Linus wrote on Aug 3
rd, 2023 at 6:03pm:
Frank wrote on Aug 3
rd, 2023 at 4:52pm:
greggerypeccary wrote on Aug 3
rd, 2023 at 4:15pm:
Disgusting crimes and, if found guilty of them, he should be punished to the full extent of the law.
Those crimes are some of the worst imaginable, however, there is no place in any civilised society for the premeditated state-sanctioned killing of restrained prisoners.
Of course there is. There is nothing 'uncivilised' about the death penalty.
There are problems in framing laws around it, setting up fail-safe mechanism to avoid meting it out to anyone not deserving it. But to say that the death penalty is always undeserved, always uncivilised is asserting something without any proper foundation or logic.
Where's your "proper foundation or logic for your claim:"There is nothing 'uncivilised' about the death penalty" or that it is not always undeserved, Frank ?
No law or set of laws are going to provide a "fail-safe mechanism". The risk of wrongful execution is too high a price to allow the death penalty. A wrongful execution is irreversible.
It's a moral double standard and contradiction to condone the killing of a person by the state if you accept killing is immoral.
It undermines the state's authority in enforcing moral standards if it engages in the very act it condemns.
If you value and respect human life, then there is no place for
the death penalty.
There are strong concerns about racial and socioeconomic disparities in the application of the death penalty, which raises questions about its fairness and impartiality.
There are alternatives to the death penalty. In the most heinous cases life imprisonment would suffice.
There is a lack of evidence to support a link between the death penalty and lower crime rates.
The death penalty can also have an adverse psychological impact on those involved in its implementation: prison staff and witnesses, not to mention the impact on the family and friends of the person executed.
If morality, the value of human life, fairness and impartiality, and the mitigation of human suffering are characteristics of being civilised, then the death penalty has no place in a civilised society.
By the standards you list, there is no place for hideous crimes in a civilised society by members of that society. Yet they happen. What to do with people who KNOWINGLY violate the limits of civilised, moral, humane behaviour and inflict unspeakable suffering and death on their fellow human beings?
I do not think that MOST death penalty inmates are wrongfully convicted.
It Is possible to set laws for the death penalty to be applied at NO DOUBT, rather that at the level of beyond reasonable doubt.
My main moral support for the death penalty is based on morality and on treating everyone, criminals included, as fully responsible moral agents. (Not talking about the certified insane or feeble minded).
Someone who is as much an autonomous moral being as you and me offending knowingly against KNOWN moral codes we are all subject to deserves the full moral weight of retribution, self-defence and self-cleaning of the body politic that he violated.
It is morally shifty to treat them as fully equal until they commit a hideous crime and then make excuses about why, from that point, their violation of the moral code means that it doesnt apply to them but a different moral code applies to them.
The death penalty, in a real sense, MAINTAINS the offender's status as fully responsible moral equal who must face the consequences of his knowing transgression of the moral code.
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