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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jul 25, 2014 - 12:52pm PT
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There are more posters here than just you. This is a group discussion.
Read some of the fantasy violence here from people who would never self identify as sociopath and weep...
...for the children.
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vlani
Trad climber
mountain view, ca
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Jul 25, 2014 - 12:55pm PT
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The problem with the capital punishment is that after it is done it is not a punishment anymore. Dead people do not suffer.
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TYeary
Social climber
State of decay
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Jul 25, 2014 - 12:58pm PT
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This is not a pro or con death penalty statement. But it is time to halt executions until a reliable, uniformly applied method carrying out the sentence can be found. As it is now, "capital punishment is inconsistently applied, subject to manipulation and error, morally wrong and of dubious value in deterring crime". And as of lately, they are becoming more difficult to carry out without violating the condemned's constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. It's time to reevaluate how we administer the death penalty. All I am suggesting is states using lethal injections declare a moratorium until the process can be reviewed and fixed.
TY
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Jul 25, 2014 - 01:08pm PT
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The problem with the capital punishment is that after it is done it is not a punishment anymore. Dead people do not suffer.
There are some of us who would disagree. . .
Incidentally, Tony's post, above, is almost exactly the reasoning of a Federal District Judge in ordering a stay of any executions in California a week or two ago. It's, in a way, eerily reminiscent of the SCOTUS in about 1972 when it found the death penalty, as administered, to be cruel and unusual because its administration was so haphazrd, it was "like being struck by lightening."
Then again, there's the Chinese system. They march the condemned to an arena, shoot them, then send a bill to their families for the bullets.
John
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Jul 25, 2014 - 01:30pm PT
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I am on the fence about capital punishment as well. As has been mentioned before, I have a huge concern over executing innocent people. I think this happens more often than people want to admit, because of ambitious prosecuters, botched evidence/investigations and imcompetent representation. Here is a recent example.
http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/dallas-man-exonerated-for-rape-after-being-cleared-by-dna-tests
No wonder they allow so many appeals. I have to give Dallas some credit for trying to clean house.
I want to see "justice" done, as opposed to revenge. When I see some heinous crime committed I have the same gut reaction as most people, and there may be instances where putting someone to death is really justified. But if you want something to be a deterrent, I am not sure putting someone down in pseudo-serene manner is going have that much impact. I think we are a little schizophrenic in that regard.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Jul 25, 2014 - 02:17pm PT
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Ron posted Humanity? Where was the dead as#@&%es "humanity" when he gunned down those innocent folks? Someone tried to shoot me once,, and he is long dead and worm dirt.
Someone else's lack of humanity is not cover for the absence of yours.
Chaz posted It's not our problem if the rest of the world places a lower value on innocent life than the U.S.
We value innocent life so much we are willing to kill innocent people and pat ourselves on the back about it. Now THAT is some serious caring.
Ron posted The right to self defense knows no color.
Ahahahahaha. Yeah right.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Jul 25, 2014 - 02:23pm PT
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This is not a pro or con death penalty statement. But it is time to halt executions until a reliable, uniformly applied method carrying out the sentence can be found. As it is now, "capital punishment is inconsistently applied, subject to manipulation and error, morally wrong and of dubious value in deterring crime". And as of lately, they are becoming more difficult to carry out without violating the condemned's constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. It's time to reevaluate how we administer the death penalty. All I am suggesting is states using lethal injections declare a moratorium until the process can be reviewed and fixed.
TY
Oh please. Everyone knows a firing squad (for example) would work just fine; hanging is maybe little tougher but is fine too. (One of the objections to hanging is that it can cause decapitation, but that seems more of an aesthetic issue than a constitutional problem).
I have given this a little bit of thought and have come up with a slightly novel solution: why not select any two of the methods commonly used, and apply them both?
For example: set up a gas chamber that also has a remote controlled gun in situ (so you don't need a human being in the chamber to fire the gun).
Start the gas, wait a few seconds, then shoot the gun.
No way anyone's getting out of that.
(You can pretty much combine the firing squad with any other method, but there are also other possibilities, for example, how about hanging with an electrified rope?)
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jul 25, 2014 - 02:29pm PT
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Some problems do not have good solutions. Violence is one. We're programmed for it. We need better ways to self manage it - even most sociopaths manage this, but our basic punishment/reward way of dealing with each other supports the use of violence as an expedient means to get what you want - and that results in a lot of battering.
If we kill our way out of it - and we won't, because most of what plagues us doesn't involve actual murder - we legitimize the behavior we're trying to extinguish, and that makes is very difficult to change a societal norm so that more self policing will occur.
Society does need to quarantine the chronically violent. But how?
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Flip Flop
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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Jul 25, 2014 - 03:15pm PT
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Not me Jim,
I believe in progress and that humanity can be better once we stop choosing to punish and kill.
Consequences are enough for sane people and a sane society.
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sandstone conglomerate
climber
sharon conglomerate central
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Jul 25, 2014 - 04:56pm PT
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start with every pedophile and rapist until they get it right. practice makes perfect.
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overwatch
climber
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Jul 25, 2014 - 06:04pm PT
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Requested it
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Jul 26, 2014 - 12:28pm PT
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I personally find executions by lethal injection to be a pretty sick way of doing things. It seems to be something of a fantasy world of doing a criminal a favor, but seems to me to be even more cruel than a firing squad or a hangman's noose. The concept of allowing them to "die peacefully, and in their sleep" doesn't seem to work very well or uniformly, does it? The argument that there are innocents being terminated does more for me than the weird manner of execution. Only if the Judicial System were completely infallible, or if a heinous crime had been committed with many disinterested 3rd party witnesses present, would I back this ultimate "deterrent to bad behavior." So...enter me in the list of those opposed to the death penalty, not on moral or religious grounds, but on the principle of possible (in many cases, very remote) innocence of the accused. If the DP is to be upheld, then use a firing squad or hangman's noose to do the job right. There were lots of botched executions using the electric chair, too.
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jstan
climber
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Jul 26, 2014 - 01:24pm PT
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BDC pretty well sums it up. But, of course, a couple of comments.
1. I have been anesthetized. If people trained to do this to save people could be induced to do it to produce death, the problem with this approach would simply evaporate.
2. The whole issue is, at its base, political. Politics being what it is, we may presume almost exactly 50% of the electorate wants the condemned to suffer.
If the firing squad has beauty it lies in the fact we don't know what suffering is involved. Everyone may presume as they wish. Whether or where the spine is broken, hanging has a good chance of producing death by suffocation, the method employed by the big cats.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Jul 26, 2014 - 01:36pm PT
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1. I have been anesthetized. If people trained to do this to save people could be induced to do it to produce death, the problem with this approach would simply evaporate.
It is a settled issue: it is unethical
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Jul 26, 2014 - 02:05pm PT
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It's pretty well agreed here that the principal motive for the death penalty is REVENGE. But as someone else already posted above, there is a real motivation by unethical prosecutors and judges to obtain convictions.
Why did I mention judges, whom we are always taught to revere? They are paid by the State, same as prosecutors, and receive bonuses based on convictions! These days we are subjected to so-called evidentiary hearings which decide whether or not jurors are allowed to hear certain pieces of evidence. In my mind, no judge should EVER disallow evidence or testimony which could serve to exonerate the accused. I know of at least one case in which such evidence or testimony was suppressed or disallowed. The Political Prisoner is now serving 60 years in solitary confinement, with no visitation rights for his family members; this conviction was based on some fabricated evidence and the word of a paid BATFE informant. It forever disabused me of the concept of a fair trial in the current USA.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Jul 26, 2014 - 03:44pm PT
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Why did I mention judges, whom we are always taught to revere? They are paid by the State, same as prosecutors, and receive bonuses based on convictions!
I don't think that's true.
Citations?
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Jul 26, 2014 - 09:28pm PT
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At least we've gone beyond the British form of punishment today (flogging), where men were beaten to death for minor (by today's standards) breaches of military discipline. Huge numbers of men wore the stripes on their backs during the 18th and 19th centuries.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Jul 26, 2014 - 09:38pm PT
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Back in those days, the concept of "doing time" as a punishment hadn't yet been conceived. Prisons were used to hold someone until trial, or flogging, or execution, not as the punishment itself.
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