The Rebel Faction

You're correct again demos -no Western country tortures it citizens. And look at the astronomical proportion of said citizens behind bars. I rest mycase on that point alone.

You are correct on a second option - death means little if you can keep appealling and live forever. So I said give them six months to prove their innocence, not use some legal loophole. As such, a division of the Justice Ministry would have to be detailed to such tasks as reviewing the cases for those to be executed, making sure they are guilty. However, they would not stop the execution due a mistake or one of the ridiculous the police found the murder weapon in a place not on the search warrant so its out and it's dismissed, no. That's a makrer of guilt and so the execution goes forward. But if DNA exonerates the accused then he is free to go.

Demos, you pose a recurring theme that is indeed very important and needs to be addressed. Can we execute masses of criminals while ensuring that no innocent ones are put to death? The answer is a simple no. The innocent will perish along with the guilty, but the systems needs to be refined so that the number is small but if ten innocent must die to execute a hundred guilty ones then so be it. The good of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. It is an aged old phrase but a real one true enough. That is why firefighters rush into burning buildings while civilians just stand there, gawking while people scream for aide. Some must do the unthinkable that the rest may live.

Telan Desaria:

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Demos, you pose a recurring theme that is indeed very important and needs to be addressed. Can we execute masses of criminals while ensuring that no innocent ones are put to death? The answer is a simple no. The innocent will perish along with the guilty, but the systems needs to be refined so that the number is small but if ten innocent must die to execute a hundred guilty ones then so be it. The good of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. It is an aged old phrase but a real one true enough. That is why firefighters rush into burning buildings while civilians just stand there, gawking while people scream for aide. Some must do the unthinkable that the rest may live.

If you truly believe this, Telan, then I'm very, very disturbed. You honestly believe that it's all right that 10% of the people your plan would kill would be innocent? That for every nine people executed, an innocent man or woman would go to their deaths, too?
This is not a case of the "needs of the many" - capital punishment does not deter crime. It does prevent reoffences, but so does incarceration. Capital punishment is putting the desires of the victims to see bloody retribution above the rights of the citizenship not to have to worry about being accidentally put to death by their own government.

What a ridiculous argument you make, Telan.

The deterrent argument is poor, because a life sentence without parole does the exact same thing.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with you there. To me, death sounds worse than a life in prison (if I was guilty. If I was innocent and wrongly convicted, I'm honestly not sure what I'd think).

That's the point of capital punishment, isn't it? The worst punishment we can deliver.

Not really.... Extended torture - you know, pulling someone's fingernails off, sticking probes in their brain to stimulate pain constantly. That sort of thing (I'm sure you can use your imagination) - surely that's much worse? If I was supporting capital punishment as some sort of "revenge", surely I'd want the person to die slowly, over the period of months, or years - in constant pain. Personally, I don't condone that. Death should be quick and ideally painless. (I know in some cases it's not with lethal injection, and there's a controversy). I'm willing to admit there's room for change on the method, and indeed, on the way the system works.

I'm not saying "The system that the United States uses (say, in Texas) is perfect and should be emulated". I'm simply saying that in principle, I can support capital punishment in extreme cases. You seem to be saying that you don't support it in any case at all - that's the point I have issue with, really.

Out of curiosity (not to prove a point or anything), what would you have done with Hitler had we caught him? Or Hussein? Or Bin Laden?

But the point is that right now, today, killing is wrong. That's why we have laws against it.

I propose that today, now, killing is not necessarily wrong. The problem is using blanket statements like that one you've used there, I think. In war, for example, killling can be justified (to some people. To me, anyway). In self defence, killing can also be justified. We have laws against Murder (and "manslaugher" and "death by negligence" and all the rest). There are no laws that say "killing someone else is wrong. That's a moral stance, not a legal one, surely?

I would say that capital punishment is comparable (legally) to a soldier killing another soldier in war. Therefore, it's not murder, and it's not "wrong". (IMHO anyway)

Demos, you sound dangerously close to hippy. You are saying that excessive force is wrong? So when a man enters your home in the middle of the night rather than stand and fight and kill the intruder you should lock yourself in a closet and cower while his depreadations continue because running and hiding is a logical alternative. That is not only wrong it is dishonourable.

I have admitted that there would be victims of such pogroms against criminals and that innocent people would suffer. The goal is to shrink the number of such innocents dying so that eventually only the guilty perish. I am saying losses are acceptable while the bugs are worked out, not in the long run.

You are of the school that thinks it is right for a man to shoot fifty people in a bell tower then be able to just throw his gun down and be taken calmly by the police. I am ordered to do that now and I do it accordingly because I know what it is to obey. It is not however right - that person should be executed on the spot, the blood still fresh and wet on his hands. You have such a person spend a lifetime in jail.

Now, I am amenable to the elimination of the death penalty if something equally appropriate is put in its place. For example, the working endlessly of the prisoners. Yes, make them cut the path for the new right of way using shovels and picks and axes - make them crush rocks into smaller ones, make them pcik up trash on the side of the highway. Work them and make them pay their debt to society. A debt to society is not sleeping for twenty years in your cell with three meals a day and medicine provided by the law abiding citizens outside the wire. Incarcerate a murderer then, seize all his assets and sell them off, including bank accounts and cars and clothes, and work him until he is decrepit. Then his debt will be paid, his blood and sweat turned into the soil that the lawful citizens now trod upon. THAT is a debt paid to society, forever sorrowful for his crimes.

How many times have you watched MSNBC or other jail shows and see unrepentent murderers and rapists? Too often. They are not punished every day, they are not worked, they are not beaten, they are not made to remember the horrors they inlficted on the world. No, they are coddled by therapists, drugged at expense to the tax payers, and given shelter and protection by officers of the law working inside. That is not punishment and it is not justice.

So I say again, fine - remove the dealth penalty. But then make a life spent behind the walls a life spent in search of absolution and forgiveness that work may make free. Arbeit macht frei if you will. Now it will be put to good use - not the wholesale slaughter of innocent people based on beleifs no but the punishment of the truly wicked for their sins.

Now, I am willing to be sacrified as the first to the alter of justice or I would not be able to make such an argument. I am not a hypocrit -I believe what I say with the utmost of conviction. I am willing to do as ordered - I obey as commanded now as an officer and I live by the tennets of my oath. I do question the basis for those orders but I obey all the same.

Can you, Drayson, say that you are willing to do so? There is a major difference between us, my friend. I say these opinions as someone who everydayfights against crime, who everyday sees the evil that man is capable of. You live insulated from it. Remember that there are those of us out here working to keep you safe - please finally stand and show us our work is not in vein, that our blood has our blood has purchased a better future.

Thank you Irtar, but using Drayon's anti death logic, they could be used as cheap labor, only costing minimal food-intake the cost of the officers who watch them. Now THAT I can support