Death Penalty Kills Whom?
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Housing revolting killers for their lifetime seems a cheap price to pay for our not becoming killers by proxy ourselves.
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I prefer to leave the Judgment of Death in the hands of Fate or the Universe rather than becoming a premeditated killer myself.
And what do you do if you find out you had the wrong DNA after they fry? Say “Whoops”?
If the Death Penalty worked as a deterrent those people wouldn't be on Death Row.
Given that in Death Penalty cases, we can't re-make what we break, it seems the place for the highest road. There are no errors in compassion. Wasn't that Jesus' point? Compassion isn't for when it's easy. It's for when it's hard. Love your <i>enemy</i>. Loving your neighbor and your friend is for Hallmark cards. Jesus was asking the radical — the hardest thing. As we ask for our worst sins to be forgiven, not our peccadilloes.
If I by proxy pull the lever or release the gas or drug, I do not see how I am any different in premeditated monstrousness from the villain I by proxy would kill. How is my soul then not condemned too? So who dies? In any of my innocence I am surely slain too. Lethal to whom?
Even if I could countenance this in some moral sleight of soul, suppose that man were later revealed as innocent? It could not be worth the killing of one innocent man. Keep people in prison for life. Like torture, the death penalty does nothing but coarsen and make cold and make hard our nation. Not strong, but cold and hard. It takes strength and wisdom to hold back from vengeance. Vengeance is the easy thing. One could imagine vengeance in the heat of the moment. But premeditated? I cannot see how it separates you by one iota from the jailed killer you despise. You just become an unjailed killer.
All of civilization has been slowly modifying the abuse of power and of murderous impulses. Sadly, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />America is still steeped in blood. We are behind the vector of history however. The cosmos watches us sadly. We still think killing shows strength. Instead, it shows lack of ingenuity and patience and diligence. Diplomacy is the invention of our time. We seem to be the last to have gotten the message of civilization. It’s very painful to watch the people of the world recoil from our arrogance and bloodthirst.
I sometimes muse that perhaps the gene pool that manifest destinedly ruthlessed across the continent from sea to shining sea and perpetrated slavery and a particularly implacable rule-of-the-bottom-line cold capitalism was a gene poll of cutthroats and malcontents thrust off from the shores of their original homelands? That like killer bees, it has taken some generations for our aggressive behavior to be modified so we can contribute to making honey rather than stinging people to death?
The time of honey and genuine equality and happiness does come. We have to illuminate the shadow first though. The vengeful, greedy, selfish, grandiose jungian shadow qualities are perfectly manifested in our present leaders. We have to look at that maggot-writhing stuff before we can move on to the next quantum of integration. We cannot just educate the soul and the head and the heart – we must clean out the aegean-stables of the gut too. The viscera will always sully your fine ideas unless you alchemize its energies too. We like to indulge the gut, the viscera in America. Much better to holler at football games than to fry people in the electric chair or fight wars, sooth said.
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2 Lizard . Kan . South . tzol 184 12.02.05 fri
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I don't know how many people are aware of what happened in Illinois once they started DNA testing etc. for the 19 or so people they had on death row. Something like 9 of them, all of whom had had full trials, turned up provably innocent, not OJ not guilty genuinely innocent.
I suppose if it were reserved for definitely guilty folk who had carried out really horrible crimes, it's conceivable that the death penalty might be arguable. When the justice system is this imperfect though, we shouldn't even be considering the death penalty. In the meantime, who knows how many innocent people were executed in Texas, Illinois, etc.
is the death penalty a deterrent? it is in that it eliminates the chance of a killer killing again in prison, or if released. or if he escapes.
what about the possibility of an innocent being executed? i accept that it can happen, and i will take that chance. i am more concerned with the many, many more innocents who have their life snuffed out by those you seek to award.
you may hate the idea of living in prison, but they adapt to life in there, they have an alternate society there, most would welcome being awarded the chance to live within those walls.
I hate the idea of living in the prison *I* would be in if *I* became a premeditated proxy killer.
I'm not seeking to reward them. I'm seeking to remain more innocent than they are. I am not willing to forfeit my own restraint just to indulge a fierce desire for vengeance. If I perpetrate vengeance, I don't see how I am then any different from them? It's my own soul and the soul of my nation I seek to honor by resisting the murderous impulse they could not.
The deterrance argument for the death penalty has always been more theoretical than real.
1) countries with the highest murder rates usually have a combination of guns and a death penalty.
2) countries with the lowest rates often don't have the death penalty, but have a culture that does not promote violence.
3) the biggest deterrents appear to be having a culture where people actually work through problems and having significant social support services for those who are struggling. and actually catching and “punishing” criminals on an even-handed basis rather than just killing the ones you happen to catch and don't like.
One of the most shocking statistics in American criminal law is the relative sentences for poor blacks and white defendants found guilty of the same crime. Some of the death penalty studies are really pretty interesting.