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The Death Penalty!


Riffage

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You can't ask whether something is good or bad. Every - and I mean EVERY - thing has a good and a bad side.

 

I can't generally decide if I'm pro or against death penalty. Would have to explain it more thoroughly. I don't have time now, cause it's time to knock off work. Yippie!

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I'm not sure whether we still use the electric chair or not, but if we do I think we should stop. Lethal injections seem a lot more humane.

I'm fine with the death penalty as long as it's painfully obvious that the murderer needs to be gone. Some psychotic redneck who killed seven people in his shack, fine, put him down. But some sad hobo who killed another hobo, nah, just put him in jail.

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That's why I think the death penalty should be reserved for serial killers, with substantial evidence or open confession. Especially if it's obvious that they'll want to kill again in the future. If a guy's wife is cheating, the guy gets drunk and kills his wife's boyfriend, he deserves a life sentance at most.

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I'm against death penalty. If even one innocent life is lost because of it, the price is already too high. And, when you come to think of it, sitting fifty years in a small prison room is much more of a punishment than "a quick escape" through death. (Sounds pretty grim, but give it a thought.)

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I agree with Trapezoid. Nobody should ever be executed due to circumstancial evidence, and those that are clearly guilty yet show remorse and only killed once should be put into prison.

 

On second thoughts, lets just kill everyone and put our tax<insertcurrency>'s elsewhere.

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The most humane method of execution is hanging as practiced in the UK before they stopped using the death penalty. Lethal injection, gas chamber, electric chair all take minutes. Hanging takes seconds. My second choice would be firing squad (But only if they have good aim and hit me in the head).

 

But I agree with the majority here. The death penalty is too risky.

 

A more interesting discussion is corporal punishment. Not for kids, but for adults.

 

Why don't we bring back whipping? Or perhaps some more modern apparatus for administering pain.

 

Think about it. What's the difference between 5 and 10 years in jail? It's so abstract a punishment we can hardly comprehend it. And when you're still recieving your punishment ten years after you committed the crime, how do you relate that psychologically as the consequence of what you did? At that point it's just your life. Taking away years of a persons life is more cruel and unusual than anything else I can think of.

 

Pain, as measured by a number of lashes, or volts, or whatever, is far more comprehensible. It's short, it's relatively soon after the crime it relates to, and is, I think, a credible deterrent for both the people being punished, and those considering committing crime.

 

Why is pain, our most primal mechanism of deterrence somehow deemed too cruel to use on criminals? Is it _really_ any more cruel than other punishments?

 

Dangerous criminals, obviously, should be locked away for public safety. But for mid-level criminals, I think this is a good option.

 

Comments?

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Some thoughts:

cons:

- If life sentence means just that. With no possibility of ever seeing the light of day 'unfiltered' again.

- The costs of death trials are said to exceed the costs of life long prison.

pros:

- There's the problem of jailbreaks. Imagine a multiple rapist and murderer escaping from prison. You'd wish he was grilled on the electric chair if he kills a person after that.

- Dangerous criminals have to be kept away from people to avoid them influencing others.

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But surely criminals are humans too, and all humans have the right to live.. A human that commits a crime has made a mistake and needs help, not punishment, least not serial killers.

 

Then it could also be argued whether killling could be just, but I'll save that for another discussion.

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Originally posted by Mort-Hog

A human that commits a crime has made a mistake and needs help, not punishment

Like in "You've killed someone, now let's talk about it some and then you go home"? It's common knowledge that reintegration does not work in every case. It's easy to play the victim and blame it on some Oedipus complex. And I'm only talking about mentally ill persons. What if someone killed not because it was 'a mistake' but because he liked it. Jail is not only punishment, but also a place that devides sickos from their potential victims.

 

The more I think about it, the more your reply seems like mother****ing crap. Help the criminals? I say help the victims, put the bad guys in a dark whole.

 

The right to live? So it's OK for those poor mislead souls to kill, but not for a board of sane people who want to maintain a civilised community?

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But surely if you think about it, it is the criminals that have the problem, and so need help. Shutting them away, or indeed killing them, isn't going to help them, and so won't solve the problem. The aim should be to find out why the criminals commited the crime (or whether it be due to insanity, to investigate the cause of that) and then prevent the cause from propping up in the first case.

Although I have no evidence or any investigatory work at all, I could imagine that a fair amount of serious criminals would have had an uncomfortable childhood, whether it be through bullying at school or whatnot. If this would be the case, surely by preventing bullying (or whatever the investigated cause would turn out to be) would be a much better solution to crime.

 

My point being that instead of just blindly killing off the criminals as they come, it would make much more sense to delve deeper into the root of the problem and come up with a more substantial solution.

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I think we should have forum based votes to see who dies and who doesn't. We should go through everybody in the whole of the world, in alphabetical order, deciding who should and shouldn't die.

 

The preffered method of death, being of course, crucifiction.

 

Just think. If Jesus had've been shot, Christians would own guns.

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I am all for the death penalty. I don't care. Personally, I don't think any one person has the right to decide whether or not a person should be removed from existence - judge not lest ye be judged. If someone else is willing to shoulder the burden, so be it. Get rid of ****ing Hindley. I'd be pleased. But I can't make the decision myself.

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Originally posted by Mort-Hog

But surely if you think about it, it is the criminals that have the problem, and so need help. Shutting them away, or indeed killing them, isn't going to help them, and so won't solve the problem. The aim should be to find out why the criminals commited the crime (or whether it be due to insanity, to investigate the cause of that) and then prevent the cause from propping up in the first case.

Although I have no evidence or any investigatory work at all, I could imagine that a fair amount of serious criminals would have had an uncomfortable childhood, whether it be through bullying at school or whatnot. If this would be the case, surely by preventing bullying (or whatever the investigated cause would turn out to be) would be a much better solution to crime.

 

My point being that instead of just blindly killing off the criminals as they come, it would make much more sense to delve deeper into the root of the problem and come up with a more substantial solution.

You're an idiot!

 

I was going to write an answer to all your statements but then I thought I can't be bothered. I'm not even sure if you don't fake this crap just to annoy me.

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No he isnt its a valid viewpoint.

If you want to have a debate about a complex issue like this dont go reducing it to the level of name-calling, otherwise theres no point.

 

Oh and less of the swearing please. I dont care if its blanked out, calling someones post 'mother****ing crap' is offensive and again cheapens the debate.

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