Are you really anti?

[Mirrrr]

The 2 reasons why I never wanted that my fathers killer would have gotten a death sentence was mostly because I would never want his family feel what my family went through.
He had a daughter who is my age.

The second reason was that when I was younger I really had the big WHY question. And no one besides him could tell me why and if he would have been dead he could never tell me that anymore.
Now I'm older I realise that I will never get an answer on that question. But it has lived my life for so many years. My whole youth I was only busy with that only question. 

[JTiscool]

I did not expect this thread to fill up that fast  Okay well, I'll address all the posts when I have time.

[JTiscool]

A few points:

1) I actually don't think everyone is redeemable.  Any crime should be punished and the severity of these crimes means a harsher punishment is necessary.  I don't actually agree with rehabilitation of those worthy of the DP either.  A crime that serious means you leave your human rights at the door to the prison in my opinion, but I won't go as far as to agree with the DP as it is an act that is irreversible and inhumane.
Yes, the common argument against that stance is "Well what they did to their victims wasn't humane!", but two wrongs don't make it right. 

2) I disagree with you on the Wanda Jean Allen scenario.  Certain societies to indeed breed criminality.  Simply compare crime per capita in certain parts of the  US - there is a vast difference.  That isn't to say ALL crime would be solved by looking at certain structures of society, but a fair percentage of those crimes where people find themselves on DP would.

3) And finally, you certainly can stop a chain of events from happening where a high percentage of these crimes are concerned.  For instance, we are lucky to have very strict gun laws over here as opposed to your bill of rights.  A gun crime in the UK is rare, but when it happens, it is front page news.  It is not the norm.
Your acceptance of certain 'rights' leads to possibilities that seem like at a nightmare for those looking in on how your system works. 

Unless you start looking at why so many people are committing these horrendous crimes, you're taxes will continue to rise for the sake of stocking up on sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide andpotassium chloride. 

1. The death penalty is not irreversible but it is humane. It's as humane as putting a pet out of it's misery. The only difference is one deserves humane treatment and the other doesn't. Also prison is irreversible because once you take 5 years of someone's life they can't get it back.

2. Everyone has control of their own actions. Society doesn't breed murderers. As I have just told you, people can be in bad society's but if society breeds murderers then everyone who grew up in a broken society would kill.

3. Fair enough..

4. Just bring back the firing squad and it will be cheap and effective. It's cheap and it gets the job done.

[JTiscool]

This is a good and perfectly justified question. I believe it's very difficult to tell in what way your general opinions would change if you were personally affected.

The problem is that the same is true for the opposite situation: What if you instead was a close relative/friend to the offender? What if it was your own son? Your brother? Your best friend from school? What if you learned to really know some DR prisoner as a person, can you be 100% sure you still would advocate the DP for him (even if you still were convinced he was guilty and the verdict 100% correct)

Especially the last question is of great interest to me. It seems that when it comes to killing of another human beings most of us (thank God!) have a great resistance against it - as long as we see the potential victims as being really human! If you study the history of mankind you'll see that almost all genocides and even wars were preceeded by propaganda and/or rhetoric where the enemy (real or imagined) was dehumanized. The nazi propaganda against the Jews is one of the most obvious examples.

When you have established a mental picture among people that a group of humans are not really human beings it becomes much easier to have them accept or even actively participating in various attacks against them. Even killing. Because non-human beings can be killed if that serves some purpose to us, that is a belief that most of us (except for a small group of vegans and animal right activists) us believe. And there is always a purpose that is being presented, even if it's only vengeance.

Although no situation is exactly the same the process is/was pretty much the same. The german fathers/husbands who participated in mass murders on jews in the baltic countries, Yugoslavian men who killed former neighbours during the civil war, young american soldiers who killed innocent civilians in Vietnamn. Of course peer pressure can also be a part of the explanation in all of this examples, but peer pressure alone couldn't have made it work, hadn't it been preceeded by dehumanizing propaganda and attitudes of various kinds.

So what on earth has this got to do with the death penalty? My answer: To be a pro requires the same inner process. To think of the offenders as ordinary human beings with good sides and bad sides, capable of both doing good and doing wrong (like most of us) would make it impossible for most of you to support it. Because it would create an emotional conflict with other beliefs and values you have regarding human life and human rights. So you distance yourself from those people and do what you can by constantly talking about how evil they are and call them "monsters", "scumbags", "POS" and similar things all the time. And every little sign of humanity among the DR prisoners is generally explained away or viewed as just theater or manipulation. Because if you admitted to yourself that even some of this murderers that did very evil things may be capable of love and compassion and other good feelings, that they aren't all 100% selfobsessed, then the emotional distance you successfully created to them would began to collapse and it would be more difficult for you to stand there on the "right" side of the fence, shouting "Kill em! Kill em! Kill em!"

But aren't many of those men evil? Yup, some of them are psychopaths with no compassion whatsoever. Others are capable of doing very evil things because their compassion is mostly weak and their capacity to dehumanize and explain away their own evil actions is huge. Others are (or once were) capable of doing evil things in extreme situation when under great stress and had a bad upbringing and/or various mental issues that deminished their ability to study, work and all other things you need to manage to live a productive and law-abiding life. Many have been abused themselves and never had a chance to learn and experience normal, human relations. But that's not the point (my point).

What's important is not whether this men deserves our hate and condemnation, it is what happen to ourselves when we go through this process of dehumanization.  I'm not saying that we should feel sorry for them or even less spend our efforts in supporting them. There are lot of completely innocent persons in the world that could use what time and money we have to spend better.  But I say that we should be careful in not letting ourselves be carried away by hate and aggression. Because I don't think it's good for us, nor as indivduals neither as a whole society. When I look back in history I see almost nothing good at all that came out as a result of dehumanization processes. Whenever humans used this ability that seems to be built in the most of us (it's definately built in in me I can tell you) it mostly resulted in overall worse living conditions, more violence, less compassion.  If I hate DR offenders and view them as sub-humans it's not a long step to do the same with all murderers. And then the process can move further to other criminals, illegal immigrants or just poor people in general.

Maybe this is my strongest argument against the DP, hence this very long post.

I hope of course that I never will have to experience a murder at close distance and I honestly cannot tell exactly how I would react during various stages of the process. I'm sure feelings of rage and anger would be common. If someone harmed one of my kids I would surely be able to hurt them very bad in return. But hopefully in the long term I would keep my belief that deliberate killing (except in self defense) is ALWAYS wrong, no matter who does it and that even murderers are human beings.

Excellent post.

[JonnyTwoToes]

A few points:

1) I actually don't think everyone is redeemable.  Any crime should be punished and the severity of these crimes means a harsher punishment is necessary.  I don't actually agree with rehabilitation of those worthy of the DP either.  A crime that serious means you leave your human rights at the door to the prison in my opinion, but I won't go as far as to agree with the DP as it is an act that is irreversible and inhumane.
Yes, the common argument against that stance is "Well what they did to their victims wasn't humane!", but two wrongs don't make it right. 

2) I disagree with you on the Wanda Jean Allen scenario.  Certain societies to indeed breed criminality.  Simply compare crime per capita in certain parts of the  US - there is a vast difference.  That isn't to say ALL crime would be solved by looking at certain structures of society, but a fair percentage of those crimes where people find themselves on DP would.

3) And finally, you certainly can stop a chain of events from happening where a high percentage of these crimes are concerned.  For instance, we are lucky to have very strict gun laws over here as opposed to your bill of rights.  A gun crime in the UK is rare, but when it happens, it is front page news.  It is not the norm.
Your acceptance of certain 'rights' leads to possibilities that seem like at a nightmare for those looking in on how your system works. 

Unless you start looking at why so many people are committing these horrendous crimes, you're taxes will continue to rise for the sake of stocking up on sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide andpotassium chloride. 

1. The death penalty is not irreversible but it is humane. It's as humane as putting a pet out of it's misery. The only difference is one deserves humane treatment and the other doesn't. Also prison is irreversible because once you take 5 years of someone's life they can't get it back.

2. Everyone has control of their own actions. Society doesn't breed murderers. As I have just told you, people can be in bad society's but if society breeds murderers then everyone who grew up in a broken society would kill.

3. Fair enough..

4. Just bring back the firing squad and it will be cheap and effective. It's cheap and it gets the job done.

About this being 'humane', Henrik put's it far more eloquently than I ever could with his point of dehumanising people for the benefit of then punishing them in the way we see fit.

The central point here is to realise that those opposed to the DP aren't automatically criminal lovers (well, the sane ones aren't anyway!).
Those such as Henrik and myself (I hope I can speak for you Henrik) have exactly the same venom and anger towards these criminals as those who are in favour or the DP.  As mentioned earlier, the only difference here is that fact that I will stop short of supporting the DP and you won't.

That is a difference of opinion.

Anyway, I watched a program last night talking about "What is Reality?" and the whole area of quantum physics and string theory.  It appears none of this is real and we're living alternate lives in many other universes.  So in some other universe, we may all be having the switch thrown on us.

(Advice - don't ever watch a program about quantum physics before you go to bed!)

[skflorida]

For many years I was an anti,  1)  I believed that any killing was morally wrong 2) Social standing, economics, race and gender played too large a role, 3) It was too easy to make a mistake (eyewitness testimony, etc) and 4) I thought life in prison was far worse than death, I wanted these murderers to suffer. I now support the DP, not in all cases but most of them, the race, gender, economic inequities are mostly in the past, DNA has greatly reduced the risk of a mistake, and with the appeal process being as lengthy as it is, mistakes are corrected before a person is executed,  and morally, I think it is far worse to lock someone up and treat them as animals for the rest of their lives than to execute them. I do not "dehumanize" murderers, I am fully aware we all have many sides to our personality, I am aware that everyone is capable of both giving and receiving love. The DP does not create more victims, the person who made the decision to take a life did that. I do not "celebrate" executions, I pray that it will bring some sort of peace to the victims family and friends, I always think of the murderers family and friends and pray that they too will find peace. In short, I believe that the DP is a lawful, just punishment, a punishment that is easily avoided.

[JTiscool]

A few points:

1) I actually don't think everyone is redeemable.  Any crime should be punished and the severity of these crimes means a harsher punishment is necessary.  I don't actually agree with rehabilitation of those worthy of the DP either.  A crime that serious means you leave your human rights at the door to the prison in my opinion, but I won't go as far as to agree with the DP as it is an act that is irreversible and inhumane.
Yes, the common argument against that stance is "Well what they did to their victims wasn't humane!", but two wrongs don't make it right. 

2) I disagree with you on the Wanda Jean Allen scenario.  Certain societies to indeed breed criminality.  Simply compare crime per capita in certain parts of the  US - there is a vast difference.  That isn't to say ALL crime would be solved by looking at certain structures of society, but a fair percentage of those crimes where people find themselves on DP would.

3) And finally, you certainly can stop a chain of events from happening where a high percentage of these crimes are concerned.  For instance, we are lucky to have very strict gun laws over here as opposed to your bill of rights.  A gun crime in the UK is rare, but when it happens, it is front page news.  It is not the norm.
Your acceptance of certain 'rights' leads to possibilities that seem like at a nightmare for those looking in on how your system works. 

Unless you start looking at why so many people are committing these horrendous crimes, you're taxes will continue to rise for the sake of stocking up on sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide andpotassium chloride. 

1. The death penalty is not irreversible but it is humane. It's as humane as putting a pet out of it's misery. The only difference is one deserves humane treatment and the other doesn't. Also prison is irreversible because once you take 5 years of someone's life they can't get it back.

2. Everyone has control of their own actions. Society doesn't breed murderers. As I have just told you, people can be in bad society's but if society breeds murderers then everyone who grew up in a broken society would kill.

3. Fair enough..

4. Just bring back the firing squad and it will be cheap and effective. It's cheap and it gets the job done.

About this being 'humane', Henrik put's it far more eloquently than I ever could with his point of dehumanising people for the benefit of then punishing them in the way we see fit.

The central point here is to realise that those opposed to the DP aren't automatically criminal lovers (well, the sane ones aren't anyway!).
Those such as Henrik and myself (I hope I can speak for you Henrik) have exactly the same venom and anger towards these criminals as those who are in favour or the DP.  As mentioned earlier, the only difference here is that fact that I will stop short of supporting the DP and you won't.

That is a difference of opinion.

Anyway, I watched a program last night talking about "What is Reality?" and the whole area of quantum physics and string theory.  It appears none of this is real and we're living alternate lives in many other universes.  So in some other universe, we may all be having the switch thrown on us.

(Advice - don't ever watch a program about quantum physics before you go to bed!)

The death penalty has 3 purposes.

1. To prevent other people from getting murdered
2. To give the ultimate punishment for the worst of the worst murders
3. To act as a deterrent

Isn't our goal to prevent murders from committing more murders? Isn't that what we had prison for, but when prison fails what do we do? If the prison system isn't 100% guaranteed to stop a murderer from killing then that proves that the current means of punishment (Life in prison) fails.  Sure, Life in prison with no human contact would solve that problem but the Constitution prohibits that so therefore we must do the next best thing and if it means putting murderers to death then so be it.

[JonnyTwoToes]

The death penalty has 3 purposes.

1. To prevent other people from getting murdered
2. To give the ultimate punishment for the worst of the worst murders
3. To act as a deterrent

Isn't our goal to prevent murders from committing more murders? Isn't that what we had prison for, but when prison fails what do we do? If the prison system isn't 100% guaranteed to stop a murderer from killing then that proves that the current means of punishment (Life in prison) fails.  Sure, Life in prison with no human contact would solve that problem but the Constitution prohibits that so therefore we must do the next best thing and if it means putting murderers to death then so be it.

But every time you kill a murderer, you have more a long line of others waiting to step into their shoes.  The key issue of WHY people are committing these type of crimes is never being addressed.  By using the DP, you're never going to get to the core of the problem.  Surely it would be better to have less people to execute?

And just to go to your point number 2. (To give the ultimate punishment for the worst of the worst murders).  I don't consider the law of parties to support this opinion.
Texas is killing people who just happened to be some with the murderer at the time of the crime.
That doesn't sound like 'the worst of the worst' to me.

[ggbop]

I think Jonny's argument is NOT that he is against punishment, he is just against the Death Penalty.  I have to admit that I am very Pro-DP, but I am not so biased in my opinion that I cannot see his point of view.

We in the UK are a strange people.  When we DID have DP in the UK, we carried out the sentence within weeks of the verdict.  This gave rise to issues such as - should we be doing this, is the person really innocent, why do we not take into account mitigating factors (Ruth Ellis and her state of mind is a case in point).  The UK made too many mistakes and the DP sounded its own death knell because of it.

Now the UK suffers from a Justice system that makes light of murder, but condems theft.  Sentencing is a national joke and this has given rise in the number of DP Supporters in the UK.  There are still the dumb bints who write to DR inmates so that they can feel special about themselves, but please don't tar us all with the same brush  .

I may not agree with Jonny on his stance re the DP, but everyone is entitled to have an opinion without being attacked for it.  And that goes both ways IMHO.

[JonnyTwoToes]

Now the UK suffers from a Justice system that makes light of murder, but condems theft.  Sentencing is a national joke and this has given rise in the number of DP Supporters in the UK.  There are still the dumb bints who write to DR inmates so that they can feel special about themselves, but please don't tar us all with the same brush  .

Absolutely!  You get a longer sentence for tax fraud that you do if you kill someone over here.  Absolutely ridiculous!
Now the conservatives are in though, I'm hoping for things to get better in the justice system - I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[BB Survivor]

I have been reading this post with interest, I survived the bali bombings and those responsible were executed in November 2008 I still have mixed feelings about it.. I have always been an anti... however there are times particularly before I have surgery (I still get infections from shrapnel that is still in my leg near where I lost muscle) that I feel easier knowing that even though there is still attacks on innocent people these three monsters can never do this to anyone else. they took the lives of 202 people and injured so many more and never once showed remorse.

how do you punish people like that. I dont have an answer, life in prison has to mean life but for these would that have been enough, would they still have been able to communicate and recruit or worse still plan another attack these are questions I still have if they could then maybe I am wrong and the DP has a place.  sorry for the rant .

[ggbop]

I have been reading this post with interest, I survived the bali bombings and those responsible were executed in November 2008 I still have mixed feelings about it.. I have always been an anti... however there are times particularly before I have surgery (I still get infections from shrapnel that is still in my leg near where I lost muscle) that I feel easier knowing that even though there is still attacks on innocent people these three monsters can never do this to anyone else. they took the lives of 202 people and injured so many more and never once showed remorse.

how do you punish people like that. I dont have an answer, life in prison has to mean life but for these would that have been enough, would they still have been able to communicate and recruit or worse still plan another attack these are questions I still have if they could then maybe I am wrong and the DP has a place.  sorry for the rant .

Your post was not a rant it is a topic for discussion  .  Us folks never rant

[ScoopD (aka: Pam)]

I have been reading this post with interest, I survived the bali bombings and those responsible were executed in November 2008 I still have mixed feelings about it.. I have always been an anti... however there are times particularly before I have surgery (I still get infections from shrapnel that is still in my leg near where I lost muscle) that I feel easier knowing that even though there is still attacks on innocent people these three monsters can never do this to anyone else. they took the lives of 202 people and injured so many more and never once showed remorse.

how do you punish people like that. I dont have an answer, life in prison has to mean life but for these would that have been enough, would they still have been able to communicate and recruit or worse still plan another attack these are questions I still have if they could then maybe I am wrong and the DP has a place.  sorry for the rant .

No apologies necessary. You are welcome to share your thoughts here. I cannot even to begin to imagine what you have been through and your feelings are completely understandable.  It is not until something like this hits home that we truly begin to reflect on our own views. I was once against capital punishment....   whether you believe in it or not shouldn't be a question of right or wrong, it is a personal choice that we all make.

Welcome to the site.

Pam

[JTiscool]

The death penalty has 3 purposes.

1. To prevent other people from getting murdered
2. To give the ultimate punishment for the worst of the worst murders
3. To act as a deterrent

Isn't our goal to prevent murders from committing more murders? Isn't that what we had prison for, but when prison fails what do we do? If the prison system isn't 100% guaranteed to stop a murderer from killing then that proves that the current means of punishment (Life in prison) fails.  Sure, Life in prison with no human contact would solve that problem but the Constitution prohibits that so therefore we must do the next best thing and if it means putting murderers to death then so be it.

But every time you kill a murderer, you have more a long line of others waiting to step into their shoes.  The key issue of WHY people are committing these type of crimes is never being addressed.  By using the DP, you're never going to get to the core of the problem.  Surely it would be better to have less people to execute?

And just to go to your point number 2. (To give the ultimate punishment for the worst of the worst murders).  I don't consider the law of parties to support this opinion.
Texas is killing people who just happened to be some with the murderer at the time of the crime.
That doesn't sound like 'the worst of the worst' to me.

And you think sending people to prison instead of the death chamber will tell us why they commit murders? Face it, in the end it doesn't matter why they do what they do. It's a number of reasons such as greed, sexual repression, boredom etc but in the end one thing is clear. 99% of those who commit the murders knew it was wrong and they don't give a crap who they hurt. If they made an effort to evade the law then they knew it was wrong in the first place. You cannot prevent murder, it has been with us over centuries and will continue to do so until somehow we can operate on someone's brain and insert a chip in them that negates any thought of committing crimes.

In response to your second statement, it is right for them to execute a person under those circumstances provided he did know exactly what was going to happen, he didn't make any attempt to stop it and he conspired with his co-murderers.