Your Mother Condemned You to Die

[El Barto]

I was reading the PETA thread and it was getting into the relative value of cows to humans (100 cows = 1 human etc.) - this got me thinking of the relative value of a punishment of death vs. incarceration.

I've never had a big problem with the death penalty because I consider the psychological impact of being held against your will to be just as bad if not worse than a quick death (the death itself is quick, not the wait on death row).

If you don't agree that incarceration is as bad as death, then why do we punish so severely crimes of unlawful detainment - kidnapping, rape, abduction. If no permanent injury occurs from these crimes - then no harm, no foul - right? But we punish heavily for these crimes - and I say it is because of the psychological impact on the victim that we do so.

And if a victim of such crime has a deep psychological impact, then being incarcerated in prison must also have a deep psychological impact. Meanwhile, death has very little - once you're dead, it has no psychological impact at all.

Hence, I say yea for the death penalty. Meanwhile, if you listen to all these death penalty debates, you would think that death is the worst possible thing that can ever happen to you. Well, consider this:

Your Mom condemned you to death by the very act of giving birth to you! It may happen 100 years later, but to death you were condemned. And your biological father participated in this condemnation of death too /images/graemlins/wink.gif.

So if death and the death penalty is so bad, all parents should be incarcerated. Of course, I don't think death is so bad, while incarceration has severe psychological impact.

To rephrase a cliche:

It is better to have lived and died, then never to have lived at all.

So let us treat death as the small penalty that it is. We are all going to die anyway.

[stripsqueez]

i'm anti the death penalty - i pretty sure i know why but i cant do the anti death penalty argument justice

your right about the psychological impact - whats your view about longer prison sentences ?

stripsqueez - chickenhawk

[gonores]

[ QUOTE ]
And if a victim of such crime has a deep psychological impact, then being incarcerated in prison must also have a deep psychological impact.

[/ QUOTE ]

A few things....

- You're assuming that the same basic event (unwillful detainment) will have the same impact on different people. That does not follow, logically. Although naive and completely unscientific, my opinion is that a moral person is going to be impacted more deeply by this event than an immoral person.

- There is an underlying sense of justification in each (justly) imprisoned criminal if he is of sane mind (I am here because I committed _______). This has to dampen the psychological impact of said imprisonment.

[Ray Zee]

the only reason for prison over the death penalty is the chance of finding him innocent later on. and that is a real possibility with dna nowadays. and the chance he can be reintroducded to society.
the resat of the bs about immoral or cruel is hogwash.

and unless you are hitler what you did bad in the past life is soon forgotten mostly.

[ChristinaB]

[ QUOTE ]
the only reason for prison over the death penalty is the chance of finding him innocent later on. and that is a real possibility with dna nowadays. and the chance he can be reintroducded to society.
the resat of the bs about immoral or cruel is hogwash.

and unless you are hitler what you did bad in the past life is soon forgotten mostly.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you accept Bart's psychological argument, you will be as emotionally crippled by jail whether you are innocent or guilty. Better off dead then, eh Bart?

[GWB]

As a former Governor of Texas, you will be happy to know that we help end the suffering of our worst criminals.

Once executed, all their "psychilogical" pain ends for them. Ain't we nice /images/graemlins/laugh.gif


W

[ChristinaB]

I have been thinking about Bart's argument, and he has a point - the death penalty really isn't that much worse than say life in prison. Does any anti-Death Penalty proponent have a good argument to counter his?

[The Dude]

Yes. Two come to mind.

1. Being incarcerated is very different than being detained against your will by a stranger. Logically and psychologically, one can accept their surroundings because they are somewhat predictable. When one is abducted, kidnapped, or raped, great psychological damage is done largely due to the fear and uncertainty.

2. Virtually nobody - yourself included - would rather be put to death than inprosoned for life. You would never choose death, nor would you even seriously consider it, so stop pretending there's no diifference.

[spamuell]

[ QUOTE ]
Virtually nobody - yourself included - would rather be put to death than inprosoned for life.

[/ QUOTE ]

If by life you really mean until a person dies, rather than life in the judicial sense as somewhere in the region of 25 years, and by being imprisoned you mean being imprisoned in a public jail where criminals are detained, I would choose death. I would much rather die than spend the rest of my life festering away in a jail cell where I can't make any difference to the world and will find myself beaten up and raped many times, with no hope whatsoever of freedom.

And it's not just me - why is the attempted suicide rate in prison's so high if people would rather be imprisoned than die?

[superleeds]

Apart from the fact that an innocent person may be (and have been) executed the next best arguments are I think that

1) it is not any more a deterrent than existing sentances
2) it costs more to execute an individual than it does to lock them up for life

[ThaSaltCracka]

I would agree with superleeds. The thought that someone who was innocent of a crime getting executed is a chilling thought.
His other two arguments are also great ones as well.

I think the death penalty is an easy way out for some criminals. I mean like you said they are going to die anyways, so why speed it up. Let them think about what they did for years and years, this is far worse punishment than death, IMO.

[GWB]

[ QUOTE ]

2) it costs more to execute an individual than it does to lock them up for life

[/ QUOTE ]

It wouldn't cost much if we got rid of those extra appeals. We should do it the old Texas way: Hang 'em up within a fortnight.

W

[J_V]

Your argument is you are condemned to die, so the death penalty is good. Glad to see you went into the think tank for that one.

I'm gonna call you on Ad-everything.

[ QUOTE ]
"Apart from the fact that an innocent
person may be (and have been) executed.."

[/ QUOTE ]

"And have Been," really? It's a "fact" that one or more convicted murderers have been put to death in United States' prisons and then later found to be innocent? Can you name one?


[ QUOTE ]
1) it is not any more a deterrent than existing sentances

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree this is probably true for people who have not yet committed murder, but the death penatly certainly deters a convicted murderer from ever murdering again /images/graemlins/wink.gif,where being incarcerated for life doesn't deter murderers from killing again. I can attest to this since a childhood friend of mine was murdered in prison back in '97 by a convicted murderer.

I'm too lazy to research how many people are shanked to death in American prisons each year, but I'm guessing it's quite a lot (of course you have to assume a percentage of these murders are being committed by prisoners who are killing for the first time.)

[superleeds]

[ QUOTE ]
"And have Been," really? It's a "fact" that one or more convicted murderers have been put to death in United States' prisons and then later found to be innocent? Can you name one?

[/ QUOTE ]

I made no comment singling out the US. But yes it is a fact. The UK has admitted that it has executed an innocent person. Whilst the US (at least to my knowledge) has never admitted so doing, IMHO, it is highly likely they have.

Here is a link I found
state aknowledges executing person who did not commit the crime (http://www.spectacle.org/395/texas.html)

I don't know how reliable it is but I believe there is enough evidence (amnesty int. for instance) to suggest that the US/Individual States position and procedures in cases where Capital Punishment is an option are seriously flawed.

[El Barto]

[ QUOTE ]
Your argument is you are condemned to die, so the death penalty is good. Glad to see you went into the think tank for that one.

I'm gonna call you on Ad-everything.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your argument is We are going to die anyway, but we must wail and protest when a criminal scumbag faces death.

Perhaps we should let them out so they can inflict death on some random innocent person. Or perhaps we should spend a million bucks keeping them locked up until their old age, while children go hungry.

With limited money for society, a cheap and quick execution would serve society the best - let us concern ourselves with innocent sufferers, not criminals.

My argument is that there is much suffering in this world:
Death
Imprisonment
Rape
Kidnapping
Abduction
Hunger
Disease
etc.
Why do we make the Death Penalty a "fetish" of concern amongst this list?