This week, Virginia executed Paul Powell for murdering a 16-year-old girl and raping and attempting to murder her 14-year-old sister. Reading the details of the crime, your instinctive response is utter revulsion and a cry for justice to be done. But state-sanctioned killing -- unless it is for reasons of national security -- is not something we as a society should be doing. In America, 139 people on death row have been exonerated. And a study on death penalty appeals found two-thirds of all death sentences were overturned due to serious errors, including prosecutorial misconduct. Then there is the cost: it is much more expensive to execute a prisoner than to send him to prison for life. For example, California could save $125 million a year if it eliminated the death penalty. That's a lot of money for a state cutting social services to the bone. It's time for the death penalty to be put to death.
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Sorry Arrianna, but the facts of his case prove otherwise. For some people, life in prison just doesn't cut it.
For a state to even threaten war, on the other hand, is an unacceptable response to anything. Only a union of countries has the right to engage in armed conflict when there is an immediate danger to lives in one of the union countries. In other words at present only the United Nations has the moral authority to engage in war, and only when absolutely necessary to protect life (e.g. Rwanda and perhaps one or two cases since, but it's pretty difficult to justify even those.)
Even gross excesses like Guantanamo don't justify armed response, because, while people were clearly killed there, the killing was achieved by driving people to suicide and that is not sufficiently immediate to justify an armed response; it could have been averted in other ways.
The rules for states are the same for individuals. You can only use force when it is the only way to avert an *immediate* threat, you can only use the minimum necessary force.
There really is no rational debate here. Killing people who can be restrained and don't want to be killed is invariably, without exception, wrong.
I love you, Arianna. I have been a Progressive for my entire life.
But this one time, I disagree with you. That murderer-rapist in VA (Paul Powell) deserved to die--it's just what he did to another, and attempted on yet ANOTHER, so obviously HE believes in it-- and there is nothing philosophically "wrong" with state-sanctioned killing of criminals in the first place. Heck, every country believes in killing its enemies on the battlefield, and they are not usually criminals (or lawbreakers of any stripe).
An eye for an eye is most certainly FAIR. Why he deserved to live, in your opinion, is beyond me. Killing these horrible predators may not be pretty, but it's like putting out the garbage--completely necessary. Nor should prison guards have to deal with these vermin and risk their own lives; these murderers should be executed within a week after their last legal appeal, not allowed to live 25 more years before execution. Let the murderer-rapist live only when his dead VICTIM (remember her?) returns to a full life on earth. Now THAT would be fair.
As another poster noted, your reasons against the death penalty are only complaints with the faults/costs of the system, not rationale for a killer not deserving death himself. "Prosecutorial misconduct"? Please! What about defense attorney misconduct (lying, accusing innocents of the crime), which I'd guess outnumbers the former at a ratio of 50:1, though is never prosecuted.
Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Somalia, Nigeria, China etc...
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/images/international.jpg
There's a reason executions aren't televised: They're shameful things that no one wants to see and very few can actually do. Murder lessens us as individuals and as a society. No exceptions.
It is very easy for humans to ease into the idea of society killing individuals for supposedly "justified" reasons. Read a little bit about the Milgram experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) to see what good people are capable of doing even in ambiguous situations. Given the prospect of someone guilty of heinous murder and a government that says it is required to execute them, many become convinced that such things are justified and even preferable.
One day, as they near yet another island, the Captain leaps to his feet and starts yelling and waving towards the shore, then turns to others in the boat and says "At last! We're saved. A Christian country! I can see the gallows from here".
T
Death penalty is not only wrong but STUPID -- both, on so many levels.
I'm so tired of this debate.
Besides (as others have pointed out), in prison they get three hots and a cot, all the necessities of life, free medical care, friends, recreational drugs, conjugal visits, tv and radio, library books and parole. Do you realize that they let one of the Manson girls go? What happened to life without parole? Do you realize that every so often they try to parole Sirhan Sirhan? Do you realize they let lots of murders free?
From Ecclesiates 3:
1 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
Opponents of the death penalty don't realize that there is a time to kill, when killing is not murder but justice.
I think it is WRONG; it is illogical; it is an irreversible action in a too fallible system; I do agree with arguments about the expense, though I don't think that is the POINT; but most of all, I think the death penalty, for a truly guilty criminal, is too damned EASY a penalty.
And if you think that life in prison is so SWELL, you go do it. I love that ludicrous conservative argument against life in prison -- hey, they get 3 hots and a cot and TV! They get to exercise! They get free food and health care! That's just way too much GOOD STUFF! Absurd. Risible. Life in prison without parole is hell. Talk to someone who's been in prison for 40 plus years and see what he thinks.
As for the rest of that biblical claptrap, I can only say that the most vicious, unmerciful, unforgiving people I have ever encountered have invariably been religious ones. It's is as predictable as rain in Seattle: if someone is advocating for the death penalty because it is fitting retribution for a crime (let alone doing so while badly quoting a religious text), he is INVARIABLY a religious person who considers himself "moral."
Irony, thy name is religiosity.