I’m fine with that. I never want to hear about Breivik and Roof again, and that includes them being abused by prison staff (which I do not want to happen). I don’t mind if they live long lives, because I am better than them.
I would have said the same had Derrick Bird been caught alive after he shot 23 other people, killing 12 of them including a friend of my brother.
Not necessarily. Like I said, we put animals down when they become a threat or unmanageable. While I am not directly comparing humans with animals, at the same time most people don’t adhere to the idea that “ALL life is sacred” and there are many exceptions to this rule.
A guy who shot someone in a robbery I think is someone who can possibly be trusted to enter society again.
Someone like Roof or the BTK killer or McViegh and others I believe forfeited their rights to live in society by their direct, willful actions. Killing them isn’t necessarily vengeance, any more than killing a dog who bites people or killing a bear who killed someone is. As someone else penned, it is an “unfortunate necessity” to keep them out of society - and when we have such a clear case of guilt of such a heinous crime, I don’t have an ethical problem with just ending them.
Humans aren’t simply animals, legally, philosophically, or socially.
Except you’ve done it twice now… (and always in the context of putting down a misbehaving animal)
Straw man. No one is talking about releasing a cold blooded murderer. (We can argue about whether someone getting shot in a robbery qualifies). We are discussing keeping people in jail versus having our state murder them though.
Socially, I think it very much is. Doesn’t do anything for the murderer or their victims but makes the public feel justified and happy.
You seem to be arguing that there is no more humane way of dealing with murderers than killing them ourselves. The majority of our peer nations categorically disagree with this idea and find it barbarous. Why is putting ourselves in the company of Russia, China, and dictatorships something not to be examined?
I hope desperately that you are wrong, but I fear and feel that you are right.
This is another thing I fear. Can I still choose death rather than reprogramming?
Wait, I… I love Big Brother… don’t take me to room 101… please?
“Necessity” implies that there are no other options. We have another option to “keep them out of society”: a prison.
Not that US prisons are currently perfect (or even particularly humane). but they are a step up from the death penalty.
I mostly agree about the dog, because the dog probably can’t remain with its family in that scenario, few people would want to adopt a dog with a history of biting, and turning it out into the wild is just cruel. However, bears generally only attack people who wander into their territory. Being killed for simply doing what bears do when people wander into their territory does seem like vengeance more than an “unfortunate necessity.”
As you know, I strongly disagree.
The death penalty in the abstract sense, or in the particular implementation present in our unjust world?
I think he’s disagreeing about the horrors of US prisons being better than death.
From what I understand, Death Row is not much different from the larger US prison system, except that you have a countdown to the day where you’re scheduled to die: a countdown which could, at an time, be moved forward, or backward, or stand still for awhile, even on its last day.
I remember reading Dead Man Walking, and having described to me the psychological stress of knowing the day that you’re scheduled to die.
Not to mention that the US is having trouble procuring the drugs necessary to ensure that the process of death itself isn’t torture (not that enough was administered to properly ensure that previously), and has to resort to untested cocktails in order to keep executing people.
Yes, the prison system is horrific, but I can’t see how the prison system, followed by a death after three five fifteen eighteen years, where the death is cannot be guaranteed to be anything less than torture itself, is any improvement whatsoever.
If you aren’t against the death penalty for Roof, you aren’t against the death penalty, you’re just deciding where the line is drawn.
I acknowledge it isn’t the exact same thing, but there are similarities.
Again, most people don’t value life above all. Euthanasia and abortion are two areas where a more clinical approach is used.
I’m arguing that killing them isn’t less humane than locking them up for life. Especially someone like Roof who would probably be confined to solitary.
Which is why in general I am against the practice, but there are examples I am ok with it. As I have said, i am ok with the concept, it is often the practice I am not ok with.
Not by everyone.
No of course not. What is considered ethical varies. Thought experiments like the trolley scenario etc can show you how many people can have a variety of views on what is ethical.
Until there is massive, systematic reform of the US prison system (as many here are espousing) I believe execution is far more humane than lengthy imprisonment, regardless of actual guilt or innocence. I think that anyone who does not feel the same way does not truly understand that death is a benison, a succor to the human condition, and far preferable to modern revenge-based non-rehabilitative incarceration.
So yes, if I lived somewhere that did not require me to financially support torture, I might have a different opinion. I’d be more inclined to side with death penalty opponents, on the precautionary principle, and out of compassion. But as things stand compassion compels me to support execution.
Everyone has based their position on their own viewpoint; as perhaps they should since this is such a fundamental moral issue.
Death is nothing to fear. Facing death will not harm anyone more than the US prison system does.
If you’ve ever known someone both before and after they’ve been in a US jail for a year or more, you know it breaks people.
Still sounds like torture to me!
I understand the point you’re making here, I just can’t wrap my head around the likelihood of exonerating evidence being available in the future and exterminating someone before that point.
I don’t see either as an acceptable “solution” so I’ll just err on the side of the one that doesn’t grant the State that power. Thanks for the clarification.
I’m younger than him, he threw his life completely away, the guy is absolutely feral, i don’t think therapy would have extinguish the hatred that he holds, his neurons, they are too entrenched.
So does killing them.
WTF is going on with Iran, there? Executed like 10x the number they sentenced.
I’m asking if people believe they are the same thing.
I’m not so sure it is such a bad idea. I’m fairly sure I’ve reprogrammed myself, to some extent, with psychedelics (and meditation and analysis and dream work and inter-personal relationships and and and). I’m still the same person, but different. No death except for some of my bad habits and their associated neuroses.
Maybe teenage-me is cursing present-me from up in the clouds… along with yesterday me, last-week-me and every other me representative of a span of continuous consciousness. They’re all ‘dead’ now.
I personally believe people are far too attached to the persona. It’s an empty shell.
ETA: I’m really talking about deprogramming, not reprogramming. Reprogramming sounds like the imposition of an external model rather than the removal or manipulation or control over that which already exists. Probably, conflating the two is unhelpful.
It wasn’t an actual suggestion, but I do think it would be the most fitting way to deal with him.
It’s interesting that so few Black people are against the death penalty in this case, although there’s opposition for a number of different reasons including that it’s too easy on him, so it’s not necessarily just a distaste for capitol punishment.
As far as the responsibility is concerned though, abstracting it is more of a psychological trick, and a way for us to silently approve of lots of things that are done in our name. Putting him in an American jail until death could be worse than capitol punishment for him. Plenty of Black men and women are sent to kill people much less deserving of death, without people being overly concerned about the psychological damage they’re suffering from this. The prison population continues to be populated disproportionately by black people, and they are disproportionately the ones to suffer from police shootings. They live in worse conditions with fewer opportunities, which causes them psychological harm as well as more tangible disadvantages. A lot of these things are perpetuated by white people, and we don’t worry too much about the psychological damage harming black people does to them.
At the end of the day, black forgiveness of white violence is expected and black anger against white people is suppressed as something unbecoming and less human. While I know that you and most people here are against the death penalty (as am I, including in this case), I firmly believe that a fair punishment for this would be for him to be given over to the community (I’m not sure how you could be both fair and humane in this case). This would give them responsibility, but also power and acknowledgement that they have the right not to forgive. And I also believe that many people in that community could live with themselves after joining together to kill him.
On the other hand, he isn’t worth any further harm, including the harm that would come from making an example of him and setting a precedent for sanctioned mob vengeance. Ultimately, the harm from that would fall disproportionately on black people. I know where you’re coming from and I agree, but in the work toward a more humane treatment of prisoners and their rehabilitation, he should join the back of the very long queue.
