Capital Punishment

[Jahled]

Okay, A) That was a good quote at the end, Mitth, and B) What if the judge is corrupt, or the accused was framed?

 

Or simply the cops, who are human, got their work/evidence wrong! This is somebody's life being condemned here! I more or less agree on the repeated killer argument where-by the question mark of guilt must eventually and obviously come to an end and the final judgement apply, but such convictions aren't what's typical in most legal murder cases.. Hence my caution!

[CorellianAce101]

I'm also an old-line conservative, so i dont buy into all the bleeding-heart liberal nonsense.

 

I do, and not necessarily as the type of 'liberal,' as your language might be suggesting to define or categorize. As a society we have a moral and legal responsibility to protect our fellow citizens, from criminals in our midst, and miscarriages of justice as well. Convictions for a crimes someone is not guilty of are surprisingly frequent in the democratic western world, and their later exposure by the legal process is something we can term the essence of being 'civilized' and 'democratic,' and having the 'civilized' and enlightened opportunity to do so.

 

In most of the world, the legal process is observed with all the attention and detail of a schoolchild's rant in the playground, applied to law, and subsequently applied with the state's force. In China, it's got to the extent where execution has virtually become an industry; the 'people's state,' selling off the organs and body parts of the executed to western wallets as exposed by that renowned 'bleeding-heart liberal' organ the BBC last week.

 

Whilst I at times wish the furnace on the scum of society when they are caught, it is some aspect of our status as being truly civilized as a society that allows a convicted citizen perhaps time to prove they were never guilty of the crime they were guilty of, without being a coffin in the ground.

 

Mr. Ace, you've just been owned! What're you gonna do, now?

 

go off to my stateroom and cry? then look at the poster of grand admiral thrawn on my wall and ask "what would you say?".

 

lol jk. I freely admit that occasionally miscarriages of justice do occur. as supreme court justice oliver wendell holmes once said "this is a court of law, young man, not of justice." sad, but true. here's a little history for you. the death penalty was basically abolished in 1972. it was hastily reinstated 4 years later. why? the number of violent felonies in our country spiked.

another problem is the condition of our prisons. they're not for punishment. they've just become another realm of the criminal world, almost a criminal college, if you will. for criminals, "doing a stretch" is a badge of honor.

personally, i do believe in restorative justice. this basically means use of things like community service rather than jail, so the criminal learns respect for the community, rather than how to exploit it. prisons should be to hold people who pose a significant danger to the community. the death penalty is simply the extreme end of that. it is a necessary deterrent in our criminal justice system. history demonstrates that conclusively. The best way to describe capital punishment is an unfortunate necessity.

 

Thanks Admiral. you always know waht to say

[Jahled]

go off to my stateroom and cry? then look at the poster of grand admiral thrawn on my wall and ask "what would you say?"

 

lol jk. I freely admit that occasionally miscarriages of justice do occur. as supreme court justice oliver wendell holmes once said "this is a court of law, young man, not of justice." sad, but true. here's a little history for you. the death penalty was basically abolished in 1972. it was hastily reinstated 4 years later. why? the number of violent felonies in our country spiked.

another problem is the condition of our prisons. they're not for punishment. they've just become another realm of the criminal world, almost a criminal college, if you will. for criminals, "doing a stretch" is a badge of honor.

personally, i do believe in restorative justice. this basically means use of things like community service rather than jail, so the criminal learns respect for the community, rather than how to exploit it. prisons should be to hold people who pose a significant danger to the community. the death penalty is simply the extreme end of that. it is a necessary deterrent in our criminal justice system. history demonstrates that conclusively. The best way to describe capital punishment is an unfortunate necessity.

 

Thanks Admiral. you always know waht to say

 

Fair enough, you have every right to your view obviously, i'm just torn with the lingering doubt of a conviction being wrong when the consequence is as grave as execution. That's my personal bottom line, and the sort of 'civilized' society I want to live in.

[The_Dane]

I'm on Jahleds side here.

Even if I am unable to come up with a definate counter-solution I believe that there has to be a more civilised method of crimefighting than execution.

 

As someone going to college for a Criminal Justice degree, i can tell you it's a good thing.

Do you have some sort of proof that it is a good thing that, more importantly, works? As I can understand from your last post you base it on statistics...

 

here's a little history for you. the death penalty was basically abolished in 1972. it was hastily reinstated 4 years later. why? the number of violent felonies in our country spiked. ... ... it is a necessary deterrent in our criminal justice system. history demonstrates that conclusively

 

just curious...

[DarthTofu]

I doubt don't think the Texans ever gave up the death penalty! Even with it they still have a ridiculous number of criminals who are involved in offenses punishable by death!

 

Oh, wait, that's right- Texans tend to crank out the electric chair if you go through a door marked "Employees Only" (Yes, I know that was historically innacurate. I just had to pull that on tex seeing as Texans are way big on the electric chair.)

[Mitth_raw_nuruodo]

The electric chair is too quick. Capital punishment needs to be graphic for it to be an honest deterant. Beheadings, getting drawn and quartered, tarred and feathered (yes it was mostly just humiliating, but it can result in death), then there's the rack. The list goes on.

[CorellianAce101]

The electric chair is too quick. Capital punishment needs to be graphic for it to be an honest deterant. Beheadings, getting drawn and quartered, tarred and feathered (yes it was mostly just humiliating, but it can result in death), then there's the rack. The list goes on.

 

i dont think we need to make it graphic, just effective. get rid of the electric chair/lethal injection. put firing squads back in.

you want graphic just watch braveheart with the commentary on, which describes the actual method of execution for william wallace. he was castrated, then tied to a cart and dragged over 3 miles of cobblestone streets. then he was tortured publicly for the crowd's amusement. the portion of the real thing gibson showed was hanging, racking, disembowlment, and beheading. multiply all that by about 3. ouch

here's another ouch. much quicker, but more painful. Kind Edward the Confessor was publicly executed by having a red-hot sword shoved up his butt and out his mouth. big ouch.

[JediHunter]

you wanna get into ouch look at some of the Spanish Inquisition torture devices... theres one.. im not sure what its called, but I call it the wheel.. they sit you down on a "wheel" and strap you to it.. then they placed the "wheel" on a spike.. well.. the trick was.. your anus was positioned above the hole in the wheel.. and the spike kept increasing in diameter... so.. the spike went up your butt... then as you slowly went down the spike.. it slowly made its way through your body... thats an ouch for me.. ... and yea... those things you said to Ace...

[turtle]

I went to a museum in York England where is showed some of the torture and execution techniques that were around in the middle ages. The one that springs to mind quickest for me was one where they lie you down without your shirt one put a rat on your stomach, put a bucket (pale) over the rat and then heated the bucket up. The rat wanting to get away from the heat will gnaw his way through the victims stomach. You also get a nasty burn too!

[DarthTex]

I doubt don't think the Texans ever gave up the death penalty! Even with it they still have a ridiculous number of criminals who are involved in offenses punishable by death!

 

Oh, wait, that's right- Texans tend to crank out the electric chair if you go through a door marked "Employees Only" (Yes, I know that was historically innacurate. I just had to pull that on tex seeing as Texans are way big on the electric chair.)

I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I believe (in general) Texas executes more convicts than all of the rest of the US combined. And we don't have the largest of state populations! So, bottom line, don't commit a capital crime in Texas , odds are you're goin' get fried

[CorellianAce101]

I went to a museum in York England where is showed some of the torture and execution techniques that were around in the middle ages. The one that springs to mind quickest for me was one where they lie you down without your shirt one put a rat on your stomach, put a bucket (pale) over the rat and then heated the bucket up. The rat wanting to get away from the heat will gnaw his way through the victims stomach. You also get a nasty burn too!

watch 2 fast 2 furious. the drug lord uses it to coerce the cop into helping him

[CorellianAce101]

I doubt don't think the Texans ever gave up the death penalty! Even with it they still have a ridiculous number of criminals who are involved in offenses punishable by death!

 

Oh, wait, that's right- Texans tend to crank out the electric chair if you go through a door marked "Employees Only" (Yes, I know that was historically innacurate. I just had to pull that on tex seeing as Texans are way big on the electric chair.)

I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I believe (in general) Texas executes more convicts than all of the rest of the US combined. And we don't have the largest of state populations! So, bottom line, don't commit a capital crime in Texas , odds are you're goin' get fried

 

actually it's only about 40%. But it is more than three times as much as anyone else. in the words of the great texan ron white "I'm from Texas. In Texas, we have the death penalty, and we USE IT!! that's right. if you come to texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back. that's our policy. they're trying to pass a bill right now through the texas legislature that'll speed up the process of execution in heinous crimes where there's more than three credible eyewitnesses. If more than three people saw you do what you did, you don't sit on death row for 15 years, jack, you go straight to the front of the line. other state's are trying to abolish the death penalty-my state's puttin' in an express lane!"-blue collar comedy tour, the movie

 

dont know if that actually went through, but ron white is a funny man

[DarthTofu]

you wanna get into ouch look at some of the Spanish Inquisition torture devices... theres one.. im not sure what its called, but I call it the wheel.. they sit you down on a "wheel" and strap you to it.. then they placed the "wheel" on a spike.. well.. the trick was.. your anus was positioned above the hole in the wheel.. and the spike kept increasing in diameter... so.. the spike went up your butt... then as you slowly went down the spike.. it slowly made its way through your body... thats an ouch for me.. ... and yea... those things you said to Ace...

 

I saw that History Channel show as, well, JH. Looked quite painful...

 

The part I remember most was impalement. You could be stuck on a spike and have your own weight drive it through your chest (The merciful way, believe it or not) or have it shoved up your rear end where you would slowly sink on it. It worked its way through you over the course of three days. You typically didn't die until the third. Ouchies.

 

Another one I recal was the nipple clamps I saw at an old museum. Shaped like crocodile mouths, and sharp. They were regularly used to rip off a victem's nipples and, in some cases, to rip out the unfortunate's eyes (After crushing them, of course)

 

Which brings us back to the death penalty: Could you really stomach watching someone go through any of these methods and then finding out that he was innocent? At least with the current situation they don't suffer. After all: "Only in America do we steralize the needle for a lethal injection."

[Defender_16]

*Shudder*

 

Hate.

 

Rats.

[DarthTofu]

*Shudder*

 

Hate.

 

Rats.

 

There, there, Winston.

 

... Okay, that was frickin' hilarious if you've read 1984.

 

There have been worse things with rats- they had head-cages where they would shove a starving rat in with your face. Thing would eat away at your features. If you were lucky you might bite it to death. If not, the inverse was true...

[JediHunter]

I saw that History Channel show as, well, JH. Looked quite painful...

I actually saw it at a Torture Museum in Spain when I lived there. Not on the history channel. I always miss the History Channel's show on Torture

[Mad78]

I always miss the History Channel's show on Torture

Maybe its better for you.

[Grand_Admiral_Thrawn]

While I voted that I do not support capitol punishment, I think that there are some isntances where is should be used: serial killers, pedophiles, mass murderers and the like. I think that on the whole it's just not the best way to go.

[Mitth_raw_nuruodo]

I actually don't support the use of the death penalty for pedophiles. Pedophiles and kidnappers will suffer more by putting them in jail and letting their fellow inmates know what they're in for. Personally, I'd rather get put on the wheel that JH mentioned and be dead after day three than become Bubba's bitch for the next 5-10 (or whatever the time frame for those crimes are).