Deterrence is a terrible and dishonest justification. Retribution on the other hand is much more fitting. But in order for the Death Penalty to fit that criteria, it has to be used far more sparingly than it is now. Only for the worst of the worst. He qualifies for that, but many on death row don’t.
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The only way to implement it without mistakes is to use it in the most sparingly way possible. For those where there isn’t much of an issue of innocence and only the worst offenders like:
Serial/mass killers, contract killers, and killings with exceptional cruelty. Usually guilt isn’t even a question or disputed by the offender in those situations.
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To be against the death penalty for moral reasons (killing people is wrong) and because it can’t be done without mistakes IS consistent.
The moral argument matches the position.
To be for it for moral reasons, but against it for ethical reasons is not consistent. The moral argument does not match the position.
It illustrates that the person with the latter argument is letting ethical concerns outweigh their moral concerns. It’s fine to do this, there’s no law or rule or anything. But it is inconsistent.
EDIT: And, I will admit…quite pedantic. My apologies.
Another edit: I’m against the death penalty. I think my argument regarding the inconsistency is giving people the impression that I’m for it. I’m against it even if we had absolute certainty in a person’s guilt. Killing people is wrong.
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With all due respect, you are conflating your disagreement with an underlying rationale with someone else’s inconsistency.
Everyone arrives at the answers to complicated moral questions in their own way. I’d be willing to bet that plenty of staunch advocates for the abolition of the death penalty may disagree with at least a portion of your own reasoning. Does that make your belief inconsistent or otherwise less sincere? Of course not, it just means that you’ve arrived at the same destination by a slightly different path.
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99% of those people are lying, and are guilty as hell. Which itself is a pretty good argument for not having the death penalty.
Yet another success for Trump, in shaping the government in his own image.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if ratio of people for/against executions, was again, 30/70, like so many other “common sense” issues. It’s probably going to take some serious political will to bring the US into step with the rest of the civilized world, with this issue as with so many others.
We don’t really have a system for juatice. We have a system for revenge. Lots of people like it that way, but they are in the minority, I think.
I don’t think that is very reasonable.
Well - but you can. I just did it.
I have zero problem with someone like Timothy McVeigh being executed. I have zero problems with the executions from say the Nuremberg trials. We probably should have killed more, to be honest. If state executions were all air tight and irrefutable, I would perhaps be ok with it.
But given how many people on death row later are found innocent, our system is too flawed to trust it with a penalty that severe. And like I said, too often it is used as a bargaining chip to get a confession. Confess and you will just go to prison. Make us go to trial, we will convict you and ask for the death penalty.
See also: Blackstone’s Ratio - “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
Yes, thank you for echoing my point.
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I agree it was explained poorly. Allow me to try again: You find it ok to kill people because they are “horrible”. But many things come together so that these people became a “horrible” person, nobody is able to achieve that by themselves. Therefore the case for killing “horrible” people, but doing nothing to address the many factors (people, culture, society, systems) that contributed to people becoming “horrible” is pretty weak.
On top of that I find that it’s pretty rare that violence makes anything better, and I have yet to encounter an example where revenge helped anyone.
Of course, these people are not being executed for being horrible, but for very specific crimes they have been found guilty for (rightly or wrongly). And no matter how awful their background and history, at some point they made the decision to kill, or whatever they did.
And yes, I’m another who thinks there are some people we’d be better off if they were just killed off cleanly, but that the risk of innocent people being executed is unacceptable.
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In an extremely simplified model of the complexity of life, that sounds superficially correct. Considering the dependent origination of things, this explanation is just plain wrong, that single context-free decision simply does not exist.
Who would decide that?
That’s always the issue. It’s fine if I get to decide. Not so much if it’s anyone else…
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No offense, but I think it’s better if I decide that. 
I’d oppose it even in the impossible scenario where the state’s judgement was infallible. I oppose the death penalty for the same reason I oppose using torture as a penalty (and incidentally most methods of execution, including lethal injection, are also torture). I don’t want my republic committing torture or murder in my name on my dime, even when it’s of tortures and murderers.
I see real justice as rehabilitative and protective, with the rightful role of the state in those who cannot be rehabilitated, including the piece of garbage in question, to life imprisonment. I don’t regard punitive “justice” as an end in its self as just.
And indeed, there’s some evidence that the death penalty incentivizes worse crimes insofar as it leaves criminals with less to lose by murdering.
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That’s fine. Note I am not saying everyone who murders someone should be killed. It should be limited for egregious cases But in my examples above, I really don’t have a problem with those people being put to death. There is a line that can be crossed IMO where your actions forfeit your life.
YMMV, and that’s fine.
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Agreed 100%.
As for the methods of execution that our society chooses to use it’s really weird that they try to make it seem like a medical procedure rather than an execution. There are many, many examples of botched executions due to issues with the drugs or I.V.s that did truly result in a torturous death. If the government wants to be in the murder business, there are extremely fast, reliable ways to kill people. Say a double-barreled shotgun blast to the skull at short range, which would probably kill so quickly that the pain receptors wouldn’t have time to signal the brain. But of course the people who favor executions try to pretend it’s not murder, so that kind of gruesome act isn’t considered acceptable in a civilized society. The lethal injection thing is totally about the comfort of the witnesses and society at large, not the comfort of the condemned.
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Third execution this week.
What’s “complicated” about it? The state rightly expects us not to kill each other, therefore the state should also not kill.
Lead by example.
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