Evidence lockers are a constantly refreshed source, no need to locate and enrich a dealer.
even better
What the heck do you mean by practical choice here? From everything I can tell, it would seem to be Brainsporeâs. The whole developed world has decided that they are not going to torture even the worst criminals to death, not even euthanize them, and they havenât suffered at all for it.
Meanwhile the US spends large amounts of money on this terrible practice, plainly hasnât even figured out how to apply it in a way that spares innocent people, and there is nothing obvious to show for it. Practical indeed.
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tor¡tu¡ous: full of twists and turns.
tor¡tur¡ous: characterized by, involving, or causing excruciating pain or suffering.
I can assure you that people have indeed suffered for it. There are crimes that leave scars that never heal, and I can promise you with absolute certainty that there are people who suffer every second of every day that their abuser gets to live. I have known and worked with way too many of them to write them off like that.
The countries you speak of by and large also have structures in place to prevent crime. If you want to discuss terrible practices which are inconsistently applied in the US, this is going to be a very long conversation.
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The alternative is life in prison. I know this post and discussion about the weird way the State is executing people and alternative measures if you intend to kill people. However just to be clear there is an alternative to capital punishment that is already at their disposal - Life Imprisonment without Parole.
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Of course there are crimes that leave scars that donât heal. Itâs not honest to attribute those to the lack of barbaric punishments, though, which donât do anything real to alleviate them at all. If anything, they just add one more group of people responsible for tortures and so ready to be scarred.
Yes, other countries also have better structures to prevent crimes. America needs to grow the hell up in more ways than one. That doesnât mean abandoning a practice at once barbaric, ineffective, and rejected by all but the worst countries shouldnât be on that list.
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closure is overrated.
Agreed.
But when it is literally the only thing someone has left, I wonât deny it to them.
Almost twenty years ago one of my childhood friends was brutally murdered (along with her mother) by a young man they had previously taken in. He was soon apprehended and sentenced to life without parole. The surviving family members were obviously devastated, but they never sought the young manâs life. He was sentenced to life without parole, allowing them to move on with the healing process without having to think about what fate awaited their family membersâ killer years or decades down the road.
Had the young man been sentenced to death then he might still be alive today due to the lengthy appeals process, and my friendâs family still might not know his final fate. Every time he filed an appeal they might be asked to weigh in by the courts or the media, and have to hear the gruesome details of the murders all over again.
I submit to you that the former approach is a better path to âclosureâ than the latter.
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I am sorry for your loss. I sincerely hope that you were able to find whatever closure or solace is most appropriate for you.
Perhaps. I donât think itâs my call to make (or yours), but should be up to the family of the victim.
Iâm absolutely willing to concede that the death penalty is wrong in any given case, and due to any given circumstance- Iâm not able to concede that itâs wrong in every case or under any circumstance.
I donât accept that that is a suitable alternative in every case.
I donât believe itâs fair to the other prisoners to put a predator into their midst where he can continue to victimize people. That leaves solitary confinement- Which I actually find to be more cruel and unusual than execution.
The difficult truth here is that âcruel and unusualâ is subjective. There are people who actually prefer prison over the outside, and there are people who would rather take a bullet to the head then spend three minutes in a holding cell. There are people who could shrug off being waterboarded, but would suffer a complete mental breakdown after 12 hours of solitary confinement. There are people who wouldnât be bothered with anything as long as they get to live.
I donât believe that thereâs any solution which fits every case equally, and thatâs what Iâm arguing for, is the option to do what is best in any given unique situation- Including when the best you can do is the lesser of two evils.
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Forgetting for a moment this paritcular incident, a recent meta-review found at least 4% of all the people sentenced to death in the US are actually innocent. Not partially innocent⌠but COMPLETELY innocent. They shouldnât even BE in prison at all.
Given that the US has executed 15,717 people since 1700⌠that means at LEAST 630 people were killed by the state for crimes they did not commit.
(http://time.com/82375/every-execution-in-u-s-history-in-a-single-chart/)
That means, using last yearâs 39 people put to death, 1 - 2 of them were completely innocent.
If you could gurantee to me that there would be ZERO innocent people put to death, Iâd be more comfortable with that as an option. But the fact that so many people accept 4% âerrorâ is disgusting. Itâs really perverse.
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Actually, as a group they are pretty much the worst people to ask.
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It isnât rocket science, human biology is quite easy to disrupt with the right compounds, I for one would like to know which drug companies are fucking up so simple a procedure so I can avoid their products in future.
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The practical 50% is completely against the death penalty because of the cost, the toll taken on families and witnesses, and ultimately the risk of error.
The emotional side of me is closer to being split down the middle, leaning more towards a sympathetic stance. I donât want to see anyone suffer, even an evil person, but at the same time part me thinks âyou had it coming.â In the end, I base my opinion on the 75%+ thatâs against capital punishment.
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In many cases they are.
But again, Iâm talking about situations where guilt has already been established through a fair trial, facts have been double and triple checked, (or held to a higher standard of proof) and the crime has been determined by an objective authority to be heinous enough to warrant the most severe of punishments.
Then, and only then, do I advocate handing them the rope.
Ok, so youâre against the death penalty, because it has been incontrovertably shown that none of those things can be delivered reliably.
Why do you persist in posting for somehing when youâre actually against it?
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You are conflating two closely related yet separate issues:
- How to determine guilt or innocence
- What should be done once a determination has been made
I certainly have ideas on how to improve upon the first of these, and in no way claim the current method to be infalible. This debate is over the second.
I advocate capital punishment only under certain circumstances- Chief among those being the certainty of guilt. I have no objection to requiring a higher burden of proof in order to pursue execution. Even if our justice system is flawed, there are specific cases where guilt is beyond any doubt, not just a âreasonableâ one.
I donât see how that could be interpteted as inconsistent.
