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Post new topic   Reply to topic The Death Penalty
ecco



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 PostPosted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:01 pm Reply with quote        
oh no, thats awful >_< poor man. see that only convinces me further that the death penalty is wrong. what he did was terrible, truly, but it sounds as though he regrets and feels guilt. people can be driven to do all sorts of horrible things... i feel bad for him. its good that you could forgive him, it must mean a lot to him.

the only person i have met that i know has done something like that, was a guy i met in december when i was with some friends. we sat round a bonfire with a few other groups of people and got chatting, and it turned out that this one guy had commited murder a long time ago. but he did it to protect his daughter - i dont know the full story, but he seemed like a pleasant person. circumstance can drive people to do all sorts.

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The Emo Duck



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 PostPosted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:03 pm Reply with quote        
He felt horrible. He cried a few times talking to us... It was a little sad...

I know what you mean people shouldn't be defined by one bad thing they do.

ecco



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 PostPosted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:11 pm Reply with quote        
it is as Aristotle said; you can't judge a person as virtuous or not until they are dead, and the full life is lived, for to judge a person on a single part of their life is entirely unfair.

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The Emo Duck



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 PostPosted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:14 pm Reply with quote        
He knew what he was saying, didn't he? : )
ecco



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 PostPosted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:16 pm Reply with quote        
he definitely did. the worst part about studying that guy is that hes ALWAYS right. you just cant argue against him XD

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The Emo Duck



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 PostPosted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:18 pm Reply with quote        
Haha I know what you mean. We studied him last year in philosophy class and we have to write a paper about all the different people we studied and whether we agreed with them or not.
ecco



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 PostPosted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:20 pm Reply with quote        
ahh i did philosophy last year too XD so alot of it is hazy right now, but i just remember agreeing with every single word Aristotle wrote. haha Smile i loved studying philosophy, but i prefer spoken debate than writing about it.. which is unfortunate given the latter is how they grade you on it haha.

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The Emo Duck



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 PostPosted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:24 pm Reply with quote        
I don't like to speak out loud, so that's why I prefer debates here haha
nocturnalxpulse



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 PostPosted: Fri May 07, 2010 11:05 pm Reply with quote        
The death penatly is very sad, but all our money right now is going to prison and keeping prisoners happy, why should they be happy? They still have their rights to a free trial but sohould'n't they lose some rights? If they kill someone in cold blood and promis they wont do it agian how many actually change their ways.......... I dont like sencless killing and i belive that we should bring back the death penalty *embarrasses* i know its wrong and its not like death is fun to watch and Revendge is one of the most evil things ourt there....

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Tianfu



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 PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2010 2:28 am Reply with quote        
Personally, I support the death penalty. There are people out there who are just too sick to live. But that's a gut reaction that has nothing to do with rational facts.

Rationally, the American prison system doesn't work in any way. It is not a rehabilitation system. Inmates are not given couselling or skills that might improve their life standing when they get out. As someone earlier pointed out, the ones in for short terms come out with criminal contacts. And the ones in for long terms come out institutionalized, completely unable to re-enter society in any constructive way. Our prisons are meant solely as punishment, but they aren't a deterrent to crime. Everyone knows what the punishment will be if they murder someone and get caught, but people still kill each other.

So, taking that into account, a life sentence is punishment for life, which, when you think about it, could be considered torture. You are basically taking away their life, but you didn't kill them, so you can feel all high and mighty about it. Beyond any eye-for-an-eye reaction, I believe that instead of torturing someone for seventy, eighty, ninety years, we should just put them out of their misery. And they won't be a burden on the state for the rest of their lives.

And I'll continue to think that, unless we revamp the whole system to be a rehabilitation one. But even then, there will always be people who are so deranged as to be, to put it bluntly, a lost cause. They will always be a danger to society, and so I think the death penalty should still be applied to them.
ecco



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 PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2010 4:11 am Reply with quote        
i agree that prisons need to become more concerned with rehabilitation than punishment... that goes for the UK as well as the US, we have the same problems here. i still dont believe the death penalty is right tho. if you think about serial killers - from what i can see, they are not actually monsters. they do monstrous things, yes, but they are sick. they are still a human being, theres just something not quite right upstairs. and thats not their fault. often its the fault of somebody in their past, for example their parents or something. its not fair to kill someone if theyre sick. they should be kept away from society so they cant hurt anybody, but i believe they should be treated with compassion. let them have a comfortable but isolated life.

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The Emo Duck



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 PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2010 9:04 am Reply with quote        
Nocturnal: Most inmates have pretty much every other right taken away from them. Speedy trial and things that have to do with arrest are pretty much the only rights they have. They can't vote anymore when they are a convicted felon, they don't have free speech because whatever they say will be used against them. And prisoners aren't happy... most of them end up killing themselves because prison is too much to handle. Death is an easy way out for them and many take that route themselves, so why spend state dollars to do something they may do themselves?

Tianfu: Many of the "sick" people you are referring to actually have an illness, it's just of the mind and not of the body. And in many cases it is this sickness that causes them to do the things they do. The sickness is not something they can control either, it's usually obtained in a biological way and/or through experiences in childhood or earlier life.

I do think that prisons should do more to rehabilitate some of the inmates, but I do think that there are some that are past the point of rehabilitation. And most of the people that are past this have life sentences and won't have to worry about re-entering society. You mentioned how prison isn't a deterrent to crime, neither is the death penalty actually, because most of the people who commit crimes don't think about the punishment, only the act itself because they don't believe they will get caught. Studies have been done showing that the death penalty isn't a deterrent in some states there was a correlation between having the death penalty and having less crime BUT correlation doesn't not mean causation, there could be other confounding variables that cause the lack of crime.

They killed someone and in some cases they killed multiple people, don't you think they should at least receive some sort of punishment for what they did? I feel like it should be a mix of punishment and rehabilitation, they need some sort of punishment for their actions.

But those people are sick, why not put them in an institution instead of a prison so they can live a more comfortable life and not have the same urges as before? Those people can be helped they just need the right kind of help and prison isn't it.

Ecco: I agree with what you said about pretty much everything haha

Tianfu



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 PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2010 2:08 pm Reply with quote        
In my above post, I use the word "sick" in a derogatory way, rather than referring to someone who actually has an illness, which was probably not the best word choice. So, for people who have a physical illness that messes up their brain chemistry and makes them truly unable to understand their actions, yes, rather than being given the death penalty, they should get medical help... in most cases. If there is no cure for an illness, I still believe they should be put down, rather than allowed to suffer for a lifetime, either in prison or in an institution (which isn't much better in a lot of cases).

However, I don't subscribe to the thought that childhood trauma makes someone incapable of realizing that their actions are wrong. Too often, people use the "I was abused as a child" as a sort of "get out of jail free" card. There is nothing medically wrong with their brain that causes their actions. I, myself, had an abusive stepmother as a young child. That does not mean I get to murder, rape or torture another person with no repercussions. Having been abused doesn't make me unable to tell between right and wrong.

And I realize that the death penalty is not a deterrent, although I believe the statistics you quoted to be somewhat two dimensional. More goes into crime rates than just the presence or absense of the death penalty. I'd say socio-economic conditions have more to do with it. However, that's another discussion. I don't think the death penalty SHOULD be used as a deterrent. Rather, I don't think that "life without chance of parole" should be a sentence ever handed down. If the crime was considered that heinous, and there's no chance of ever rehabilitating the criminal, just give them the death penalty. And don't let them sit on death row for fifty years, either. They should have enough time for an appeal or two, maybe five years, and then put them to death. There is no reason these people should be a complete drain on the system for their entire life, just so that we can feel better about ourselves because, although we sentenced them to a torturous existence for seventy years, "at least we didn't kill them."
The Emo Duck



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 PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2010 5:45 pm Reply with quote        
In most cases though childhood trauma does cause mental illness, I never said it was an excuse to avoid punishment though. I feel like the death penalty is an easy way out for some people, a lot of inmates choose to kill themselves because they would rather be dead, and what kind of punishment is being dead? You don't feel anything when you're dead, you can never truly be sorry for what you've done. Carl Panzram, a serial killer from the '20s and '30s was sentenced to death and said to detectives when arrested for house-breaking "I have put a lot of people out of their misery, and now I am looking for someone to put me out of mine." And at his execution he egged the executioner on by saying "Hurry us you hoosier b*stard I could hang a dozen men while you're fooling around."

Some mental illnesses make it so you do know what's right and what's wrong but you have no conscience, these are the "sick" people you are referring to. In which case they are still actually sick and need help for it not to be put to death because they have no conscience. This is still a brain chemical imbalance. I know what being abused is like too, not from family but from 3 of my former boyfriends, all totaling to 4 years of abuse. I wouldn't even dream of killing, raping and torturing another person because I don't want to put others through that. But some people who have been abused want to project their abuse onto someone else. They are using the weaker person as a surrogate for letting out the abuse put on them, because the abuser is too strong. Another Panzram quote "If I couldn't injure those who injured me I would injure someone else." He knew what he was doing was wrong but he still did it because he had no conscience, these people don't think like people without an illness like me or you.

I quoted statistics from a death penalty study, done in the late 50s I believe I couldn't find the exact numbers so I summarized it.
I don't not want the death penalty because I want them to be tortured in prison and us to say "at least we didn't kill them." I don't want there to be a death penalty because I think it's an easy way out, I think we should at least try to rehabilitate first and try to make them realize they should be sorry for what they've done and if not then they can sit in prison. But I do think prisons need to be fixed, they are a broken system that I don't approve of. And life in prison doesn't cost as much as the death penalty, I wrote about that in my first post if you wanted to take a look, cause there are more details there and I posted the deterrent study there too.


Helen



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 PostPosted: Sat May 15, 2010 2:52 am Reply with quote        
I'm in support of the death penalty, but only on certain cases. There is no black and white in determining if somebody lives or dies, there is no cookie-cutter way to go about it. And above everything, I believe that it should not be done if there is any doubt of their guilt--if it's possible that they're innocent, stop right there.

First off, I support the whole argument that prison should be about rehabilitation and not punishment--for those who will be released from the system, it's very important that we at least TRY to reform them instead of letting them rot for a few years before letting them back out. However, for those who will not be released, I support one of two courses: Life sentence or death penalty.

For various white collar criminals like extortionists or huge fraud (of course I'm talking very severe levels here, like ruining hundreds of other people), I support life in prison. Does it do much, I don't think so, but I don't believe it warrants killing them but I also wouldn't want to see them released after so much harm.

However, for true sociopaths who are 100% proven beyond a doubt to have committed a truly heinous crime such as serial murder, serial child rape, etc, something not in self-defense or limited to one incident...I don't see the purpose in wasting resources to keep them alive, especially not when they're a risk to other inmates. That food and money could go to much better things. They had their chance at life, and with that chance they chose to take the lives of other people, it's pretty clear that they failed. Some people are there by their own actions, and sadly some are there because they were manipulated into doing things, but I don't believe in mercy based on that. They still chose to do it. Not everyone abused by their parents ends up a murderer, not everyone who gets in with the bad crowd ends up a hitman, there are choices made.

I am a very compassionate person who believes that every human IS human, but when somebody has taken their one chance at life and used it in the worst way possible...

I don't love the idea of determining if somebody lives or dies, but if it is known beyond a doubt that they committed such a heinous crime as to never allow them into society again then why keep them alive? To make them feel sorry for what they've done? Pfft. I don't know why we should spend money to keep them inside 4 walls just so that they can think. I'm sure some of them come around and see what they did, but to what purpose? They'll die there anyway. They won't get to apply what they learned to lead a better life, their life is already gone--they're just waiting until their heart stops beating. It certainly is the easy way out, I agree with that, but I don't see what's so bad about that. If they're in there for life without parol for such a terrible crime and all appeals have led to nothing, just end it.

[/babbles]

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