Capitol Hill Blue Forums Life and Moral Issues Crime & Punishment Capital punishment: Why not?

Percival Lowell's bad eyesight resulted in his seeing things on Mars that were not really there; however, I personally do not see this thread as requiring that much squinting in order to follow.

BTW, how's the popcorn supply holding?

Offthread, but I am curious as to the frequency and circumstances for this. I grew up in the desert, and have spent a great deal of time roaming around environments where rattlesnakes exist. Only once have I actively engaged in ending a rattlesnake's life, and that was because of a very stupid act by a person in my party. Three of us were fishing off a boat in Lake Mead. The one who had no experience with the desert noticed a rattlesnake in the water and pulled it out thinking it was dead, and not knowing that rattlesnakes can swim, very inefficiently. At Lake Mead rattlesnakes are occasionally seen swimming in water between two close islands as a part of their hunting areas. Having a coiled rattlesnake on a relatively small bass boat and three humans is a bit unnerving, and I aided in its demise with the use of a handy oar. There were also a couple of times while on horseback where I would have killed a snake if I had a sure and effective means of doing so without dismounting, because it was a clear and present threat to the horse. These encounters have always fortunately ended without anything more dire than than fear among the three animals directly involved, as the rattlesnakes beat a hasty retreat without striking.

From your sig can be discerned that you live in the So. California Hills. If you lived on certain hills there when it was going through a building surge, you probably have experienced rattlesnakes that had been forced to attempt a migration not of their own choice. An unfortunate event for all concerned, indeed.

Working with the definition of “collective” as
And the original question,
And further working with Ponderer’s list as a jumping-off point,

I will offer the following arguments:

Social vengeance
Dictionary definition: "infliction of injury, harm, humiliation, or the like, on a person by another who has been harmed by that person; violent revenge."

Although crime does have a general, ambiguous effect on society as a whole, currently law does not provide a remedy for those not specifically involved. For example, the state may charge you for robbing a liquor store in Toledo, but as a member of society hundreds of miles away, I may not sue you for damages. In the same way, “vengeance” is restricted to those immediately harmed, and is not available as a remedy for “the good of the group.”

general deterrence (fear of punishment)
Solid proof of the value of the death penalty as a general deterrent to other criminals is sorely lacking; in fact, the opposite tends to be proven.

As a deterrent to the criminal executed – again, this is exacting the highest penalty possible, to prevent a crime not yet committed, and our goal (as citizens and as a country) is to punish crimes AFTER they are committed. There are other means for accomplishing this goal that do not involve the death penalty.

Justice: (Dictionary) the administration of law; especially : the establishment or determination of rights according to the rules of law or equity.

The death penalty is still the law of the land in many US states, but it is being abolished in other countries at the rate of about 3 per year. Other first-world countries have abolished it more often than not. So while it can be argued that justice as legally defined should be administered, it can also be argued that laws change over time, and that given the actions of other first-world nations, we would be wise to consider revising ours.

Societal convenience (it's cheaper to kill them than to keep them); This argument fails on a number of levels, but the most obvious is this: it would be cheaper to shoot a drunk driver than to put him/her through rehabilitation, but we don’t do it. We do not (yet) value a human life in monetary worth; therefore “it’s cheaper to kill them” is an incomplete calculation.

Irredeemability – Again, we cannot exact the highest penalty in the land on the expectation that someone will commit a future crime. The penalty must be applied on the basis of crimes committed.

finality (providing "closure" for the victims' families). “Closure” is itself something of a fuzzy term. It can also be argued that the death of the criminal does not provide closure; it provides vengeance. Closure – the sense of bringing something to finality – has more to do with the death (assuming the crime was murder) of the victim. “Closure” – if it exists – cannot be imposed from the outside.

NW - thanks for providing me a list from which to work.

All - I have attempted to argue the reasons against from the point of view of a just society. In doing so I've made myself late for work <grin> so I won't be able to respond to anything until later in the morning. But I'll check back as soon as I can.

I agree. Innocent people should not be executed. People who have not commited a crime should not be punished.

However, if you have been convicted of a crime you should be punished. And the punishment should be such that it either prevents you from hurting someone again or you are seriously afraid of the next punishment if you do so.

How many times have I heard or read about a previously convicted crimnal getting out of jail only to proceed to his/her next victim? Too many. How many have you?

If punishments were harsher it would protect future potential victims by detering would be criminals.

Actually the evidence is to the contrary, that harsher punishments have no impact upon crime for the most part. Especially debunked are "3 strike" laws which add draconian prison terms for the 3rd criminal conviction.

although im against the death penalty in all cases, there is one thing that it does do: those executed will never commit another crime!

I am saying that there are ways - punishments or penalties - short of death that would accomplish this. Life sentence without parole is only one; there are others, both more and less draconian.

[quote=Phil Hoskins
Actually the evidence is to the contrary, that harsher punishments have no impact upon crime for the most part.

[/quote]

The evidence you are refering to is based on current punishments, correct?

I'm saying re-vamp the punishments. It is obivous what we are currently doing is not working.

General Note: references would be helpful to support points.

Julia, thanks! Although I might quibble on some of the points (and elaborate on others), I think that this demonstrates it is possible to discuss this topic in a reasonable fashion.

There are a couple of points that I feel the need to elaborate on. First, as Issodhos originally posited the issue, since it is society that is exacting the penalty, it has to be society's interest that is under consideration to justify its action or inaction. When I offered "social vengeance" as a justification, it is exactly that - society substituting itself for the victim in exacting vengeance. I don't agree that vengeance is personal. It is, in many ways, a loaded, emotional term, and execution is done dispassionately. The harm being avenged in this case, however, may be to society itself - indeed, often the victim is incapable of "infliction of injury, harm, humiliation, or the like, on a person by another who has been harmed by that person" because they are dead. Punishment should be commensurate with the original harm, in my view, and deliberate murder is one of the greatest harms possible. How else does society achieve balance for that harm?

There must be, in my view, gradations in punishment that correspond to the harm. This is the point that motivates my position. There are gradations of harm, even in murder. If we provide the same punishment for two crimes, doesn't that essentially indicate that they are roughly equivalent? How then are we to distinguish the rapist or kidnapper who leaves a victim alive from one who dispatches them in order to cover up the crime? Isn't one crime more egregious than the other? Is Jeffrey Dahmer no different than a bad driver, even though both leave victims dead? I think most of us appreciate these distinctions.

This, I think, is where Justice comes in. It is more, in my experience, than the "what" of the law, but the "why." We have laws to ensure fairness and justice in our society. They are the means to accomplishing that end, not the end in themselves. Is it really "just" that one person can, with impunity, take everything from another, and face no more than continuing life on the public dole? I'm not saying prison is a picnic (although they do have them, you know...), but it is continued existence, no matter how limited. It is, then, something more than they left their victim. Where is the justice in that?

When I speak of "societal convenience" and "irredeemability" I mean more than just keeping criminals from committing future crimes (deterrence/prevention). (Oh, and deterrence and punishment are separate goals, but that is a different point.) There are some crimes that I think cannot be balanced by any future acts. Even if Hitler had donated all of the proceeds of his enterprise to a victims' fund, would that have "balanced the books" with regard to the enormity of his crimes?

But I have gone on again, too long. There are those in our system of justice, and I have met some, that are irredeemable in both senses of the word - their crimes are so callous and their intentions so depraved - that they can never function in society. That is a reality, uncomfortable as it may be. It then comes to the point where we have to ask ourselves how many resources should we devote to these individuals? It is more than economic costs, although these are not meager (e.g. Costs of Incarceration - US Courts on the state side the average is much higher - about $60,000-75,000 per year for a death row inmate), but the social costs - the wear on the system for maintaining prison space, the emotional toll, the efficiency costs. Couldn't those resources be better spent on rehabilitation of lesser criminals, education of our children, improving our infrastructure, providing productive opportunities for society, than maintaining an individual whose only contribution to society is to disrupt it and take lives? I think so.

(To avoid full repetition I've used lots of pieces. I tried to avoid taking things out of context, but please correct me if I've done so.)

As you say, the question was posed from society's interest, and indeed that's how I attempted to answer.

There are many reasons (as you note) for sentencing of criminals; punishment is only one. It seems highly unlikely that a society which cannot agree on whether or not children should be spanked, will ever come to agreement about the punishment of criminals - but that doesn't mean we can't discuss it - civilly.


If I accept the premise that vengeance by society is acceptable or possible - reading vengeance as "punishment inflicted in retaliation" - I would still ask this: how does one "balance" a crime? (The eye-for-an-eye argument is out, as Issodhos requested no appeals to religion.)


Does it? I'm not sure I accept that. I know the obverse is true - for example, the penalty for selling cocaine varies according to the form the cocaine takes, so we have differing penalties for essentially the same crime. I need to think more about this point, but my inclination is to disagree.


Following your argument, if three murders are more egregious than one, are we to carry out three death penalties for multiple-victim murderers?

While intentional killing is different from accidental killing, the victim is no less dead and the family is no less bereaved. Is society wounded more, or less, by the circumstances of death by murder and death by accident? Or death by drunk driver, which is somewhere between the two? There are gradations of crime yes, but there are no gradations of capital punishment.


It depends on your definition of justice. Unless we have already decided that capital punishment is just or unjust, this statement doesn't really make sense to me.



This presumes that the goal of sentencing is to balance the books.I don't think that's possible, no matter what the crime - and I don't think it's an argument for the death penalty. If you rob me, is it enough to return my possessions? If you kill my child, wouldn't a true balancing of the books require society to inflict the death penalty on your child?


There are ways to do it; in fact, last year in a similar thread I devised, wrote up, and posted a plan for housing such creatures. I don't know whether it's possible to find it (I certainly don't know how); if you're interested I might be able to dig it out of a backup copy.


There are always decisions of opportunity cost. Many of us now -- a subset of society -- are at least as angry about resources spent by certain portions of the federal government as you (and others) might be about death row expenses.

Wiki says something over 2 million people were incarcerated in the US in 2006; there are just over 3000 on death row. To put it bluntly, you could kill them all tomorrow and not make a dent in the total cost of the penal system.

Finally, I pose this question, an answer to which I believe to be necessary before we can truly address Issodhos' original question: What is the death penalty supposed to achieve for society?