[xerxes]

Quote:

I mean
there are those bleeding hearts who say that every life is worth preserving.

That's not why I oppose the death penalty. I oppose it because it's a punishment that doesn't solve anything. If someone I loved was killed by some psycho, seeing him/her put to death wouldn't take away my anguish. Not even a 1000 times over would make that pain go away.

Also, I oppose it because, as so many examples in the US bear out, the punishment is disproportionally borne by minorities and underprivileged.

Of course, the death penalty, or call for the reinstatement of the death penalty will never go away. For every innocent man exonerated by new evidence after the fact, there is a Paul Bernardo or John Wayne Gacy who well and truly have earned their noose.

[Psudo]

Death is a bad thing. Violation of will is a bad thing. Since the death penalty is inherently both, a huge benefit must be proven to result from a specific execution before it is even a morally reasonable consideration. Miscarriage of justice is also a bad thing, so there is a very heavy burden of proof to be met even if the details of the case can justify an execution.

But there is also an inherent civil benefit to having a legal death penalty: leverage. When prosecutors need evidence from deeper inside a criminal conspiracy or lifestyle, it helps to be able to turn accomplices and hitmen into informants. There is immense and socially beneficial power in the sentence "Give us what we need and we will not seek the death penalty." That is why we have so many states in the USA that have the death penalty but have not executed anyone in years.

xerxes mentions demographic disproportionality, which is a real problem. (Thank you, xerxes, for addressing the why of the death penalty.) But it does not speak to the justice of the individual cases. Are minorities and the underprivileged overrepresented because the death penalty is biased, or because their lives on the cultural fringes push them more easily into desperate action? In other words, does the fault lie with the death penalty, or in society at large? The persuasive element should be whether justice was done in the individual cases (both those that were capital cases and those that perhaps should have been). To paraphrase Dr. Foreman, maybe we just need to execute more white people.

I think it is possible for a legal death penalty to be an overall good for a society, but it's very, very easy for it to be an overall detriment. It is not always morally abhorrent, but great care must be taken to ensure it does not become so and, if it does, justice demands it be suspended. This puts me narrowly in favor of the death penalty, not because my support for my position is weak but because my position supports only a narrow definition of proper capital punishment.

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Off topic, Re: xerxes' signature. That H. L. Mencken was cynical about America proves nothing; the man was also cynical about marriage, democracy, morality, government, and humanity generally. That hardly puts America in bad company.

[Yogi]

xerxes wrote:

Quote:

I mean
there are those bleeding hearts who say that every life is worth preserving.

That's not why I oppose the death penalty. I oppose it because it's a punishment that doesn't solve anything. If someone I loved was killed by some psycho, seeing him/her put to death wouldn't take away my anguish. Not even a 1000 times over would make that pain go away.

Also, I oppose it because, as so many examples in the US bear out, the punishment is disproportionally borne by minorities and underprivileged.

Of course, the death penalty, or call for the reinstatement of the death penalty will never go away. For every innocent man exonerated by new evidence after the fact, there is a Paul Bernardo or John Wayne Gacy who well and truly have earned their noose.

To which, the logical response would have to be "When a disproportionate number of minorities and underpriveledged quit committing a disproportionate percentage of crimes, only then will we see a more balance representation of society being imprisoned or punished".

[Brenda]

Just because I am against the death penalty means I am a bleeding heart? I am insulted

[Yogi]

Brenda wrote:

Just because I am against the death penalty means I am a bleeding heart? I am insulted

IF you are against the death penalty in the face of irrefutable evidence then indeed you are a 'bleeding heart', and will just have to accept that label, and move on!

[Brenda]

Yogi wrote:

Brenda wrote:

Just because I am against the death penalty means I am a bleeding heart? I am insulted

IF you are against the death penalty in the face of irrefutable evidence then indeed you are a 'bleeding heart', and will just have to accept that label, and move on!

How do you explain me being pro-choice when it comes to abortions and assisted suicide then?

You can't put me in a box!

[Yogi]

Brenda wrote:

Yogi wrote:

Brenda wrote:

Just because I am against the death penalty means I am a bleeding heart? I am insulted

IF you are against the death penalty in the face of irrefutable evidence then indeed you are a 'bleeding heart', and will just have to accept that label, and move on!

How do you explain me being pro-choice when it comes to abortions and assisted suicide then?

You can't put me in a box!

I'm not going to try to explain anything about your beliefs. That's up to you to do!

[Gunnair]

Brenda wrote:

Yogi wrote:

Brenda wrote:

Just because I am against the death penalty means I am a bleeding heart? I am insulted

IF you are against the death penalty in the face of irrefutable evidence then indeed you are a 'bleeding heart', and will just have to accept that label, and move on!

How do you explain me being pro-choice when it comes to abortions and assisted suicide then?

You can't put me in a box!

You'll go to the box we pick for you and while you're there, you'll make me a goddamned sammich, Ducthie!

[Brenda]

Gunnair wrote:

Brenda wrote:

Yogi wrote:

IF you are against the death penalty in the face of irrefutable evidence then indeed you are a 'bleeding heart', and will just have to accept that label, and move on!

How do you explain me being pro-choice when it comes to abortions and assisted suicide then?

You can't put me in a box!

You'll go to the box we pick for you and while you're there, you'll make me a goddamned sammich, Ducthie!

Ahhhhhhahahahahahaha
Ya got guts!
I'm still waiting for you to shovel my driveway in your kilt, Scottie. Until you done that, NO DAMNED SAMMICH, ya hear?

(is that box shiny? )