived. There is no doubt who did it. Hang the perp in a public square. No coddly Liberal crap about aesthetics, either. Drop him naked then leave the body to rot. After the neck separates burn the remains and scatter the ashes.
The death penalty is about proximate disposal. Define what is too heinous to tolerate. Define what constitutes adequate proof of guilt or doubt. If the conditions are satisfied, the perpetrator is fast track dispatched in a suitably swift, effective, and unpleasant public manner.
http://www.extremeselfprotection.com/predator_profiles.htm
How much of that is tolerable? Do you want to “treat” them?
Is Juvenile Hall in any way a preferable alternative to flogging and release? Broad classes in America view gratis three squares a day plus air conditioning and Cable TV as heaven itself whatever their container. The British Navy has no recorded instance of a flogging junkie. Take the hint.