Death Sentence Vs Life Imprisonment

arunbg

Should capital punishment be abolished and replaced with life imprisonment ? Is death more humane as compared to almost 15 years of rigorous confinement ? Do you think some criminals actually deserve the ultimate punishment ?

I feel death penalty should indeed be abolished .It doesn't make the judges any different from the convicts themselves. Every man has a right to live his life to the fullest. It is not reasonable to take what you cannot give back. Sure there may be people who are rotten to the core and are a threat to society, but even they ought to be given a second chance, while taking necessary precasutions of course.

Arun

Pengwuino

I don't think the idea that "Every man has a right to live his life to the fullest" is a good case against the death penalty. The alternative is throwing a man in maximum security prison... and well... no man lives his life to the fullest in there.

Tom Mattson

I voted Both. Some people deserve to swing from the gallows.

arunbg

What about life after his term or during paroles ?
Even if life isn't at the fullest, it can still be worthwhile .
Death just terminates this opportunity.

Pengwuino

I'm just saying thats a bad reasoning against the death penalty because in fact, they don't get to live a large majority of their life to the fullest or anywhere near that. Life isn't much of a cakewalk after 40 years in prison either when/if you're paroled.

Plus its rather unfair to let someone be released from prison to at least attempt to have a normal life when his very act stopped another persons life dead in its tracks, literally.

siddharth

I don't think that anyone should be sentenced to death.

Evo

Someone that deserves the death penalty should not ever be eligible for parole or a sentence less than life (without the opportunity for parole).

Why should a criminal that is guilty of something heinous enough to warrant the death penalty be entitled to a "worthwhile" life? Some people are just evil and not reformable. I don't think their time in prison should be like summer camp.

siddharth

But, if you're dead, life isn't much of a cakewalk either.

Pengwuino

and this means.....

Notice how i said nothing as to the merits of the death penalty...

Kurdt

The reason I am against the death penalty particularly for murder is that its such a contradictory penalty. You say that killing somebody is wrong and that it is one of the most awful crimes one can comit yet you condone the killing of the murderer afterwards. Doesn't make sense to me. Taking a life is either wrong or it isn't.

EDIT: Second point is in the event of a miscarriage of justice.

arildno

Really? By the long or short rope?
Or is frying more humane?


As I see it, the punitive element in the societal reaction towards crime is largely irrational, obscuring the perfectly rational motive of getting some dangerous person off the streets (this, of course, given any type of crime, is most effectively done by killing the person)

One of the primary problems with the whole punishment idea is that the punishment must "fit" the crime, it can't be larger or less.
This means, for example, that a petty crime drug addict must get a "small" punishment if any, instead of being forcibly retained until we may be comfortably certain the guy can be released and do no further offenses.

On the other scale, since "taking a life" is said to be such a horrifying act, a woman finally rebelling after years of abuse by taking her husband's life must be consigned a long prison term (or execution), even though there is just the minutest risk she'll ever do something like that again.


On the death vs. life imprisonment issue, I voted life imprisonment only, since "undecided" wasn't an option.

Pengwuino

But how often is a housewife given the death penalty for killing her abusive husband?

MeJennifer

Depends on the person you ask.

Some have those morals while others do not.

Some consider it simply an effective deterrent for others.
"Here, look! This is what's going to happen to you if you do not obey the law!". The criminal is used as an example and warning for others.

Tom Mattson

It was just an expression. I don't mean that we should use the literal gallows. I think that the lethal injection should be used. Actually, I think that's a lot more humane than life in a maximum security US prison, where the local gang of nothing-to-lose, AIDS-ridden convicts would be happy to offer a new convict a lethal injection of an entirely different sort.

Kurdt

arildno: I concur with this point of view but perhaps go further to say that a lot of petty crimes are born from social factors which largely need to be resolved in society. Beyond that some serious crimes are performed by people whom I imagine have some sort of mental illness. WE agree that anybody in their right mind would not comit murder but we fail to recognise even in this era that mental illnesses are a very broad spectrum indeed. The fact that somebody killed is indeed terrible but if they are fond to be of unsound mind then they deserve the chance to be treated and live a normal life.

This is similar to arildno's beaten wife argument, One could say environmental conditions have pushed her to the edge of sanity and in one brief moment she lashed out and murdered her abuser. With the correct councelling that woan could be freed into society with no danger to anybody else. Of course it depends on whether you believe society should be survival of the fittest type or a one in which we all look out for each other.

siddharth

What I mean is that, I think that every person including the criminal has a right to life.

There's a lot of conflicting studies done on the effect of capital punishment as a detterent. If I remember, some studies even showed that there were higher murder rates in countries with the death penalty. In fact, I don't think that statistical studies can prove that the death penalty actually causes the murder rate to drop, they can at best only show correlation.

MeJennifer

Were does this notion come from that murder must be some kind of mental illness?
Perhaps from the absurd idea that since "humans must be good and if that is contradicted by the facts then they must 'obviously' be mentally ill, by definition"?

What a few thousand year of history has shown us is that humans murder for all kind of reasons, ranging from pleasure to self defense. Murder is simply a human activity, which by the way is not uncommon in the animal world either.

I wonder if you would call a lion mentally ill as well?