Trump reinstates death penalty for federal crimes

Soldato
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It shouldn't be about only deterrence anyhow.

Those extremely dangerous criminals remain extremely dangerous inside prisons. Dangerous to prison staff and other inmates. Requiring the construction, expansion or at the very least maintenance of maximum security facilities. Requiring specialist medical attention/psychiatric care, etc. The costs must be fair astronomical in some cases.

And I would also like to see the costs of, for example, a whole-life prison term for an 18 year old psychopath vs the cost of a lethal injection.

But also why would you be keeping such persons alive? So they can live in prison as deranged and dangerous as you like for the rest of their lives? There is no reintroduction in society for these persons. No repairing such mental brokenness. No rehabilitation.

I agree with anyone who says that revenge has no place in our justice system. But in these cases it seems more humane to put these persons down. They can never be a part of society - ever again. They will always be incredibly dangerous and unfit to be around normal people.

In short, they have no future, regardless.

If it's not about deterrent, there is a link above showing that it is more expensive and you say it shouldn't be about revenge, your post comes down to it being more humane for the criminal.
 
Soldato
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By that definition, all soldiers who kill anyone are murderers too. Military forces usually plan things and killing people is sometimes part of the plan. Do you regard all deliberate killings in wars as murders? If not, why not? If murder is defined solely as killing deliberately, in a planned way, then all such killings are murders.

Or how about killing in defence? Imagine you're an armed copper. You get called in because someone is killing people. You get there and there are a couple of bodies on the ground and the person described is, right now, in the process of swinging a hammer at someone's head. If you kill the attacker to save the intended victim, are you a murderer? If not, why not? You planned to kill. And none of the "I'd shoot the hammer out of their hand" thing, please. That's for fiction.

Do you feel that, every time a soldier kills its totally okay and in no way at all murder? I would say that yes - there have been many times when a soldier is a paid murderer. But sometimes no, they are not.

Surely a lot of this has to do with the choice to kill or not to kill. Killing in self defence, or to defend another I would say is not murder.... because there is no real choice.

If there truely are other options other than to kill a person, and the choice that is chosen is to kill, well that is murder really.

I honestly believe that capital punishment does more harm than good in the long run, it does not deter crime if anything it makes it worse because crims then act as if they have nothing to lose and either behave smarter or wilder because of that.
 
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Caporegime
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Wasn't there some island that one country used to deport its most serious offenders to (I'm not referring to Alcatraz)? I can't say I've thought it through thoroughly but for those that are unrepentant/beyond help or treatment, well, I can think of worse things that lumping them off on to an island and leaving them to get on with it. It doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.
 
Man of Honour
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Man, those are some horrible crimes. I certainly don’t feel sorry for the convicted. Yet, I still don’t think it’s right to take a life even in these circumstances. There is just some sort of forbidden finality about it that doesn’t sit right with me.
 
Caporegime
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Wasn't there some island that one country used to deport its most serious offenders to (I'm not referring to Alcatraz)? I can't say I've thought it through thoroughly but for those that are unrepentant/beyond help or treatment, well, I can think of worse things that lumping them off on to an island and leaving them to get on with it. It doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.

Well when we can finally make a prison station that orbits the sun away from the planet (preferably Pluto distance), this will become a non-issue, until then it's cheaper/more suitable to just let them rot forever in prison.
 
Caporegime
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It's not for them then, it's for us.

In california a death sentence is 18 times more expensive on average than a life term. EIGHTEEN.

Further,

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/URLs_Cited/OT2016/16-5247/16-5247-2.pdf
It's not the death penalty part that's the problem, in any case.

It's the being unable to 100% reliably determine guilt or otherwise. And that's where the costs are being incurred.

In a hypothetical world where guilt could be 100% conclusively determined (so not this one - yet), it would be pretty easy to argue for death for some of these crimes.
 
Caporegime
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It's not the death penalty part that's the problem, in any case.

It's the being unable to 100% reliably determine guilt or otherwise. And that's where the costs are being incurred.

In a hypothetical world where guilt could be 100% conclusively determined (so not this one - yet), it would be pretty easy to argue for death for some of these crimes.

Such a world can never exist, it is physically impossible, you cannot create an infallible system, it's best to simply never entertain it and work towards efficient running and as much distance as possible.

It's like entertaining perpetual motion.
 
Permabanned
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I've no problem at all with the death penalty in theory as some people should be executed, but its implementation is placed in the hands of fallible people who will abuse it as is predictable due to human nature.

I'm torn to be honest.
 
Caporegime
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Such a world can never exist, it is physically impossible, you cannot create an infallible system, it's best to simply never entertain it and work towards efficient running and as much distance as possible.

It's like entertaining perpetual motion.
Surely there will be cases where guilt is 100% established for all practical measures. Ie, bloke stabbing people on London bridge, dressed in suicide belt; shown on CCTV being arrested... yadda, yadda.

You'd have to have some pretty contrived defence like "the camera footage was doctored" or "it's a conspiracy and the police are in on it" to believe there was doubt.

But yes I suppose in 0.000000000000001% of cases there might actually be a conspiracy, a corrupt police dept and the footage might even have been doctored. It's just the chances are so incredibly small as to be justifiably disregarded.

The point being - in some cases you should be able to 100% (or very close) establish guilt.

e: The 2nd part of that point being that we might through sheer weight of surveillance and other technology move closer to 100% accuracy.
 
Caporegime
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Surely there will be cases where guilt is 100% established for all practical measures. Ie, bloke stabbing people on London bridge, dressed in suicide belt; shown on CCTV being arrested... yadda, yadda.

You'd have to have some pretty contrived defence like "the camera footage was doctored" or "it's a conspiracy and the police are in on it" to believe there was doubt.

But yes I suppose in 0.000000000000001% of cases there might actually be a conspiracy, a corrupt police dept and the footage might even have been doctored. It's just the chances are so incredibly small as to be justifiably disregarded.

The point being - in some cases you should be able to 100% (or very close) establish guilt.

e: The 2nd part of that point being that we might through sheer weight of surveillance and other technology move closer to 100% accuracy.

Just because you can 100% attribute a crime to someone doesn't mean you can 100% attribute all crimes to their alleged criminals.

A single event cannot describe a system, otherwise there'd be no point in law in the first place, just kill any random person you feel did it. The limit for Death penalty has to be 100% accuracy in a moral society.
 
Caporegime
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Just because you can 100% attribute a crime to someone doesn't mean you can 100% attribute all crimes to their alleged criminals.

A single event cannot describe a system, otherwise there'd be no point in law in the first place, just kill any random person you feel did it. The limit for Death penalty has to be 100% accuracy in a moral society.
Your point being? Nobody can be executed unless all criminals are proven guilty beyond all doubt?

If not that what other point are you making? That sentences can't vary depending on the safety of the trial?
 
Caporegime
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Your point being? Nobody can be executed unless all criminals are proven guilty beyond all doubt?

If not that what other point are you making? That sentences can't vary depending on the safety of the trial?

Yes, because if one innocent is killed it's morally wrong and should not be done. It will always cost more than life imprisonment, so this discussion just seems masturbatory.

The only time you can be sure it's cheaper is if you do absolutely no due diligence and not allow appeals, which is just not happening.
 
Caporegime
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Yes, because if one innocent is killed it's morally wrong and should not be done. It will always cost more than life imprisonment, so this discussion just seems masturbatory.

The only time you can be sure it's cheaper is if you do absolutely no due diligence and not allow appeals, which is just not happening.
I didn't say innocents should be killed tho... you seem to have lost the thread of the argument.
 
Caporegime
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I didn't say innocents should be killed tho... you seem to have lost the thread of the argument.

But you can't have an infallible system so you'll definitely kill an innocent person eventually.

Since 1973 there have been 150 exoneration's from death row, regardless i just point back to the financial argument, this hypothetical one is really pointless.
 
Caporegime
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But you can't have an infallible system so you'll definitely kill an innocent person eventually.

Since 1973 there have been 150 exoneration's from death row, regardless i just point back to the financial argument, this hypothetical one is really pointless.
In some cases you will be 100% proven guilty. It might be rare, but you could have CCTV of a murder + CCTV of the arrest of the perp.

Barring some 0.0000000000001% conspiracy scenario, that person is verifiably guilty. So what then?
 
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