Life Sentence vs. Capital Punishment
Life Sentence vs. Capital Punishment
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I have been wondering about this for a while. I had a serious discussion about this with my friends. We didn't get anywhere so I decided to take it to my FAKKU family.
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We need to know more why this is a topic. Such as "is it morally right to have capital punishment?" and "is it worth it having a life sentence, knowing that taxpayers money fund their imprisonment?"
I am for capital punishment, especially if it is a person who has raped and/or killed individuals. I don't see the need to have such people roaming the world.
I am for capital punishment, especially if it is a person who has raped and/or killed individuals. I don't see the need to have such people roaming the world.
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The only problem with capital punishment is that, in order to not execute innocent individuals (which some how still happened pretty often) the state takes extreme measures to ensure guilt. That takes years of appeals and legal shenanigans before capital punishment is sanctioned.
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I oppose capital punishments because nobody has the right to deprive another person of their life. It's a double standard that if I kill someone, I'm a murderer but, if the government kills someone it's simply "justice".
Plus, there are several studies and polls that have shown that capital punishment does not deter violent crime.
I could go on but, the ACLU has a nice article located here.
Plus, there are several studies and polls that have shown that capital punishment does not deter violent crime.
I could go on but, the ACLU has a nice article located here.
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I was saying which do you think is better. Not which is more humane, better cost wise, or what you would prefer for yourself. For prisoners who deserve it should the herbage life sentence or capital punishment.
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I was saying which do you think is better. Not which is more humane, better cost wise, or what you would prefer for yourself.
.... what?
I hate doing stuff like this, but define "better".
lifetime incarceration has the following disavantage:
-- cost. The cost of keeping a criminal alive is passed on to the taxpayers, who may not want to spend money for such an endeavor.
I'm against capital punishment because:
1) it doesn't work as deterrent
2) it can't be reversed. This is significant, because the world is not a perfect place, and there have been c ases were innocents have been given the death penalty. Imprisonment can be reversed.
3) because it can't be reversed, the state takes a freakishly long time to decide if a person should die or not. This means that arguments saying the the death penalty is cheaper is false as it takes time and money for the various appeals, likely more than keeping a person simply locked away.
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Sorry better was a wrong choice in wording. Which do you think is "deserved" for crimes offshore stature.
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I don't get it when people say it doesn't act as a deterrent. I think the thought of being killed for my crime would stop me dead in my tracks make me turn around go home and hide under the covers.
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phenixking wrote...
I don't get it when people say it doesn't act as a deterrent.
Link
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4
The first graph alone puts hole in the deterrent argument. Theoretically, the number of murders should be lower in pro-death penalty states. Granted the graph is simplistic and doesn't go into the variable but, that's what the others are for.
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In the inner city of Detroit, niggs put such a low value on life I think a death sentence would be the perfect wake-up call for those chuckers. People are gettin shot for cars, cell phones, eyeglasses, shoes and anything considered "BLING" Hell, we just started prosecuting a 9 yr. old for accidently shooting a classmate! Where are the fucking parents for christ sakes!
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I can't argue with that. Still I agree with capital punishment. This is just my personal opinion but I would not want to be imprisoned like a trapped rat. Also, I believe in an eye for an eye not two wrongs don't make a right.
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Did you really have to use the n word? Black guy. Right here. But I kinda agree. Also I do have a few things to say about todays parenting skills but I'll save that for a different thread.
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Sorry about the "N" word, but it also occured to me that it would help with prison overcrowding so the real baddies don't get so many early releases. Whats the use of giving someone a 20 yr sentence nowing they'll be out in 5 yr on good behaviour, that ain't no punishment put them away, let them rot so they can think about the dumbass choice they made.
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Capital punishment is better, assuming we have plenty of proof that the suspect is guilty.
Even if it doesn't reduce crime rates, it still reduces jail costs.
Even if it doesn't reduce crime rates, it still reduces jail costs.
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You make a good point. What's the point of locking them up if they're just going to get out and do it again like some comic book supervillian. And like I said earlier I don't like the idea of locking someone up for life. It is also cheaper to just kill them. But the fact is you have to take into account all the time they have someone sitting there on deathrow waiting to die. I don't like that either.
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Winged-Fapper wrote...
Sorry about the "N" word, but it also occured to me that it would help with prison overcrowding so the real baddies don't get so many early releases. Whats the use of giving someone a 20 yr sentence nowing they'll be out in 5 yr on good behaviour, that ain't no punishment put them away, let them rot so they can think about the dumbass choice they made.That is the problem with the modern prison system. Instead of just locking them away and forgetting about them we need to try and rehabilitate them.
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Do we have any guarantee they are actually rehabilitated? That's like the insanity plea. There is no guarantee that person is telling the truth. And if a corrupt psychiatrist get into the system what then. I know I'm making alot of what if points but I'm just covering points that I made in class. Also, is this an appropriate topic, brought up by the teacher, for homeschool freshman?
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I made my opinion and case in another topic talking about the death penalty, so I'm just going to copy/paste.
I can't decide my position on the death penalty, though I'm LEANING towards the anti side.
Financially we can conclude that the death penalty is a rather blatant misapplication of a good amount of money, what with the cost of lawyers for the almost endless amount of appeals death penalized prisoners go through. And not just lawyers, but the bailiffs, re-employing the services of jury after jury, the time spent for the judges and such.
Ethically I have to say that even those who are families of victims have come out and said, rather candidly that the death of the person who killed their loved one...did them no real justice. IT didn't make them feel better it didn't even make them any less grievous over their loss, and some of them feel that they're only making things worse by killing these people, but by showing the same lack of mercy they show in murder in an application of justice, we demonstrate just how far off we are from our animalistic brethren...not far at all.
However, There...IS an argument in favor of the death penalty that I find...rather strong and compelling. And it's in the form of a refutation of the argument from the miscarriages of justice: that is, getting rid of the death penalty because sometimes it ends up punishing those later on found to be not guilty.
The argument goes as follows: "IT should give the pro death penalty person pause to consider the fact that there are a number of people found not guilty of their crimes that are executed before their exoneration should come. Therefore, life sentences are preferred."
Samuel Gross led a research team to pull up some facts about the exoneration's of prisoners between the years of 1989-2003 http://www.truthinjustice.org/exonerations-in-us.pdf They identified 4 posthumous exonerations between the years of 2000-2002. For the sake of argument, let's presume this to be representative of a constant. This means that the united states executes 1.3 innocent people..every year. Even if that estimate is off and exaggerated, it could still be reasonable to say that we execute 1 innocent every 3 years. And that MIGHT look like an egregious rate of miscarriage of justice, and a positive argument against the death penalty's application.
However.
Ernest von den Haag is a pro death penalty philosopher of the 20th century. According to him, there is no doubt that innocent people will inevitably be executed should we apply the death penalty, however the potential loss of life, in his words...are worth it.
To quote him: "Nearly all human activities such as trucking, lighting and construction, cost the lives of some innocent bystanders. We do not give up these activities because the advantages, moral or material outweigh the unintended losses. Analogously, for those that think the death penalty just, misapplications of justice are offset by the moral benefits and the usefulness of doing justice." - Ernest von den Haag
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/angel/procon/haagarticle.html
Whether or not you agree with Von den Haag that there are actually moral or material benefits to having the death penalty isn't the issue. That's not at all the point he's trying to establish in this quote. The question is whether or not it is morally permissible to have any set of policies that we know will result in the death of innocent people. And the answer is pretty clearly: Yes. And this might sound callous but Von den haag has a good point. If we're really interested in saving lives, then there are FAR more efficient means of doing so than abolishing the death penalty.
About 36000 people die every year in the United States due to non alcohol related car accidents. That's about 10 9/11 death tolls every year. Now, do we abolish driving? No, we don't even institute a national speed limit of 40 mph, which could in theory save nearly ALL of those lives. We, as a collective society have decided that those 36000 lives are worth getting to work 15 minutes faster. Otherwise we would reduce the speed limit.
Considering the death toll, and considering the lack of any advocation for a way to fix this that goes against our superficial benefit as society, I can't help but feel there's...a bit of a lack of sincerity in the anti-death penalty people when they make this miscarriage of justice argument.
You might make the argument that it doesn't matter that there's an inherent fallibility in any justice system created by man, because it's a given, and that this is still too great a risk for someone who suffers years in prison, only to be executed before they can be exonerated.
That certainly sounds good, but it ignores the relevant data.
If you compare the amount of exoneration's between the people on death row, and the people exonerated who have a life imprisonment, there's actually something surprising in it. According to the above cited study, there were 74 death row exoneration's between the years of 1989-2001.(exonerated prior to beind executed)
Out of a total of 3577 death row inmates.
That's a 2.07% death row exoneration rate.
By contrast there were 265 non death row exoneration's out of a population of 1,404,032...that's an exoneration rate of .0189%.
This suggests that people on Death Row are way over 100 times more likely to be found innocent upon further scrutiny than those not on death row.
You can imagine that one of these reasons is very likely that capital cases get a lot more oversight than non capital cases, meaning that those destined for a harsher fate are given more scrutiny, and looked at more to make as SURE as possible that they're actually guilty of the crimes. Remember my financial case that death penalty cases cost more? There's a reason for that. http://www.uscourts.gov/dpenalty/4REPORT.htm#N_3_
The average amount of hours for homocide cases from 1992-1997 that weren't of the death penalty were 117, while capital punishment homocide cases were billed an average of 1,464 hours. This is a result in 1347 surplus hours in nearly identical in content homocide cases simply because the punishment was capital.
This isn't only statistical speculation either. There are concrete cases that people are found innocent PURELY because the penalty would be capital punishment. Back to Gross : "In 1999...Dennis Fritz was exonerated by DNA evidence and released from a life sentence for a rape murder he did not commit. But he was exonerated as a by-product of an intense investigation that led to the exoneration of his Co-Defendant Ron Williamson, who had been sentenced to death. If Williamson had not been sentenced to death, Fritz would probably still be in prison to this day."
TL;DR If an innocent person gets sentenced to life in prison, it is almost guaranteed that they will die in prison. In this respect, a life sentence IS a death sentence. The alternative to being given some time in jail and being executed for a crime you didn't commit, is living your whole life in jail for a crime you didn't commit...and then dying anyway. The odds of getting exonerated drop statistically significantly when you get a death sentence, rather than a life sentence.
And to me...this is an argument anti-death penalty people are gonna have to get by if they wanna convince me to take a stand on the issue.
I can't decide my position on the death penalty, though I'm LEANING towards the anti side.
Financially we can conclude that the death penalty is a rather blatant misapplication of a good amount of money, what with the cost of lawyers for the almost endless amount of appeals death penalized prisoners go through. And not just lawyers, but the bailiffs, re-employing the services of jury after jury, the time spent for the judges and such.
Ethically I have to say that even those who are families of victims have come out and said, rather candidly that the death of the person who killed their loved one...did them no real justice. IT didn't make them feel better it didn't even make them any less grievous over their loss, and some of them feel that they're only making things worse by killing these people, but by showing the same lack of mercy they show in murder in an application of justice, we demonstrate just how far off we are from our animalistic brethren...not far at all.
However, There...IS an argument in favor of the death penalty that I find...rather strong and compelling. And it's in the form of a refutation of the argument from the miscarriages of justice: that is, getting rid of the death penalty because sometimes it ends up punishing those later on found to be not guilty.
The argument goes as follows: "IT should give the pro death penalty person pause to consider the fact that there are a number of people found not guilty of their crimes that are executed before their exoneration should come. Therefore, life sentences are preferred."
Samuel Gross led a research team to pull up some facts about the exoneration's of prisoners between the years of 1989-2003 http://www.truthinjustice.org/exonerations-in-us.pdf They identified 4 posthumous exonerations between the years of 2000-2002. For the sake of argument, let's presume this to be representative of a constant. This means that the united states executes 1.3 innocent people..every year. Even if that estimate is off and exaggerated, it could still be reasonable to say that we execute 1 innocent every 3 years. And that MIGHT look like an egregious rate of miscarriage of justice, and a positive argument against the death penalty's application.
However.
Ernest von den Haag is a pro death penalty philosopher of the 20th century. According to him, there is no doubt that innocent people will inevitably be executed should we apply the death penalty, however the potential loss of life, in his words...are worth it.
To quote him: "Nearly all human activities such as trucking, lighting and construction, cost the lives of some innocent bystanders. We do not give up these activities because the advantages, moral or material outweigh the unintended losses. Analogously, for those that think the death penalty just, misapplications of justice are offset by the moral benefits and the usefulness of doing justice." - Ernest von den Haag
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/angel/procon/haagarticle.html
Whether or not you agree with Von den Haag that there are actually moral or material benefits to having the death penalty isn't the issue. That's not at all the point he's trying to establish in this quote. The question is whether or not it is morally permissible to have any set of policies that we know will result in the death of innocent people. And the answer is pretty clearly: Yes. And this might sound callous but Von den haag has a good point. If we're really interested in saving lives, then there are FAR more efficient means of doing so than abolishing the death penalty.
About 36000 people die every year in the United States due to non alcohol related car accidents. That's about 10 9/11 death tolls every year. Now, do we abolish driving? No, we don't even institute a national speed limit of 40 mph, which could in theory save nearly ALL of those lives. We, as a collective society have decided that those 36000 lives are worth getting to work 15 minutes faster. Otherwise we would reduce the speed limit.
Considering the death toll, and considering the lack of any advocation for a way to fix this that goes against our superficial benefit as society, I can't help but feel there's...a bit of a lack of sincerity in the anti-death penalty people when they make this miscarriage of justice argument.
You might make the argument that it doesn't matter that there's an inherent fallibility in any justice system created by man, because it's a given, and that this is still too great a risk for someone who suffers years in prison, only to be executed before they can be exonerated.
That certainly sounds good, but it ignores the relevant data.
If you compare the amount of exoneration's between the people on death row, and the people exonerated who have a life imprisonment, there's actually something surprising in it. According to the above cited study, there were 74 death row exoneration's between the years of 1989-2001.(exonerated prior to beind executed)
Out of a total of 3577 death row inmates.
That's a 2.07% death row exoneration rate.
By contrast there were 265 non death row exoneration's out of a population of 1,404,032...that's an exoneration rate of .0189%.
This suggests that people on Death Row are way over 100 times more likely to be found innocent upon further scrutiny than those not on death row.
You can imagine that one of these reasons is very likely that capital cases get a lot more oversight than non capital cases, meaning that those destined for a harsher fate are given more scrutiny, and looked at more to make as SURE as possible that they're actually guilty of the crimes. Remember my financial case that death penalty cases cost more? There's a reason for that. http://www.uscourts.gov/dpenalty/4REPORT.htm#N_3_
The average amount of hours for homocide cases from 1992-1997 that weren't of the death penalty were 117, while capital punishment homocide cases were billed an average of 1,464 hours. This is a result in 1347 surplus hours in nearly identical in content homocide cases simply because the punishment was capital.
This isn't only statistical speculation either. There are concrete cases that people are found innocent PURELY because the penalty would be capital punishment. Back to Gross : "In 1999...Dennis Fritz was exonerated by DNA evidence and released from a life sentence for a rape murder he did not commit. But he was exonerated as a by-product of an intense investigation that led to the exoneration of his Co-Defendant Ron Williamson, who had been sentenced to death. If Williamson had not been sentenced to death, Fritz would probably still be in prison to this day."
TL;DR If an innocent person gets sentenced to life in prison, it is almost guaranteed that they will die in prison. In this respect, a life sentence IS a death sentence. The alternative to being given some time in jail and being executed for a crime you didn't commit, is living your whole life in jail for a crime you didn't commit...and then dying anyway. The odds of getting exonerated drop statistically significantly when you get a death sentence, rather than a life sentence.
And to me...this is an argument anti-death penalty people are gonna have to get by if they wanna convince me to take a stand on the issue.
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phenixking wrote...
Do we have any guarantee they are actually rehabilitated? That's like the insanity plea. There is no guarantee that person is telling the truth. And if a corrupt psychiatrist get into the system what then. I know I'm making alot of what if points but I'm just covering points that I made in class. Also, is this an appropriate topic, brought up by the teacher, for homeschool freshman?I'm not saying rehabilitate and release every single person. If you've committed murder then you deserve to stay locked up for years. You committed the ultimate grievance against another human being by depriving them of their life and by extension you have caused damage against all the people who knew that person.
However, if you were arrested for a drug possession. Put them through a rehabilitation treatment and see how they respond. Portugal decreased their drug abuse problems by replacing incarceration with mandatory rehabilitation programs.
Simply locking them away from society for X amount of years and releasing them is only going to force them to recommit crimes. They have no job, no money, probably no friends or family willing to support them (depending on the crime and other factors). Then they face difficulty in finding gainful employment, they are restricted in ownership of cell phones and other devices, often they are restricted in the hours they can work, some might even be prevented from owning a drivers license which further restricts their ability to work. It simply perpetuates a cycle of crime & punishment.
@ Lundi: Okay, I'll bite. What benefits do we stand to gain as a country for continued implementation of the death penalty? Statistically, we've already debunked the deterrent and financial arguments so what else is there?