There are 5 MAIN aims for law - well in Australia. 1. Discourage others: Most crimes that are committed like murder are committed in the heat of the moment due to anger etc etc, and most cases the offenders dont even consider the punishment before they act 2. Rehabilitate: their dead, they cant get rehab'd, EVER! 3. Removing from society: Only possible reason for killing someone, to keep them away. Can also be done in maximum security prison, though will cost more. 4. Shaming: the dead dont feel shame. 5. -I forget- Out of the 5, or rather 4, it only does one any good ( number 3 ). Thus its fairly inefficient and lowers society to the level of killers.
It should be abolished because there is always a chance that the person is innocent... In the system right now there are people who have been proven to have been wrongly convicted.
The cost of a bullet vs. the cost of keeping a criminal locked up for years? No-brainer. Give them the bullet, then turn them into fertilizer. That way they'll be useful to society. The whole thing about "What if an innocent person dies?"... well, what if an innocent person gets locked up for life? Sucks either way, death penalty or no. Sometimes the legal system will screw up, it's inevitable. EVERY system screws up. You just have to find the best non-perfect solution, because no solution is perfect. For example, would it be wonderful if there were no crime on Earth? Sure. Is it possible to achieve that - or even come close - without thoroughly destroying every right and freedom human beings have and deserve? No. Therefore, even though every time someone is killed, raped, robbed, or whatever, it is a tragedy, we have to find and keep the balance between protecting our lives/property and protecting our rights (hint hint, Mr. Bush).
Yet your doubt doesn't make it fact. Here's one, though: If I were innocent, but being accused of a crime that would earn me the death penalty were I found guilty, I'd do something never done before. I'd pick apart that "jury of your peers" section and, defining peer as an equal, demand that only people with an IQ equalling my own were chosen to hear my case. Best bet for survival - I'll be damned if I'd let some sub-grade moron screw me over. It'd probably be the opposite if I was guilty, though Anyway, if I was still found guilty and sentenced to death, in point of fact I wouldn't do what everyone does. I wouldn't say "This entire system is crap solely based on the fact that it didn't work for me." I HATE that people raise up a flag and want to enact world-shaking changes over every small incident with no thought to the bigger picture. I'd do everything I could to get myself free, sure, but I wouldn't do that.
Wow. Just wow. This forum must be -REALLY- forgiving and lenient to let that pass. Even at school -mines Catholic or Christian i think- people would pounce on that one.
I totally agree. Only fools expect a perfect system. No one can argue against you on that, hell heres a cookie. But the argument here is a moral one, does what the death punishment achieve warrant the killing of a human being? Yes, the cost of a bullet is less than the cost of keeping them locked up, but what is the cost on society. What is the cost on society exactly? Well firstly since law and the legal system is a reflection of society, if the legal system kills, so does society. Whether or not you pulled the trigger on the crim, by allowing that law to pass you have helped doing so. Im not saying that it makes citizens stone cold killers, but mentally we should know the gravity of what we're doing. Can you stand it? Knowing lives are ending because you simply think its the cheaper altnernative? Secondly.. well theres a whole 4 or 5 legal reasons in my last post i wont bother with. Btw: you guys have some really interesting and valid points. No matter what side of the fence your sitting on.
I have to point out some flaws in your otherwise reasonable arguments. You speak of the cost of a bullet vs cost of taking care of an inmate. Yet challenging the legal system to come up with a literal "jury of your peers" is both expensive (think of the legal bills, the expert testimony, etc) and foolish. No system on earth would ever ratify such a proposal. You would never get anywhere with that demand. A jury is always your best bet anyway, versus a judge who probably has a higher IQ than you (the general population), that's why the more serious crimes must ALWAYS have a jury --> if there is reasonable doubt (not even an absolute certainty) that a person may be innocent, then they are let go, whereas a judge may be nowhere as lenient. We are talking about the death penalty. Liberty to life. For the person who is facing the death penalty and for all the people affected by it, it is by no means a small incident. Of course everyone would do everything they could to get themselves free, and the fact that the system did not work for them (fundamental rights to justice) means that serious changes are needed to improve the justice system. In a democracy people are allowed to appeal, challenge, fight over the tiniest things. For example see the case of Charles Ng. If we can't depend on our justice system, held over everything, including the government, (except the Constitution) then what can we depend on?
Are you American? I think the guy wasnt seriously expecting to get about 12 men and women that are his friends. I'm not sure how it is with you guys. But in Australia, only a fraction of cases are with juries. like 3%-5% or something, most of them are just decided by judges. Its more efficient and adds more credibility to the legal system in the respect you dont have to wait like 5 years to get your case heard because of slow juries. Also regarding about your point about the judge being less leniant. Not really... If there is a reasonable doubt in the judges mind the person is let off. Its not something that is amplified with 12 people, straight up if there is a doubt then everyone will see it. In your example i assume your talking about an innocent. Good point.
How do you figure administering IQ tests to potential jurors would be prohibitively expensive? For real now... the cost would be infinitesimal compared to the cost of keeping even one criminal imprisoned for one year. The costly and drawn-out part would be getting it to be allowed in the first place, but only because it has no precedent. It's a very sensible request - so much so that I'm surprised no one's ever tried it. "Intelligent man wants intelligent jury. Doesn't want dumb---es deciding his fate." Without going into my whole life story, the last professionally administered IQ test I took rated me in the top .1% of the population. I'm smart enough to know how dumb people can be, and the more intelligent the juror, the better their powers of concentration, comprehension, retention, and discernment, therefore the best chance of a correct decision/verdict. I don't think that's an unreasonable request when one's life hangs in the balance. It would still take some legal battle but that cost would be mine, not the state's, and it would be well worth it. About that second part, I could easily get side-tracked into asking how in a democracy, the rich and famous are able to wipe their arses with the Constitution, but let's stay on topic and for argument's sake assume we have a democracy here. It's not whether or not people are allowed to make a big deal out of every incident - you got lost somewhere - it's whether or not it's right. You can't get a perfect system, ESPECIALLY where humans are allowed to put their flawed hands and noses into it, therefore you go for the least flawed system. Do you follow? Should we ground every airline because one plane crashes? Or destroy every road and car because of an automobile accident? Ban all violent movies because of one proven instance of a copycat murderer who did what he saw in Natural Born Killers? No... you'd agree that's preposterous, right? And it hasn't happened. But where's the difference? What's the difference between a judicial system that we estimate works 99.999% of the time making the odd mistake here and there and the odd mistakes with our media system, our driving system, our flight system, and so many more? There is no perfection. It sucks to be the guy who's the "odd mistake", but that's life. Regardless, people keep striving for perfection or making big deals out of isolated incidents but, from what I see, quite often they improve one thing by restricting another and people end up paying the price one way or the other. They just don't always see the price tag... and that's what I'm saying. I wish people thought more about the ramifications of their battle cries instead of being like lemmings who don't know what's over the edge of the cliff but are hell-bent on finding out.
Because I don't want to put the effort into researching the actual cost of giving IQ tests to every citizen in the country lest they be called to jury duty, as well as the constitutional challenges that would involve everyone in the justice system as it works its way up the Supreme Court and other as yet unforeseen fees I do not know whether it would be prohibitively expensive. But it would definitely be an expensive addition to an already over-burdened system. Also, the thing about IQ tests. They do not determine the susceptibility of a person to fall to peer pressure, as well as other factors not related to intelligence such as impatience, emotion vs logic, personal biases, etc. Also, if a person of borderline idiocy was put on trial for a murder and they are actually innocent, would all his/her jurors be of similarly low IQ, thus making them easier to manipulate by lawyers? It is much more fair to give everyone an equal chance to have a jury randomly selected from the general population that contains people of varying degrees of intelligence. The justice system, including police action and federal legislation, plays the unique role of administering sentences to someone who has committed a crime through the state regardless of their position in society or any other factor. In a democracy, that means a lot, whether or not rich people take advantage of the situation or not - see Conrad Black. It is a privilege not granted to some developing countries. It is unfair to compare the justice system to an airline company, a transportation route, a lone case of a bizarre and troubled person. In these cases there are too many uncontrollable factors that may have affected the incident in question, which may not be due to the flight, driving, media system. However, any miscarriage in the justice system is due to problems preexisting in the justice system itself. I don't understand what you mean because you are being extremely general. What are they trying to improve and restrict at the same time? What price tag? What ramifications of what battle cries make them like lemmings?
I never said intelligence is a cure-all and that a jury of intelligent people would definitely provide the right verdict, I only said it's the best bet. If you don't think people of average or low IQ are more likely to exhibit impatience, bias, and emotion driven decision making that intelligent people... then we'll just have to agree to disagree here. I'm glad Conrad Black got sent up, but what does that prove? Whitney Houston and her drug charges....? Julia Roberts and hxxp://www.juliaroberts.com [hxxp:// in there to prevent hotlinking]....? Governor Corzine and everything he does...? For every rich guy that takes a fall, you can find fifty that makes a mockery of the justice system. And it's nice to say I'm making a bad comparison of systems, but I think it was a sensible comparison and disagree with you. I think human error is more often than not the cause behind the failure of all of the above. Still, we're way off-topic here. The original question was whether or not the death penalty should exist. I say yes. I think the Earth is a better place with violent criminals absent from it completely. And I don't think the very vague "There's an off-chance that some innocent person might be wrongly sentenced to death and executed for a crime he didn't commit, and even if it did happen chances are we wouldn't know it." is even close to a good reason for doing away with the death penalty. I'm pretty sure I gave a specific instance or two before.... I didn't feel like re-typing the same thing over again. If you don't feel like reading back, I understand.
against bc i dont think it deters crime... i dont think someone goes oh i should nt commit this crime cause i might die... i think its the easy way out to just die.
IMO the cost of keeping prisoners alive shouldn't be the reason to give them death penalty over life sentence. I DO realize that all the money just doesn't grow in trees but it sounds REALLY wrong if the monetary price of keeping human beings alive instead of killing them is mostly what matters. If you want less people then I have two words for you: baby control. They are the real evil ones o_o I think sentencing or not sentencing death penalties depends highly on the state of the society. Totalitarian countries, and countries with more relative poverty tend to have death penalty as an option in order to try to keep people on the right path by showing how far they'd go with punishing. Countries with a better welfare system and less of the rich-poor castes rarely would go that far since they *cough* tend to value human lives *cough*.
I don't think its right to take away someones life. For example;; They want to put the death penalty upon a mass murderer. Will it prove that killing is wrong if the government KILLS him?
the real queston is can you ever be sure you have the right person. as a firm believer of the shanksaw redemption. lol i think that you can't put someone to death with out justified proof, tangiable undeniable proof, which doesn't really exist