The Death Penalty: Justified or Immoral?

[The Liberated Territories]

I don't think the death penalty is immoral. Child rapists deserve to die.

But I am still opposed to it, on the grounds that the government can and absolutely will send innocent people to die, or even expand the scope of the death penalty to execute people for reasons like thought-crime, which has happened in totalitarian states.

[Zurkerx]

The Death Penalty is only justified if the crime is heinous and DNA can prove that it was that person(s) that committed said crimes. Otherwise, it shouldn't be used given Death Row can be costly, especially with all those appeals.

[Punished UMN]

The Death Penalty is only justified if the crime is heinous and DNA can prove that it was that person(s) that committed said crimes. Otherwise, it shouldn't be used given Death Row can be costly, especially with all those appeals.

There is a lot of evidence more concrete at proving who committed a crime than DNA, depending on the type of crime.

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The Death Penalty is only justified if the crime is heinous and DNA can prove that it was that person(s) that committed said crimes. Otherwise, it shouldn't be used given Death Row can be costly, especially with all those appeals.

I don't think a crime being heinous helps to justify the death penalty. It's no more difficult to incarcerate a serial killer than a shoplifter, it's not as if evil people gain the ability to bend steel bars and climb over razor wire without cutting up their bodies.

I guess you could say that a crime being heinous means the criminal deserves an "ultimate" punishment but death isn't actually a punishment. Dead people don't experience things, they don't get to be like "I'm dead and this sucks, I regret what I did!", they don't exist anymore.

Now, the fear of death can be a punishment, the pain of dying can be a punishment, but if that's what we are after it doesn't really fit our society's narrative of being "humane." If the fear of death is the goal then do mock executions for years. If the pain of death is the goal then burn them alive. But we insist that we don't want them to be afraid, we don't want them to be tortured, we just want to kill them. That doesn't make sense.

The only conclusion I can draw is that capital punishment is the ultimate form of virtue signaling. It's a society's way of saying "we are just so very good that we have no choice but to kill this bad person."

So essentially, capital punishment is a self-congratulatory gesture.

[Luziyca]

On one hand, it feels really good to have it be an option for the worst of the worst (though I'd much rather to send those criminals to the High Arctic in a penal colony).

On the other hand, given that we cannot accurately prove the guilt of someone with 100% certainty, there's always a risk that we will execute an innocent person, and given that we currently do not have technology to reanimate the dead (yet), it is immoral to execute someone if there's even the remotest possibility that they are innocent.

[Agarntrop]

The Death Penalty is only justified if the crime is heinous and DNA can prove that it was that person(s) that committed said crimes. Otherwise, it shouldn't be used given Death Row can be costly, especially with all those appeals.

I don't think a crime being heinous helps to justify the death penalty. It's no more difficult to incarcerate a serial killer than a shoplifter, it's not as if evil people gain the ability to bend steel bars and climb over razor wire without cutting up their bodies.

I guess you could say that a crime being heinous means the criminal deserves an "ultimate" punishment but death isn't actually a punishment. Dead people don't experience things, they don't get to be like "I'm dead and this sucks, I regret what I did!", they don't exist anymore.

Now, the fear of death can be a punishment, the pain of dying can be a punishment, but if that's what we are after it doesn't really fit our society's narrative of being "humane." If the fear of death is the goal then do mock executions for years. If the pain of death is the goal then burn them alive. But we insist that we don't want them to be afraid, we don't want them to be tortured, we just want to kill them. That doesn't make sense.

The only conclusion I can draw is that capital punishment is the ultimate form of virtue signaling. It's a society's way of saying "we are just so very good that we have no choice but to kill this bad person."

So essentially, capital punishment is a self-congratulatory gesture.

This is a very interesting take on the issue that I hadn't actually considered before.

[Forsher]

Life without parole is immoral and cruel. Far more so than a death sentence.

The question people actually face as a society is whether they are willing to give people life without parole. Until very recently, I was lucky enough to live in a country that was not.

[Aeritai]

From my religious view point I don't think the death penalty is justified... A life sentence should just do the trick. Who knows maybe during that life sentence the prisoner might turn over a new leaf and if they don't? Then it's a shame that the prisoner didn't learn their lesson.

[Ifreann]

What about firing squad? Midalozam injection?

Benzodiazepines are extremely ineffective at rendering someone unconscious. When combined with other CNS depressants like alcohol or opioids, they will increase the sedation, prolong sleep, and can even cause respiratory arrest, but on their own they will not knock you out.

I learned this first hand in my junkie days and without going into detail about how or why it happened, I once swallowed 100mg of Xanax (50 bars) and I didn't even fall asleep. So it's easy for my to understand why so many victims of lethal injection experience the horrifying death wide awake.

Lethal injection is not painless, it's not even meant to be. Lefhal injection serves a society of cowards who want to kill people but don't want to feel like they're killing people, they can rationalize like it's almost not even an execution, it's basically a medical procedure.

As for firing squads, the victim does not die instantly, the brain continues to function for several minutes after the heart stops beating. And like lethal injection, there is more concern for the well-being of society than for the victim. They shoot from far away so they can psychologically distance themselves from the act, they even have that absurd policy of one of the guns having a blank so the shooters feel better knowing there is a 20% chance they weren't directly involved. If you need that then why the hell are you shooting someone in the first place? No one is making you do that. Executions don't happen every day and there are no full time executioners anymore, the people who participate in a firing squad don't even have the excuse of saying it's just a job to pay their bills.

My understanding was that only one gun was loaded with live ammunition and all the others have blanks, so the firing squad can all tell themselves that they most likely didn't actually kill someone.

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People like serial killers should receive a fair trial and then be executed by beheading.

Lots of people have received a fair trial and been convicted despite actually being innocent. Why do you want to enact a system that will definitely kill innocent people when you could just not kill anyone?

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The Death Penalty is only justified if the crime is heinous and DNA can prove that it was that person(s) that committed said crimes. Otherwise, it shouldn't be used given Death Row can be costly, especially with all those appeals.

DNA can't prove guilt. DNA might be able to link someone very strongly to the scene of a crime or something like that, but that's not the only element involved in establishing guilt. Even if we can establish that a specific person did specific actions at a specific time and place, that doesn't necessarily mean they are guilty of the crime they have been charged with. There are factors that can lessen a person's legal culpability, the actions might more closely fit a different criminal charge, their intentions and mindset at the time are relevant factors that we can't test for in a lab.

[Labbos]

I guess you could say that a crime being heinous means the criminal deserves an "ultimate" punishment but death isn't actually a punishment. Dead people don't experience things, they don't get to be like "I'm dead and this sucks, I regret what I did!", they don't exist anymore.

The punishment is being robbed of the rest of their life. And it's not just a punishment. An prisoner can escape and be a danger to the general public, or harm guards or other prisoners without escaping. That ceases to be a danger after execution.

Prisons generally serve several purposes. Off the top of my head:
1. Putting people off committing crime (either current prisoners or would be future ones)
2. Keeping people away from the general public if they are dangerous in some way (not necessarily physically dangerous)
3. Rehabilitation

It seems to me that the death penalty is going to be a pretty good at 1. It's also going to be slightly better at 2 than is life imprisonment. Clearly it's a case of giving up on 3.

[South Quantia]

Well, yes, I would say that the main purposes for criminal punishment are deterrence, rehabilitation, isolation, and retribution, with the latter generally more useful as an aid to the first two.
However, the death penalty has significant problems here:

For one, it's completely irreversible. If it turns out that the "murderer" who was executed was actually innocent, there's no going back.
For two, assuming that deterrence, rehabilitation, isolation, and retribution are the main purposes of punishment, the death penalty does a pretty terrible job considering its extreme nature.
It is utterly useless for rehabilitation, for obvious reasons.
Isolation can be accomplished just as easily and much more humanely by being locked up in a secure-enough prison.
And the sort of people who are insane and cruel enough to murder others in cold blood without an understandable reason are the sort of the people that wouldn't be deterred by the threat of death to begin with, which makes deterrence irrelevant. Now a lot of people would indeed be heavily deterred by the death penalty, but those sort of people would also be heavily deterred by prison. And there is practically no correlation between the death penalty and crime rate. Plus, life in prison isn't much of a life to begin with, and honestly the thought of being locked in a tiny boring isolated cell for the rest of my natural life is even scarier than the thought of being executed.

The death penalty's only "purpose" is therefore retribution, but retribution doesn't provide any tangible benefit to society other than making people feel good about criminals "getting what they deserve", and doesn't make society safer in any way. Even if a criminal cannot be rehabilitated it can't possibly hurt to try, and imprisonment is an effective deterrent anyway. Plus, shouldn't we as a society try to be decent and humane to everyone?
So no, the death penalty is not justifiable, especially if more humane alternatives can be used instead.

[The Emerald Legion]

The Death Penalty is only justified if the crime is heinous and DNA can prove that it was that person(s) that committed said crimes. Otherwise, it shouldn't be used given Death Row can be costly, especially with all those appeals.

We should either remove those appeals or add them to life sentences as well.

[South Quantia]

No. What did I say about the death penalty being irreversible?

[The Emerald Legion]

No. What did I say about the death penalty being irreversible?

Life imprisonment is also irreversible.

[South Quantia]

No. What did I say about the death penalty being irreversible?

Life imprisonment is also irreversible.

Usually life imprisonment can be appealed, and it certainly should be appeal-able if it isn't.

And that's not what irreversible means. If a person sentenced to life imprisonment is found to be wrongfully convicted on appeal, they can be released (and compensated). If a person who has been executed is found to be wrongfully convicted, they're still dead.

Plus, prison should help rehabilitate the offender and prevent him from being a danger to society until he is rehabilitated. I would much rather make prison conditions significantly more humane to begin with (compared to America at least).

[Sundiata]

Under no circumstance is the death penalty justified. Like abortion, like euthanasia, its a waste of the human person. It's never just.

[The Reformed American Republic]

Under no circumstance is the death penalty justified. Like abortion, like euthanasia, its a waste of the human person. It's never just.

It is just when you have a person who is obviously nonredeemable. I see no reason to keep sadistic criminal psychopaths alive and do believe that come criminals are too dangerous to keep alive.

[Ifreann]

Under no circumstance is the death penalty justified. Like abortion, like euthanasia, its a waste of the human person. It's never just.

It is just when you have a person who is obviously nonredeemable. I see no reason to keep sadistic criminal psychopaths alive and do believe that come criminals are too dangerous to keep alive.

Tell us how to identify such a person. Preferably with more than just "Do you think [insert infamous serial killer] could have been redeemed?", because the legal system will not be dealing with those people going forward, it will be dealing with new criminals that have not become pop-culturally mythic for their crimes. Suppose, for example, that the police find the perpetrator of the Nashville bombings later tonight. How would you have the court determine if that person, whoever they may be, is irredeemable and should therefore be executed following their conviction? What guarantee is there the court will not execute someone who could have been redeemed?

[Agarntrop]

Under no circumstance is the death penalty justified. Like abortion, like euthanasia, its a waste of the human person. It's never just.

It is just when you have a person who is obviously nonredeemable. I see no reason to keep sadistic criminal psychopaths alive and do believe that come criminals are too dangerous to keep alive.

I would rather keep those people alive than run the risk of executing innocents and spend unnecessary amounts of money on their death penalty cases.

[The Reformed American Republic]

It is just when you have a person who is obviously nonredeemable. I see no reason to keep sadistic criminal psychopaths alive and do believe that come criminals are too dangerous to keep alive.

I would rather keep those people alive than run the risk of executing innocents and spend unnecessary amounts of money on their death penalty cases.

I'm not a conservative so I'm not worried about the budget. Spare no expense for Justice.

[Ifreann]

I would rather keep those people alive than run the risk of executing innocents and spend unnecessary amounts of money on their death penalty cases.

I'm not a conservative so I'm not worried about the budget. Spare no expense for Justice.

Spare no innocent lives either, it seems.

[Loben III]

I'm not a conservative so I'm not worried about the budget. Spare no expense for Justice.

Spare no innocent lives either, it seems.

So say the to be executed was found guilty, has admitted to the crime, has witnesses, testimonies and society generally agrees that “yea that fucker needs to die.”

Would you say that there is risk that an innocent man is being executed?

[Kernen]

Spare no innocent lives either, it seems.

So say the to be executed was found guilty, has admitted to the crime, has witnesses, testimonies and society generally agrees that “yea that fucker needs to die.”

Would you say that there is risk that an innocent man is being executed?

Yes. People lie to protect others.

[Ifreann]

Spare no innocent lives either, it seems.

So say the to be executed was found guilty, has admitted to the crime, has witnesses, testimonies and society generally agrees that “yea that fucker needs to die.”

Would you say that there is risk that an innocent man is being executed?

False confessions have been extracted before. We can easily imagine someone confessing to a crime they did not commit in an effort to protect someone else, possibly the actual guilty party. Witnesses can be wrong or can be bribed or coerced into identifying an innocent person. What society in general thinks about the specifics of a famous crime can very easily be wrong. So yes, I would say that a convicted person could be innocent in the situation you describe.

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Anyone who doesn't believe that false confessions are made all the time is someone who would definitely be susceptible into being coerced into making one.