That's right. Technically, and legally, I am correct. What is left to argue? Morality? That is never ending, and those morals have been shown to change over the course of time for the most part. It was once legal to own slaves in this country, and now it isn't. We can look back and judge the morality of the laws that allowed slavery, but it is a moot point now. Now the current laws have caught up with morality. It is very difficult to bring someone to a moral conclusion if they are fixed on their present position. Often it takes generations and generations for that slow change to occur. So, all that we have to work with today is the legality and technicality of the law. I hope we see moral evolution in this country, and in the world. It its absence, let's at lease see preservation of laws and technicality. Take away law and technicality, and we have anarchy and chaos. As bad as our present system is, I prefer it over the laws of 1000 years ago, and I prefer it to Muslim law. I prefer that we have a system of law that supports technicality over whim or floating subjectivity and emotions...or some dogmatic rules that defy common sense and reason. That the woman who holds the scales of justice is not really blind, and that the blindfold she wears is just a "technical" blindness, that technicality is what preserves and affords the only possible justice available in our society, and elevates our system to a level of humanity rarely seen in the history of mankind. You have a lynch mob mentality, and fortunately, our legal system has evolved out of that primitive system to protect both the innocent and the guilty. "Would you grieve less somehow because you lost a loved one to a fellow American or grieve more because the perpetrator was a foreign national?" I would grieve the same, and I would love to take justice in my own hands from an emotional perspective, but I surrender my mind and my reasoning with the oath to our constitution I have taken as a citizen, and support its concepts, principles, laws and ideas of justice.
Yes to both. The questions to be asked of those against capital punishment are: 1) Does executing criminals effectively prevent them from committing the same crime again? 2) Which is more important, the rights of criminals or those of innocent citizens? 3) What is barbaric about requiring that someone who violently steals the life of an innocent (or two, or three, or 10, or 50?) not be allowed to keep his own? 4) Where is the moral tradition that prescribes life for murderers? 5) What is "civilizing" about telling society's worst people that no matter how many victims they slaughter, rape, or molest, no matter how barbaric the suffering they inflict on others, the worst that can happen to them is that they will go to prison? I don't care. I really don't. What I care about is that innocent Americans every day are being victimized by offenders who were released back into society by a flawed system that shows no sign of changing. dGAB and others would rather continue studying and trying to rehabilitate these animals and ignore that in the meantime, while all this academic research is being performed, another innocent American is paying the price.
Hardly, and to come from you, who is usually lucid and a voice of reason, disappointing. A lynch mob cares not about innocence or guilt, only about venegeance and the thirst to enjoy some spectacle. Here we are discussing criminals about whom guilt is not a question. That we advocate death as just punishment does not make us a lynch mob. If it were so you would have to say the same of our administration's stance on Iraq and any other time we as a country have gone to war. Very noble. I hope you never have to test that belief.
A lynch mob cares not about innocence or guilt, only about vengeance and the thirst to enjoy some spectacle. Here we are discussing criminals about whom guilt is not a question. That we advocate death as just punishment does not make us a lynch mob. If it were so you would have to say the same of our administration's stance on Iraq and any other time we as a country have gone to war. A lynch mob has concluded guilt or innocence, and exacts punishment without a reasoning process. A lynch mob will go into the cell of a convicted killer, and lynch him if they don't agree with the sentence of life without parole if they could. I have yet to hear a cogent reason for the termination of a citizen's life by another citizen in the form of the death penalty. In my opinion, punishment by death may well be preferable to life in prison. It would be a difficult choice to make, wouldn' t it? Many kill themselves in prison because they would rather die than live in a cell, so I have to conclude it quite horrible a punishment. Lockup prohibits convicts from killing the general public. So lockup solves your concerns. If you want to start a thread about the problems of recidivism, or parole, or life without parole, or why killers are released and kill again etc. please do so. This thread is about capital punishment, isn't it? I agree we need to keep convicted killers who many kill again away from society until such time that it is reasonable to believe they will not do so again. I just don't agree that we need to end their lives to do so. Very noble. I hope you never have to test that belief. I would hope my nobility and humanity, my reason and intellect could overcome my animalistic and emotional instincts. That is what civilization is all about, right?
Thank you. A truly wonderful and patriotic soliloquy on the merits of our judicial system. I agree wholeheartedly. Now then, since the death penalty is not imposed in only 12 states of our beloved Union, are the 38 states that do impose it guilty of "lynch mob" mentality and do they "defy common sense and reason"?
Because it protects more innocents from freed criminals. What about that don't you understand? It does not. As incidents every day prove, many of those who are locked-up get out and commit the same crime again. How many times have criminals released because the parole board thought the time had arrived at which they believed "it is reasonable to believe they will not do so again" gone forth and slaughtered more innocents? Definitely an aspect of being civilized. But is not civilization also about protecting society against those that would harm it?
Lynch mob mentality, in some cases, yes. Defiance of common sense and reason, yes. Just prior to and during the civil war many states supported slavery. It takes time to root out old thinking.
LOL! One can only imagine how many more innocent Americans will die before we discover this rehabilitation pill of yours or the "old thinking" of the remaining opponents of the death penalty does indeed give way to common sense and reason.
This is a pointless argument. You response is non sequitur. If locking up and throwing away the key keeps them from killing anone in society again, if follows that it solves the problem of repeat killing. Killing the murderers is not necessary. You concerns are with the parole process or length of sentence, and I understand that. I you are infavor of life in prison without the possibility for parole, I can understand that too. But killing is not necessary.
Capital punishment has never worked in the battle against crime. People are not born with felonious histories. There comes a time when a person crosses the threshold to commit an abominable act. We have witnessed on this thread the eagerness of executioner-wannabes to serve capital punishment on these criminals. Yet they care not one wit - they really don't, they have said as much - for the would be victims of the felons to be. They stand at the ready to strike dead the next recidivist but they have not the vaguest idea or inclination to reduce the production of serious criminals in our society (save for public hangings, a contribution from ET's resident "genius")