on The Death Penalty
Time to make an actual post here, so I don't look like a creepy empty account posting lots of things on the growing number of people I am posting on. (Three now!)
It took me a lot longer to find the "post new entry" button than it should have.
Anyway:
The Death Penalty.
Two links that you do not have to read because I will explain them much better than they do:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/25/772133/-MAJOR-Death-Penalty-News-out-of-Texas
http://www.abajournal.com/news/expert_hits_arson_finding_in_case_that_led_to_defendants_execution/
I don't believe everything I read on the internet so let's all take those results there with a teaspoon of salt and say, purely for argument's sake, that they're correct. Here's what happened:
A man set fire to his house and killed his three kids on purpose. What an evil prick. Texas agreed that he was an evil prick and put him on trial, where everyone agreed he was an evil prick and decided to executed him for being an evil prick. They killed the evil prick and then some new evidence was brought forward that proved that he wasn't an evil prick after all and that the whole fire was an accident. Whoops.
Let's avoid talking about how "miscarriages" of justice are awful. That's for another time and deserves a post all for itself.
The Death Penalty is one of several things that I have differing opinions on when it is being discussed in principle, or in practice.
I agree with the death penalty in principle.
I disagree with the death penalty in practice.
I agree with abortion in practice.
I disagree with abortion in principle.
Again, though, that's another topic for another time that can probably take up my entire livejournal posts forever. If my views on abortion from that little tidbit anger you then please bottle it up, let it ferment for a while, and unleash it on me when I bring up that topic point. I will love you for it because I love a good debate.
The Death Penalty: (I digress a lot)
If someone killed someone I loved I would want revenge. I wouldn't want some sort of cowardly resolution involving punishment that suits the crime only because I want other would-be criminals to be deterred from committing that same crime. Fuck that, I want punishment for that person because they _killed someone I loved_ and if you disagree that someone who kills your loved one deserves punishment then I unabashedly propose that you didn't love them and merely cared for them. There are levels of love and levels of recourse that go with them, of course. Let's go with the extreme: imagine you have a child, only a few years old and about to start school, and a man sneaks into your house in the middle of the night and rapes and kills him/her.
In that position I would want that man dead. I do not have children and I already feel that strongly about it. I hope I never have to experience the loss of a child but I am 99% certain that I would want to rip the heart out of the person who killed my child. Maybe grief would incapacitate me, or humble me, or something, but I would want the man dead. The point I am getting to right about now is: not only would I want the man's head on a platter, but I would feel completely justified and right in that desire. I think, morally, that I would be in a good place. A place of strength. If it was an accidental death from drunk driving or something else then that starts to degrade into a gray area. But vicious, sober intent that results in the death of a person should be reconciled with that person's death in my mind.
That's the principle that I agree with:
If you kill someone, you have forfeited your right to be in society. Since removing a person from society entirely is impossible without death, then death is the only option left.
Now in practice:
You need to be able to prove murder without a shadow of a doubt. How do you do this? You can't, really.
There are multiple sources of proof and most of them are flawed. Some have exceptions wherein they might become reliable, but people are horrible and lie all the fucking time.
Witnesses cannot be fully trusted. If there was a massive amount of witnesses like, for example, school shooting situations, then that may become an exception where they can be used in a reliable manner. A single witness can lie. Even if they are telling the truth the risk of executing an innocent man is too high to place on the testimony of one person. It's too high to place on even two, three, or even four people.
Technological evidence. This cannot full be trusted either. This is kind of bleeding into the talk about the justice system so let me curtail it back right afterwards. Video tapes and photographs can be doctored. I have the technology to do it on this computer right here and I could probably learn in a few days if I really wanted to. Multiple sources with multiple witnesses may culminate into an exception.
DNA. I don't like DNA. It's in every bad crime show out there. "Yeah, there's the guy's DNA all over this guy, he must have done it." It's hard to understand and therefore easy to mislead people while explaining it. There's also new, high-profile crime that has actually had DNA planted, or completely fabricated, which throws the whole thing out of the window in terms of it being air-tight and infallible.
The only way I think I could be satisfied with a jury sentencing a person to death is if the accused pleaded guilty to the crime. This raises a lot of questions about being forced or coerced into pleading guilty, but that applies to any case already. I think this is the only way to be completely safe with execution. If the accused lied just to commit suicide via the justice system, then that is very fucked up. I believe suicide should be legal anyway (again, another discussion, another time) so it's not a big problem for me. It's just fucked up.
There's one last problem, though: the government is killing its own people.
I have problems with governments killing _other_ government's people, nevermind its own. On a base level, it just feels wrong and off, but it may be a necessary problem. The same argument can be said for confining people. Jails are full of citizens held their against their will, citizens that paid taxes and voted just like the rest of us. I think the same justification we make for them being jailed can be extended to execution, it's just that it feels a lot more dangerous and wrong because there is a permanent process involved that cannot be reversed, and has this crazed fantasy where executions in controlled manners that are appealed over months and months for years will be shortened down to split-second decisions by cops on the street and will become an everyday thing in police state North America. Maybe they will even have weapons that are generally referred to as "non-lethal alternatives" to keep the gullible in the population blind to the danger of the police, and make the weapons shoot out jolts of electricity instead of things that leave puncture wounds so the death is clean and not at all bloody. Oh wait?
Again, another day.
It took me a lot longer to find the "post new entry" button than it should have.
Anyway:
The Death Penalty.
Two links that you do not have to read because I will explain them much better than they do:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/25/772133/-MAJOR-Death-Penalty-News-out-of-Texas
http://www.abajournal.com/news/expert_hits_arson_finding_in_case_that_led_to_defendants_execution/
I don't believe everything I read on the internet so let's all take those results there with a teaspoon of salt and say, purely for argument's sake, that they're correct. Here's what happened:
A man set fire to his house and killed his three kids on purpose. What an evil prick. Texas agreed that he was an evil prick and put him on trial, where everyone agreed he was an evil prick and decided to executed him for being an evil prick. They killed the evil prick and then some new evidence was brought forward that proved that he wasn't an evil prick after all and that the whole fire was an accident. Whoops.
Let's avoid talking about how "miscarriages" of justice are awful. That's for another time and deserves a post all for itself.
The Death Penalty is one of several things that I have differing opinions on when it is being discussed in principle, or in practice.
I agree with the death penalty in principle.
I disagree with the death penalty in practice.
I agree with abortion in practice.
I disagree with abortion in principle.
Again, though, that's another topic for another time that can probably take up my entire livejournal posts forever. If my views on abortion from that little tidbit anger you then please bottle it up, let it ferment for a while, and unleash it on me when I bring up that topic point. I will love you for it because I love a good debate.
The Death Penalty: (I digress a lot)
If someone killed someone I loved I would want revenge. I wouldn't want some sort of cowardly resolution involving punishment that suits the crime only because I want other would-be criminals to be deterred from committing that same crime. Fuck that, I want punishment for that person because they _killed someone I loved_ and if you disagree that someone who kills your loved one deserves punishment then I unabashedly propose that you didn't love them and merely cared for them. There are levels of love and levels of recourse that go with them, of course. Let's go with the extreme: imagine you have a child, only a few years old and about to start school, and a man sneaks into your house in the middle of the night and rapes and kills him/her.
In that position I would want that man dead. I do not have children and I already feel that strongly about it. I hope I never have to experience the loss of a child but I am 99% certain that I would want to rip the heart out of the person who killed my child. Maybe grief would incapacitate me, or humble me, or something, but I would want the man dead. The point I am getting to right about now is: not only would I want the man's head on a platter, but I would feel completely justified and right in that desire. I think, morally, that I would be in a good place. A place of strength. If it was an accidental death from drunk driving or something else then that starts to degrade into a gray area. But vicious, sober intent that results in the death of a person should be reconciled with that person's death in my mind.
That's the principle that I agree with:
If you kill someone, you have forfeited your right to be in society. Since removing a person from society entirely is impossible without death, then death is the only option left.
Now in practice:
You need to be able to prove murder without a shadow of a doubt. How do you do this? You can't, really.
There are multiple sources of proof and most of them are flawed. Some have exceptions wherein they might become reliable, but people are horrible and lie all the fucking time.
Witnesses cannot be fully trusted. If there was a massive amount of witnesses like, for example, school shooting situations, then that may become an exception where they can be used in a reliable manner. A single witness can lie. Even if they are telling the truth the risk of executing an innocent man is too high to place on the testimony of one person. It's too high to place on even two, three, or even four people.
Technological evidence. This cannot full be trusted either. This is kind of bleeding into the talk about the justice system so let me curtail it back right afterwards. Video tapes and photographs can be doctored. I have the technology to do it on this computer right here and I could probably learn in a few days if I really wanted to. Multiple sources with multiple witnesses may culminate into an exception.
DNA. I don't like DNA. It's in every bad crime show out there. "Yeah, there's the guy's DNA all over this guy, he must have done it." It's hard to understand and therefore easy to mislead people while explaining it. There's also new, high-profile crime that has actually had DNA planted, or completely fabricated, which throws the whole thing out of the window in terms of it being air-tight and infallible.
The only way I think I could be satisfied with a jury sentencing a person to death is if the accused pleaded guilty to the crime. This raises a lot of questions about being forced or coerced into pleading guilty, but that applies to any case already. I think this is the only way to be completely safe with execution. If the accused lied just to commit suicide via the justice system, then that is very fucked up. I believe suicide should be legal anyway (again, another discussion, another time) so it's not a big problem for me. It's just fucked up.
There's one last problem, though: the government is killing its own people.
I have problems with governments killing _other_ government's people, nevermind its own. On a base level, it just feels wrong and off, but it may be a necessary problem. The same argument can be said for confining people. Jails are full of citizens held their against their will, citizens that paid taxes and voted just like the rest of us. I think the same justification we make for them being jailed can be extended to execution, it's just that it feels a lot more dangerous and wrong because there is a permanent process involved that cannot be reversed, and has this crazed fantasy where executions in controlled manners that are appealed over months and months for years will be shortened down to split-second decisions by cops on the street and will become an everyday thing in police state North America. Maybe they will even have weapons that are generally referred to as "non-lethal alternatives" to keep the gullible in the population blind to the danger of the police, and make the weapons shoot out jolts of electricity instead of things that leave puncture wounds so the death is clean and not at all bloody. Oh wait?
Again, another day.