What bothers me about the death penalty is that it’s final. If you execute someone, then the person will never be brought back to life again, even though it later turns out that the conviction was miscarriage of justice.
In Europe, the death penalty is a just as dead as a recently executed retard in Texas.
While I like most of the posters here do believe that the state can come into situations, where life needs to be taken, like for instance wars, I also do believe that it must be the last resort. You can lock ppl up and throw the key away. The prospect of living another 50 years in a 9’x9’ prison cell ought to be a daunting one.
A book read by most pro-killing bible-thumbing US posters here states: “Thou shalt not kill”.
How about at least try to keep the killings down a bit? Courage anyone?
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]You’re right Rascal, OJ did go free after a fair trial in accordance with the law. The jury may have chosen to disregard the evidence or the jury instructions, but other than that the decision was made based on the proper legal process for the most part. His guilt was apparently not proven beyond doubt according to the jury.
And you’re right, even if OJ is a killer and was set free, that’s a completely separate issue from the state killing people for crimes that they didn’t commit.[/quote]
You say that we must respect the jury’s decision reached in the OJ Simpson trial ("…OJ did go free after a fair trial in accordance with the law."), but you don’t respect the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled that California’s three-strikes-and-you’re-out law does not violate the Constitutional provisions against double jeopardy or cruel and unusual punishment. But that is the law of the land.
You only seem to respect the legal process when it favors you by letting criminals go, but you have a difficult time coming to terms with it when it goes against your beliefs.
I’m not about to go checking anyone’s e-mails… 1) because I don’t have the slightest idea how to do so, and 2) because I don’t care to do it.
Look, we’ve just gone thru a thread dealing with debate ettiquette, which I think was quite constructive. Insults are fine with me, in most situations. But, I’d think very carefully before I called another poster a “liar”.
Can’t we give each other the benefit of the doubt, and consider the possibility that, at worst, one or both posters is/was/were/are mistaken with respect to what was posted at what time?
One point of clarification Mr. He. The Bible does NOT say “Thou shalt not KILL.” It says, “Thou shalt not MURDER.” The state cannot be said to ‘murder’ when the decision has been made in accordance with the laws of that state.
Therefore capital punishment has always been acceptable by religious standards in Judaeo-Christian ethics. That said, capital punishment was rarely meted out by Jewish tribunals.
But that brings us back to the question of what (serious) benefit the death penalty has. So far there is no conclusive evidence that it prevents or deters from those crimes happening, so how would it benefit society?
Interested in your opinion what need of the victim the death penalty fulfills; there might be many victims who would like to see the convict being killed, but I am sure other prefer to see him rotting in jail for the rest of his/her life.
Of course one might argue death penalty reduces the risk of repeating such crimes (after an e.g. escape), but how often does this happen to convicts who would normally go on death row? Set this in relation to the ones wrongly convicted and it might be a small risk to take, but at least it would spare the life of those wrongfully convicted.
Please don’t read the above as a factual statement or my opinion, just trying to look at it from different angels.
Agree with the first part and if we look strictly from a legal part there is no (legal) support for death penalty in Europe either, i.e. any calls by the public for it are legally unsupported and it’s up to the governments to decide.
Death penalty might not be unusual (depends how you define it though) but to me the question is if it’s really necessary if there is no obvious benefit.
[quote=“fred smith”]One point of clarification Mr. He. The Bible does NOT say “Thou shalt not KILL.” It says, “Thou shalt not MURDER.” The state cannot be said to ‘murder’ when the decision has been made in accordance with the laws of that state.
Therefore capital punishment has always been acceptable by religious standards in Judaeo-Christian ethics. That said, capital punishment was rarely meted out by Jewish tribunals.[/quote]
Which version of the bible are you referring to?
Or perhaps you are translating from the Torah in Hebrew? I wonder if it makes a distinction (or if there is a distinction to be made) between Murder and Killing. ALthough you may be onto something. i dunno.
seems like the jesus story regarding the stoning that capital punishment was meted out by the community?
The obvious benefit of course would be that the very high costs of keeping hardened criminals in jail would be eliminated. That said, the legal costs of going through the process to actually execute a criminal are so expensive that I believe any benefit is far outweighed in the cumbersome and very expensive legal process.
I do take the point about killing criminals as long as they will truly be held in prison with no chance of parole. I guess my preference would be to speed the capital punishment trial process while reducing the number of appeals and then widening the numbers on death row to truly make a difference. Why waste our breath talking about the benefits of killing 600 or so over the past several decades. Maybe we should be talking about 600,000 to truly put a dent in the prison population? I don’t know.
Kenny: Did you ever see “Serial Mom.” During a sermon, the priest tells the audience that if Christ were truly against capital punishment, wouldn’t he have said something about it while on the cross. So when it comes to capital punishment, let’s just do it.
As to the correctness of the translation, we must go back to the original. There was capital punishment in the Bible, ergo, it is most likely that the true translation of the commandment was Murder and not Kill.
[quote=“Closet Queen”][quote=“Cold Front”]I have the e-mail sent to my account that can prove you added all of the cases to your post with the exception of the original case of Derek Bentley.
Shall I send it to the moderators for their perusal? It backs up my story, not yours.[/quote]
Yes, please do, because that is clearly the only way to stop your lying. Furthermore, I request that a moderator doublecheck the authenticity of all your e-mails containing my messages and the time they were sent. I maintain that I did not go back and insert information to my original post after you responded to it. If, as you say, I added information to my post, you will have a before and after e-mail showing a sizeable difference in time and content.[/quote]
Moderators (Tigerman, Alien, whoever), please instruct me as to where I should send the relevant e-mails in order to most effectively and fairly answer this jackass’s allegations and to ensure that he is forced to give me a public apology for his baseless accusations.
Your e-mail does not contain the extract detailing the soldiers, yet above you claim in the same breath it was at the bottom of the post. If so, why isn
The Bible (originally and still for the Jews, the Torah) details accounts where people were to be legally killed. This would be different from murder which was killing done in an illegal fashion. There were several wars where the Jews were instructed to kill, etc. so if you accept the fact that the Bible is true along with the Ten Commandments, you would have to see that the translation of Kill cannot possibly be the correct one. Your other choice is to dismiss Judaism’s central tenets in their entirety by saying you do not believe that such a system represents the wishes of the Diving Being which would leave Christianity a pretty weak base to sit on since it accepts the Truth of the Old Testament/Torah.
Figures on this opposed to life imprisonment ? I seem to remember this being one of the anti-death penalty advocates.
[quote]
As to the correctness of the translation, we must go back to the original. There was capital punishment in the Bible, ergo, it is most likely that the true translation of the commandment was Murder and not Kill.[/quote]
What about war? Is that considered murder or killing? And what , pray tell, is the difference?
Perhaps that’s all very well and good, but loads of ‘Christians’ believe in death penalty, but are anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia. Since CF brought up that particular argument, take the ball and run with it Fred, instead of spouting bible studies at us.
Second, wars can and have been justified on religious grounds most famously by your pet cause, the Muslims. (just kidding).
The Christian Right in my humble opinion is more morally consistent than the Hollywood Left.
Abortion is killing of innocent (as in noncriminal) life. Life begins at conception.
Capital punishment and war are decided on by states. As such the individuals engaging in war are not killing based on individual prerogatives, hence not murder. That said, killing in war that goes beyond the pale is considered murder as well.
So we have the Christian Right saying that no Murder is right while the Left is saying Killing is acceptable when it’s a matter of lifestyle or convenience for the woman with no vote for the fetus NOR for the father, but not acceptable by the state to punish actions entered into by individuals of their own free will or in the event of war for any reason.
While I do not concern myself overmuch with abortion or anti-abortion, the moral position if taken to its logical conclusion shows that the Christian Right is consistent in its position from an ethical point of view while that of the Left is highly arbitrary at best or completely unethical at worst depending on your slant, but then no one has ever accused the Left of being consistent, certainly not by me frederick p. smith v.
What is there about any penalty, once it begins to be served, that is not final? I read about a man who was kept in prison for twenty to thirty years before he was released when his conviction was overturned. How do you think he is going to get back those thirty years? What can possibly compensate him for that lost time, for the likelihood this innocent man spent most of his adult life with criminals and degenerates, possibly being raped or otherwise abused? Does the state say, “sorry, pal, here’s a couple hundred grand. No hard feelings.”?
First, murder is illegal, unlawful.[/quote] But killing is ok? Well, let the killing begin, then!
[quote=“fred smith”]
The Christian Right in my humble opinion is more morally consistent than the Hollywood Left.
Abortion is killing of innocent (as in noncriminal) life. Life begins at conception.
Capital punishment and war are decided on by states. As such the individuals engaging in war are not killing based on individual prerogatives, hence not murder. That said, killing in war that goes beyond the pale is considered murder as well.
[/quote]Well, well, so our Christian Right washes its hands of responsibility and passes it on to the government. How convenient for them. And ‘killing based on individual prerogatives’ regards the assumption that soldiers only kill because they’re told to. So, then, would the Mafia or other hitmen also be exempt from being ‘murderers’?
I refuse to touch the abortion issue with CF and I certainly won’t debate it with the likes of you…But who says life begins at conception? [/quote]
The problem in discussing this with you is that you assume the freedom to draw sweeping conclusions from statements in an illogical manner. Saying there is a difference between murder and killing is a statement in fact. No where does this support the view that we should let the “killing should begin.” I have noted an ethical difference between the two. You might wish to consider studying ethics or even philosophy to better understand what moral positions are (I do not mean this in a condescending general way but the specific framing of moral positions).
By any standard life begins at conception. I will assume that you have studied biology so there is no need to argue such a basic fact. Now the life is not indepedent (cannot exist on its own) but then neither can a 2 year old, but point taken life that is totally dependent on the mother during the fetal stages. Now when you “kill” this fetus, the Christian Right labels it as murder and this is a completely consistent ethical position for them. War and capital punishment are sanctioned by the state. Now we have said that Iraq is wrong in its wars of aggression against Iran and Kuwait but we cannot prosecute individual soldiers for carrying out the orders of the government. We can however prosecute for human rights abuses if it is shown that killing was arbitrary or done in a way to maximize deaths unnecessarily. See the difference?
So when the Christian Right comes out against abortion and for capital punishment there is no moral dilemma. There is however when you examine the Leftist position that abortion is acceptable but capital punishment is not. Why not? Because the “criminal” has “rights” while ignoring any “responsibilities” he or she might have to living by the “rules” of the “state.” This is really very elementary.
Now I have no major bone to pick with abortion nor am I particularly concerned about capital punishment one way or another. I am only trying to show here the difference between “murder” and “killing” and that “killing” was allowed in Judaeo-Christian ethics and hence the commandment must read “murder.” See?
I’ve been a gentleman in debate with you, Alien, so will you at least touch upon the issue of euthanasia that I brought up earlier? It’s a less emotional subject than abortion for most people and I’ve drawn some parallels between it and the death penalty that merit discussion.
No, incredibly there seems to be no offer of financial compensation.[/quote]
Is this true?
If so, I suppose I can understand the philosophy behind it. The state is only obligated to provide anyone accused of a crime with a fair trial; there are no promises on the results. How could there be?