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Death Penalty

Should there be a death penalty?

  • Yes

    Votes: 55 47.0%
  • No

    Votes: 45 38.5%
  • Under certain circumstances, please explain

    Votes: 17 14.5%

  • Total voters
    117
Where was the decency for their victims?...If they need someone to pull the switch on this scum I will volunteer

The only thing wrong with the death penalty is we don't execute the scum fast enough... If I had my say I would execute any criminal convicted of a capital crime one year from sentencing........None of this 20 year ****.

So I take it, you don't consider yourself a good catholic then, right? Seriously NP, you are quick to condemn Catholics that don't follow other teachings of the church, but feel that you are perfectly entitled to pick and choose which tenements you want to follow. That's what they call a Cafeteria Catholic.
 
Where was the decency for their victims?...If they need someone to pull the switch on this scum I will volunteer

The only thing wrong with the death penalty is we don't execute the scum fast enough... If I had my say I would execute any criminal convicted of a capital crime one year from sentencing........None of this 20 year ****.

How about when we execute people who were wrongly convicted? Or whose trials weren't fair? Are you so eager to kill them, too?
 
Death penalty should be for Terrorist and Murderer only, because if they can take anybody's life, so some one should also have right to give them death
 
How about when we execute people who were wrongly convicted? Or whose trials weren't fair? Are you so eager to kill them, too?


If there is any doubt that the person is guilty then they should not be executed...that goes without saying.....With the arrival of DNA testing the chance of a person who is not guilty getting executed is very small. No system is infallible..If one innocent person is executed out of 1000 its something you live with. Whether you lefties like it or not the death penalty is a deterrent.
 
Death penalty should be for Terrorist and Murderer only, because if they can take anybody's life, so some one should also have right to give them death



What about a vicious rape of a child under 10 years old?
 
If there is any doubt that the person is guilty then they should not be executed...that goes without saying.....With the arrival of DNA testing the chance of a person who is not guilty getting executed is very small. No system is infallible..If one innocent person is executed out of 1000 its something you live with. Whether you lefties like it or not the death penalty is a deterrent.

Prove it with statistics.

"It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death."

-Maimonides
 
Here is an anecdote and idea that I really like about the death penalty presented by Albert Camus, a French author, journalist, and philosopher of the 20th century. I will probably share more of Camus's ideas as the discussion progresses.

I believe in this anecdote he is referring to a decapitation in Algiers in 1914.

"He (his father) wanted to witness the execution for the first time in his life. He got up in the dark to go to the place of the execution at the other end of town amid a great number of people. What he saw that morning he never told anyone. My mother relates merely that he came rushing home, his face distorted, refused to talk, lay down for a moment on the bed, and suddenly began to vomit.He had just discovered the reality hidden under the noble phrases with which it was masked. (he witnessed a beheading)

From Resistance, Rebellion and Death p.175

My question here is why do we not have public executions anymore? If people gung ho about it, saying they'll give him the hot shot and other claims, why not let them see what the state is really doing? If it is so right for us to be doing why can't we see it? Is it because people would feel like Camus's father once they realize the horror of what is being done? Will they no longer support the death penalty?
 
Concede what? I said I have compassion for all things that suffer. What am I conceding?

The debate you challenged me on... never mind.
 
If there is any doubt that the person is guilty then they should not be executed...that goes without saying.....With the arrival of DNA testing the chance of a person who is not guilty getting executed is very small. No system is infallible..If one innocent person is executed out of 1000 its something you live with. Whether you lefties like it or not the death penalty is a deterrent.

Man, I am a conservative and even I admit that the DP is not a deterrent...
 
The debate you challenged me on... never mind.

The when life begins? PM me with an argument as to why I should take part in that debate and then I will. (If that is what you are talking about)
 
The when life begins? PM me with an argument as to why I should take part in that debate and then I will. (If that is what you are talking about)

No. The ethical aspects of the Death Penalty that you challenged me on. This is getting ridiculous.
 
No. The ethical aspects of the Death Penalty that you challenged me on. This is getting ridiculous.

My quote from Camus begins to address one ethical concern of the death penalty. If it is so right to do, if it is just, then why is it hidden away, why is the process not discussed? If it is the right thing to do we should not be afraid to see it. Is it unethical to have public executions?
 
Whether you lefties like it or not the death penalty is a deterrent.

Contrary to every study out there. Then again....NP has never let the facts stand in the way of being completely wrong before.
 
My quote from Camus begins to address one ethical concern of the death penalty. If it is so right to do, if it is just, then why is it hidden away, why is the process not discussed? If it is the right thing to do we should not be afraid to see it. Is it unethical to have public executions?

I don't think that it is unethical to have public executions and one of the issues regarding the DP is that many people are trying to address immorality with morals and it just doesn't work.
 
I don't think that it is unethical to have public executions and one of the issues regarding the DP is that many people are trying to address immorality with morals and it just doesn't work.

Then, why don't we have public executions?

The condemned's immorality vs. the government's morality?
 
Then, why don't we have public executions?

The condemned's immorality vs. the government's morality?

We do have public executions... they are just within confined spaces such as jails or prisons now.
 
We do have public executions... they are just within confined spaces such as jails or prisons now.

Yes we do, but the "public" is limited to a special few. Victim's families, attorneys, police involved in the case and families of the one being put to death. My point is that they are not public to the general public who vote for the candidates that support the death penalty, the ones chanting about killing. If they are so sure what we are doing is right, if the government is so sure why they are doing is ethical (from a situational view, utilitarian, cultural, authoritarian or any other ethical philosophy) why can't we see it? By hiding it, it seems that it is shameful. The government won't even tell us about the preparation of the prisoner before the execution, when they still used the electric chair they didn't talk about the process either. Why? Because they know it is wrong and because of the public actually knew / saw what happened they would be disgusted and the support for the death penalty would wane.
 
If there is any doubt that the person is guilty then they should not be executed...that goes without saying.....With the arrival of DNA testing the chance of a person who is not guilty getting executed is very small. No system is infallible..If one innocent person is executed out of 1000 its something you live with. Whether you lefties like it or not the death penalty is a deterrent.
The appeals system basically eliminates the deterrent. If you want the death penalty to be substantially effective, then you must reduce the scope of appellate rights.

Also, the death penalty is not a left v.s. right issue.
 
If there is any doubt that the person is guilty then they should not be executed...that goes without saying.....With the arrival of DNA testing the chance of a person who is not guilty getting executed is very small. No system is infallible..If one innocent person is executed out of 1000 its something you live with. Whether you lefties like it or not the death penalty is a deterrent.

If the death penalty were a deterrent, then why do we have less crime in modern America than was present in more brutal cultures in the past, and in current brutal cultures around the world? Their punishments are harsher, yet we have less crime.

Every study shows that severity of punishment is not a deterrent against crime, especially not crimes like murder.

And we shouldn't kill anyone if there is any doubt? Well let me tell you, there is ALWAYS doubt. It is impossible to know for sure. Eyewitness testimony is the most unreliable form of evidence. DNA evidence is not nearly so cut and dry like on TV. In most cases, including murder cases, it is unavailable to determine anything. Ever fingerprinting, often portrayed as infallible, is actually pretty much guesswork. Even the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard only shows us that someone probably perpetrated the crime. It is not "beyond all doubt."

No innocent person should be executed. Ever. And the only way to ensure that we do not is never to kill anyone. Any other course guarantees that we will kill an innocent person. Any other course makes us murderers.
 
If they are so sure what we are doing is right, if the government is so sure why they are doing is ethical (from a situational view, utilitarian, cultural, authoritarian or any other ethical philosophy) why can't we see it? By hiding it, it seems that it is shameful. The government won't even tell us about the preparation of the prisoner before the execution, when they still used the electric chair they didn't talk about the process either. Why? Because they know it is wrong and because of the public actually knew / saw what happened they would be disgusted and the support for the death penalty would wane.
That is untrue. There is an entire book turned into a documentary which details execution procedures in one state.

lethal injection protocol
 
Yes we do, but the "public" is limited to a special few. Victim's families, attorneys, police involved in the case and families of the one being put to death. My point is that they are not public to the general public who vote for the candidates that support the death penalty, the ones chanting about killing. If they are so sure what we are doing is right, if the government is so sure why they are doing is ethical (from a situational view, utilitarian, cultural, authoritarian or any other ethical philosophy) why can't we see it? By hiding it, it seems that it is shameful. The government won't even tell us about the preparation of the prisoner before the execution, when they still used the electric chair they didn't talk about the process either. Why? Because they know it is wrong and because of the public actually knew / saw what happened they would be disgusted and the support for the death penalty would wane.

I think you underestimate human nature, both the good and the bad. If what you say is true then there wouldn't be a thousand plus years of documented hangings, beheadings etc etc of which were public and that humans often cheered for those things to happen. And they did so for at least two reasons.

One being the darker side, blood lust. Humans are by nature a blood thirsty race. There has yet to be one single day in documented history where someone, somewhere wasn't killed by another human.

The other side is a sense of justice. People love to see justice being done. Even if they don't see it directly. And for many people the DP is the ultimate form of justice when applied to a serial killer or serial rapist.

The gory details don't matter. If humans were that weak stomached then there would be no such thing as horror movies. No such thing as war movies. No such thing as any violent movie period. Which of course would translate to reality. There would be no murders, rapists, wars etc etc.

As for a sense of shame? Sorry, I feel no shame that a murderer gets the axe or that a rapist gets injected. Nor do I feel a sense of shame in how it is done. IMO neither the electric chair nor lethal injection are near as degrading or painful enough as they should be.
 
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Contrary to every study out there. Then again....NP has never let the facts stand in the way of being completely wrong before.

The only thing that stopped me from literally torturing and murdering the guy that molested my nieces when they were children was the fact that I don't want to die. Sorry but for me the DP was and is a deterrent.

Thats the funny thing about those "studies". They only focus on the crimes that have been committed in a non-DP area vs a DP area and don't address the crimes that were prevented. Know why? Because those are undocumentable. As such we have no real understanding of just how much the DP does deter violent crime. That is why those "studies" are bunk from the get go.
 
That is untrue. There is an entire book turned into a documentary which details execution procedures in one state.

lethal injection protocol
Yes, I have seen the book. It leaves out crucial details such as the difficulty of getting IV's to a good vein because of drug use. It does not explain the fact that the arm is swabbed with alcohol, it's not like he'll get an infection. Ut is to give routine to the execution team so they can think about something wise.
The audience has none of that e,pained. Why anal plug and cathater? To make the audience comfortable.

Why n ot show it to the world why is it hidden away? I think that modern folk like camus's fatherwohld realize the horror of it and run far away to cleanse those images from his mind.
 
P
I think you underestimate human nature, both the good and the bad. If what you say is true then there wouldn't be a thousand plus years of documented hangings, beheadings etc etc of which were public and that humans often cheered for those things to happen. And they did so for at least two reasons.

One being the darker side, blood lust. Humans are by nature a blood thirsty race. There has yet to be one single day in documented history where someone, somewhere wasn't killed by another human.

The other side is a sense of justice. People love to see justice being done. Even if they don't see it directly. And for many people the DP is the ultimate form of justice when applied to a serial killer or serial rapist.

The gory details don't matter. If humans were that weak stomached then there would be no such thing as horror movies. No such thing as war movies. No such thing as any violent movie period. Which of course would translate to reality. There would be no murders, rapists, wars etc etc.

As for a sense of shame? Sorry, I feel no shame that a murderer gets the axe or that a rapist gets injected. Nor do I feel a sense of shame in how it is done. IMO neither the electric chair nor lethal injection are near as degrading or painful enough as they should be.

I may underestimate the human lust for violence, but pop culturs is different than the reality in your face. I think you may undederestimate the power of something real. Sure we can watch those movies,but we know no one is being killed. You also have to account for human compassion
 
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