Should John Muhammad be executed?

[Lunar]

I think we should only execute retarded people.  It seems more humane than killing philosophers, poets, and intellectuals.  Like what would you feel worse doing, killing a parrot that could talk in English or killing a parrot that could only squawk annoyingly, I know which one I would choose.

[Lunar]

Yes, firing squad the bastard.

Or better yet, if you want to take a "religious" point of view (sorry Joe), then an eye-for-an-eye is called for.  Have him walk out into one of those firing ranges that are designed to look like a downtown street, and have someone hide in a car and pick him off from 100 or more yards with a high-powered rifle.

or we could spin him around really fast so he doesn't know which way Mecca is and then just let him go since that's punishment enough

[Lunar]

I'm surprised the 'yes' vote garnered as many as it did.  This is a very liberal forum.  And I would have thought more than 4 went with 'rehab'.

Thanks guys........a good conversation was had.

Run away! A real debate might challenge your preconceptions (and we can't have that! Ronald Reagan was the Messiah!).

Neh, but honestly,  you bore me and I've had enough.  This subject, much like abortion, won't have any converts.........but I did enjoy everyone's opinion, even yours (when you weren't being a dick).

I think the subject actually has a lot of converts, but it tends to be a one-way street [except for Democrats who all of a sudden decide to run state-wide *cough Diane Feinstein cough cough cough cough* *ahem* my throat's a bit rough today sorry.  

Anyway, this isn't like abortion at all.  The arguments for and against the death penalty are not two ships passing in the night, I feel a lot of the arguments against the death penalty directly confront every single justification for it.  

-They combat price.
-They combat morality [is it better to execute five people, one of whom is innocent, or put five people, one of whom is innocent, in jail for life or until he can prove his innocence]
-They combat deterrence [three reasons people commit murder: they think they can get away with it, they commit it in a passionate moment and don't think at all, or they are not able to beat their compulsions, none of which would be influenced by harsher penalties than life....and that's assuming that murderers would prefer life in jail to death].
-They combat discrimination and biases [a white man and a minority man are simply not subjected to the same objective procedure.  One of the most common cases of mis-identity occurs when the innocent defendant is actually a bad person or can be painted as such,  such as that recent man who was arguably the most proven innocent to date that was executed based on fabricated claims and the fact that he had Def Leppard posters in his bedroom]
-They combat my sympathy for my fellow human beings....what if a new science existed in a year that could prove the innocence of 0.1% of inmates on death row?

While I'm usually an opponent of silly rhetoric like this, fundamentally, if you can't trust the post office to deliver an important package for you, can you trust the institution to ensure not one person, ever, is wrongly executed?


The only thing killing people does is that it makes you feel good.  While that's neat, I don't particularly think that's a good justification for anything that doesn't require you taking an STD test afterwards.  

[Lunar]

While I'm usually an opponent of silly rhetoric like this, fundamentally, if you can't trust the post office to deliver an important package for you, can you trust the institution to ensure not one person, ever, is wrongly executed?

But yet you can trust them to run your health care and "stimulate" the economy. Man, are your masters this cognitively dissonant, or are you starting to throw off your chains?

?

1.

I never said I trust them on either.  I've always said if I was a senator I would have voted against the stimulus (I was, however, gung-ho for TARP, which I'm more reserved on of late, I'll probably wait to hear of some studies to judge it now).  My general feeling on healthcare is that I trust the government to run it well enough to earn a net gain to society but I don't trust Congress to write a bill that does that.  Sort of a liberal/cynic hybrid.

edit: I do tend to support the idea of Keynesian spending during a recession too, which, when taken in principle, shouldn't really conflict with a general distrust in government to properly spend stimulus-style money where it is most effective.

2.

I would be twice as skeptical of the private market regulating the death penalty.  So in this case, as in most cases, I remain skeptical of both the private market and the public domain...  I don't view that as inconsistent, but I'm trying harder not to try and put up a facade of consistent ideology.   If everyone didn't think of me as a hypocrite on something, I'd almost think I was doing something wrong.

[Lunar]

He's talking about a Democratic consulting company I intern at.  I get to read some of the emails calling Barbara Boxer all kinds of sexist language

But you can see my comment about trusting the government is pretty reasonable, as it is given in the context of NEVER screwing up once in dozens of years, while trusting the government to intervene in the economy productively does not require that government make zero mistakes. 

[Lunar]

It's an interesting debate, actually.  I've always sort of had the opinion that prison time should be short and extremely uncomfortable for people who won't be there for their entire lives, and should be humane as possible while being as cheap as possible (with little interest in comfort outside of human rights obligations) for those who have to be there for their entire lives.  I'm not sure how that actually breaks down though.  Should life-terms be worse than death?  While it may be that way for some, as Gustaf mentions, I think 99% of people would rather have life no matter how bad it is.

[Lunar]

All I am saying is that people who argue that the death penalty is the worst form of punishment available are truly missing the bigger picture.

Well, the bigger picture is to ask people who are about to commit a crime if they care if the result is the death penalty of life in prison...and I think people who commit such a violent crime to warrant either of those results either (1) think that they won't get caught or (2) are so psychotic they don't think about it at all....and in either case, how harsh the death penalty is or life in prison is does not act as a deterrent.  

I mean, how many people rationally consider the consequences of a murder, while weighing them against the advantages, and decide not to do it?  

[Lunar]

Okay, I'm just always pretty much in vocal opposition to the idea that death penalty can in any way deter crime.

And without deterrence, it's pretty hard to codify some specific concept of "justice" in killing someone instead of locking them up outside of it making you feel good since even in the amoral interpretation...I believe I've heard it costs more to execute prisoners (if you consider the costs of the automatic appeals etc.) than lock them up for live.  [messy sentence, apologies]

I'm not sure how many people on death row have escaped in the last century only to kill again, but I bet it's a really small number.  It's probably because they are heavily secure rather than because they were to be killed.  And innocent people have been killed in U.S.-run execution chambers, of course.

I probably COULD be persuaded to the idea of poetic justice in extreme circumstances, such as taking Osama and letting him go hang out in the streets of New York without having any police around to witness.  But that's only in rare circumstances where poetry needs to triumph