The Death Penalty is a Good Thing

[JOZeldenrust]

JOZ, I have killed a lot of people, some of whom might not have deserved it (there was little time for checking). That guy, I have never lost sleep over him. His mother refused to collect his body.

Doesn't change that you seem to take pleasure in it, just as you often glorify violence, and in my book that makes you vile scum.

I inderstand that sometimes violence is justified or even necessary, but it's never desirable.

Where do you get the impression I take pleasure in it, please? Quote?

You volunteered. I can understand volunteering to shield others from the trauma of having to kill a powerless man, but in that case why mention it, much less mention it in a discussion where you're supporting the death penalty?

You regularly refer to instances where you've used violence in ways that suggest you take pride in your actions. I remember you writing about knocking someone out because of an insult, and bragging about it (it was quite some time ago, so I don't think I'll be able to find the post).

I don't know what other impresion I could get from your posts.

[JimC]

Okay. Someone you love who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was wrongfully convicted. I know I'm banging on, but it's actually THE POINT!! Wrongful arrest, forced confessions etc - the legal process is VERY flawed. There's your loved one in the dock. They're going to the 'chair', and you know they didn't do it. How does it feel now?

Exactly!

Even if this is an uncommon event, it is simply wrong.

Mind you, I would also like to see longer sentences for violent offenders who have been assessed as likely to re-offend, and perhaps somewhat less cushy surroundings...

The two keys are effective deterrence, and protecting other people by minimising the chances of re-offending. I know that proponents of capital punishment will argue that it does both, but it is not the only method to achieve that to a satisfactorily high degree.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You volunteered. I can understand volunteering to shield others from the trauma of having to kill a powerless man, but in that case why mention it, much less mention it in a discussion where you're supporting the death penalty?

You regularly refer to instances where you've used violence in ways that suggest you take pride in your actions. I remember you writing about knocking someone out because of an insult, and bragging about it (it was quite some time ago, so I don't think I'll be able to find the post).

I don't know what other impresion I could get from your posts.

Volunteering doesn't mean I got pleasure from it. It actually left me rather cold. The man spent days dismembering a person just to see how long they could survive. He said, "It wasn't personal."

I knocked a guy down who attacked me. Get your facts straight.

[stripes4]

I agree Jim. Punishment, yes, and not necessarily the focus on nice counselling and rehabilitating, but a lifelong opportunity to put something back while keeping out of the way.

[cowiz]

I am against the death penalty in all instances except one. Being Stripes4 should be punishable by cruel and unusual torture followed by death. All others are barbaric and I am surprised that you have all fallen for our beloved trolls antics. Shame upon you.

[stripes4]

I am against the death penalty in all instances except one. Being Stripes4 should be punishable by cruel and unusual torture followed by death. All others are barbaric and I am surprised that you have all fallen for our beloved trolls antics. Shame upon you.

Can I have death by shagging?

[cowiz]

I am against the death penalty in all instances except one. Being Stripes4 should be punishable by cruel and unusual torture followed by death. All others are barbaric and I am surprised that you have all fallen for our beloved trolls antics. Shame upon you.

Can I have death by shagging?

You have been condemned to be shagged to death by Gawd. A fitting punishment for the both of you.

[JOZeldenrust]

JOZ, I have killed a lot of people, some of whom might not have deserved it (there was little time for checking). That guy, I have never lost sleep over him. His mother refused to collect his body.

Doesn't change that you seem to take pleasure in it, just as you often glorify violence, and in my book that makes you vile scum.

I inderstand that sometimes violence is justified or even necessary, but it's never desirable.

Doesn't change anything, oldzilla just likes to bring up that he "killed people" to make him sound like some kind of big man or something. Actually, not even sure what the point is, but he does like to bring it up. Sad, living in the past I suppose. Of course he glorifies violence, look at any of his posts. Violence is generally the answer for people to stupid to come up with an alternative. Of course, I am not in any sense a pacifist, and I do believe violence has its place, but state sanctioned violence is never a good, moral, or intelligent thing.

On this we disagree. I think state sanctioned violence is a prequisite for a functioning society. The state should be able to use force to enforce contracts, including the null-contract not to violate the material, physical or mental integrity of other people. Without ultimately violent means, the state has no way to do its job. But state sanctioned violence should be aimed at minimizing harm. An incarcerated person isn't in a position to harm anyone, so harming him or her wouldn't serve any function.

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

[stripes4]

I am against the death penalty in all instances except one. Being Stripes4 should be punishable by cruel and unusual torture followed by death. All others are barbaric and I am surprised that you have all fallen for our beloved trolls antics. Shame upon you.

Can I have death by shagging?

You have been condemned to be shagged to death by Gawd. A fitting punishment for the both of you.

He'd die before me

[cowiz]

I am against the death penalty in all instances except one. Being Stripes4 should be punishable by cruel and unusual torture followed by death. All others are barbaric and I am surprised that you have all fallen for our beloved trolls antics. Shame upon you.

Can I have death by shagging?

You have been condemned to be shagged to death by Gawd. A fitting punishment for the both of you.

He'd die before me

He'd want to.

[stripes4]

I am against the death penalty in all instances except one. Being Stripes4 should be punishable by cruel and unusual torture followed by death. All others are barbaric and I am surprised that you have all fallen for our beloved trolls antics. Shame upon you.

Can I have death by shagging?

You have been condemned to be shagged to death by Gawd. A fitting punishment for the both of you.

He'd die before me

He'd want to.

[JOZeldenrust]

You volunteered. I can understand volunteering to shield others from the trauma of having to kill a powerless man, but in that case why mention it, much less mention it in a discussion where you're supporting the death penalty?

You regularly refer to instances where you've used violence in ways that suggest you take pride in your actions. I remember you writing about knocking someone out because of an insult, and bragging about it (it was quite some time ago, so I don't think I'll be able to find the post).

I don't know what other impresion I could get from your posts.

Volunteering doesn't mean I got pleasure from it. It actually left me rather cold. The man spent days dismembering a person just to see how long they could survive. He said, "It wasn't personal."

I don't care what he did, it doesn't justify killing him. Retribution isn't a justification, it's just a rationalization, especially considering that what this person did would've been impossible to a sane person. You killed a diseased mind, someone who deserved help. While I agree that society deserves to be protected from people like him, but we can provide an acceptable level of protection without killing such people, with the additional benefit of having a chance to redeem the murderer. The success of forced therapy for mentally ill violent offenders in The Netherlands shows that the odds of refrom far outweigh the odds of repeat offences.

I knocked a guy down who attacked me. Get your facts straight.

Sorry if I misremembered. Stil, you always seem proud of your use of violence.

[Coito ergo sum]

JOZ, I have killed a lot of people, some of whom might not have deserved it (there was little time for checking). That guy, I have never lost sleep over him. His mother refused to collect his body.

Doesn't change that you seem to take pleasure in it, just as you often glorify violence, and in my book that makes you vile scum.

I inderstand that sometimes violence is justified or even necessary, but it's never desirable.

Doesn't change anything, oldzilla just likes to bring up that he "killed people" to make him sound like some kind of big man or something. Actually, not even sure what the point is, but he does like to bring it up. Sad, living in the past I suppose. Of course he glorifies violence, look at any of his posts. Violence is generally the answer for people to stupid to come up with an alternative. Of course, I am not in any sense a pacifist, and I do believe violence has its place, but state sanctioned violence is never a good, moral, or intelligent thing.

As much as Gawdzilla has been a dick toward me in the past, I have to disagree that he is somehow bragging about killing people, or that he glorifies it. I don't read that at all, IMHO.

[Coito ergo sum]

No, I've demonstrated that the civilised parts of the world have moved beyond biblically inspired punishments. IMO the death penalty coarsens those societies that practice it, has not been demonstrated to be a deterrent, inevitably suffers from racial bias and carries the risk of perpetrating irreversible miscarriages of justice.

So, you see absolutely no situation where a person could be executed as the best choice for society?

I think I've made my position clear but please go ahead and invent some kind of contrived crime scenario to try and make me change my mind...

Anyways, I'm off to bed.

uhh but, hold on a minute, what if, like someone raped the president, blew up a woman's shelter, and then masturbated on the corpses?

There are plenty of examples as extreme as that. Jeffrey Dahmer raped people, drugged them, drilled holes in their heads to give them home lobotomies and to turn them into sexual automatons, murdered people and dissolved their bodies in acid, and ate some of their organs to boot...

Another guy, Josef Fritzl in Austria kept his daughter locked in a basement for 24 years and repeatedly raped her, beat her, and forced her to mother seven children by him, her own father....

Then there is Gregory Michael Pisarcik, who told detectives he hated homosexuals and confessed that he had gone to a man's home to rob him, and then beat the guy, hog tied him, kicked his balls repeatedly, shoved a flashlight up his ass and beat him with a bottle of booze to death. He said, "Don't put me in with the homos. I'm not a homo. That's why I killed him. I'm not a homo." During fingerprinting, he told another deputy that he had no regrets about killing Leggs and had been planning a killing spree in Ventura County when deputies trapped him.

Gustavo Palmas Reyes beat his live-in girlfriend--she had made the mistake of cooking him dinner when he wasn't hungry. He left to get drunk and eat fried chicken with friends. Later that night, he came home to his girlfriend's one-bedroom apartment, where he stripped, molested and raped his girlfriend's mute, developmentally disabled 12-year-old daughter.

I am against the death penalty because it doesn't work in any real deterrent sense and doesn't serve to reduce violent crime (and in fact, it seems to have the opposite effect, according to the statistical evidence). But, there are certain folks - certain individuals - who I have no problem seeing dead. A guy rapes a retarded girl? Some guy drugs and lobotomizes human beings, rapes them, murders them and eats them? I don't blame anyone for wanting to pull the switch, especially the families and friends of their victims. I think one would have to be inhuman NOT to feel utter revulsion for those perpetrators and complete sympathy with someone who wants to off those animals.

HOWEVER - hard cases make bad law, and thankfully these creeps are few and far between, statistically speaking. I think it's sufficient to lock the fuckers up for the rest of their lives.

[Chuck Jones]

The death penalty is a good thing. Why crowd the prison system and waste taxpayer money just so that you lock someone up for god so many years? Locking someone up for many years is a form of torture. It is much more humane to just kill them. All that you are doing is pro-longing the suffering by keeping them alive. There is nothing wrong with sentencing someone to death for serious crimes. They are a lost cause and it is highly illogical to confine them in small spaces for years on end instead of just giving them a quick injection or the guillotine.

I'm from Texas but I disagree with the death penalty. Thou shalt not kill.