I wonder what, if any, effect this will have on the quality of justice/level of scrutiny/etc. in the ālife without paroleā segment?
It is, indeed, true that the quality of justice administered in a lot of death penalty cases is shockingly low, anywhere between egregious negligence and downright murder-under-color-of-law. However, Iāve never encountered any reason to suspect that capital trials are worse than serious-but-noncapital ones; and the greater attention attracted by the death penalty may even improve the level of outside interest, support, and so on.
Lesser sentences are more reversible; but they only get reversed if suitable time and attention are dedicated to the task; and Iād be curious to know if your odds of getting that are actually worse if you are doing life than if you are doing some-long-period-before-your-theoretical-executionā¦
While I like the death penalty in theory - in practice is isnāt a good thing.
I mean if you have an air tight case with a guy wearing someones face like a mask and has the mummified bodies of his victims arranged in a diorama of the bridge of the starship Enterprise, and I think that person just voided his ticket to keep living.
But too often it is used as leverage for plea deals and some people on death row have been exonerated, so the cases are less than air tight.
Really?
Did you read past the first 4 words? I have no problem the concept of putting monsters down.
A state dehumanizing and killing itās own citizens leads to ādark placesā.
I agree, itās easy to see that there are crimes that actually deserve the death penalty.
The real issue is that judicial processes are flawed with high risk of miscarriage of justice and no hope of compensation for wrongs; and carrying out the penalty itself just lowers society to the same level as the murderer.
So good on Connecticut.
What about the fact that studies show life in prison detours more crime than the death penaltyā¦ if itās practically worse than ineffective, wouldnāt you think that would factor in to the decision as well??
Again, I am referring to clear cut evil people who have done terrible things with out remorse and would do them again.
But as I outlined, that isnāt the only people being executed and it is why I am not for it.
Dependsā¦ Which Enterprise?
Subjective statement masquerading as objective truth much?
How did that happen? You didnāt even quote me. 
You think that there are no crimes bad enough to deserve the death penalty? 
Youād have a hard time persuading a majority of that. But deserving something and actually getting it are different things.
Iām anti capital punishment in practice because we canāt be sure of only killing the right ones and because actually carrying out the sentence is dehumanising for those involved. I recognise that I couldnāt kill someone without dying a little inside, so wouldnāt want to put someone else in the position of doing it for me.
Iā¦ donāt even know how that happenedā¦ I knew it was @aeon when I wrote my comment. Weird.
Much like (I suspect) you, I donāt care much for morality-as-determined-by-majority, so letās dispense with that right away. I think the thing the ruffles my feathers is that people like me, who are categorically against the death penalty, genuinely donāt make this distinction. If it were up to us, Hitler would have been captured and kept in a cell till he died. People are always incredulous when I say I donāt care what crime it was, no one deserves to kill. Thatās the issue. We shouldnāt kill killers on the same moral basis that we donāt rape rapists. Itās one thing when thereās a gunman on the loose shooting at everyone in sight and there is a pragmatic need to use lethal force, but otherwise- no.
There are also side issues: Even if I believed in the value of retributive punishment, which I do not, death is not a penalty. We all die, and I for one donāt believe in an afterlife. So I fail to understand it as a punishment. Donāt even get me started on the suspect morality of killing people for crimes as deterrence. Logically, we should kill people for driving recklessly, since deterring it would actually save more lives.
Anyway, while this is the perfect place for it, I really donāt feel like an argument about the death penalty, since in practice we agree. Iām just always bothered when people take for granted that there are moral and rational reasons for categorical opposition, even you disagree with them.
Nor I. But laws are part of systems of ethics and so need a critical mass of the persuaded to change.
But you already know that:
ā¦ and from that response that many (if not most) people are like me. We can conceive that the world would be a better place if some people just werenāt in it. Unfortunately execution is a superficially attractive solution to that problem and hence its apparent popularity.
So therefore being categorically against has to be a poor argument for gaining that needed critical mass, as it only gets you bogged down in arguing right and wrong with people who might well agree with more utilitarian arguments against, if you ever got to express them ā¦
And maybe rapists ādeserveā to be raped. But I wouldnāt support government-administered rape under any circumstances, because that would be fucking barbaric.
Because it always comes up in death penalty/crime and punishment discussions.
It really doesnāt.
The UK isnāt short of paedophiles who fit that category. 
But ā¦
ā¦ and nor would I. Thatās precisely my point when it comes to the death penalty.
Itās bad because it makes us all āfucking barbariansā by association and because our judicial systems are too flawed to allow it.
