Death Row? Why?!

Originally posted by mydarkpassenger
reply to post by AndrewJay

 

Because there is absolutely no way that kind of scum could measure up.

They would probably pull snafus to the point where they got more professional soldiers killed than the enemy.

I like what Ron White said the death penalty taking so long to be acted on: "That's bu** sh*t. In Texas, we're putting in express lanes"

I cleaned that up a bit

No I do get the point the miltary probably isnt the best place for these people but that doesnt mean they still cant be of some use to us. Anything is better than paying for them to rot in a prison cell for the rest of their life.

Time and time again, it has been shown people are found guilty of crimes, later on, they are found not guilty by new evidence.
Several cases yearly are found of people executed that didn't commit the crime.

executing after conviction is not only monsterous, it turns society into murderers, equal to the person they put down should a single case ever come up of a misjudgement.

reply to post by AndrewJay


One nice thing about the death penalty.

No repeat offenders.

reply to post by AndrewJay


I completely agree with you, our system is broken, but it's the best we have right now. Sad, but true.

On the note about keeping them in prison vs executing them, there's a lot of speculation as to whether or not it saves money to keep a person in prison vs executing them. Something about annual food cost over a life sentence vs appeals, court, administrative, and actual execution costs. There's a lot of unclear things to take in to consideration, but there is a good argument for both sides located here: deathpenalty.procon.org...

I am leaning however on this, we have a death row because:
1) We aren't 100% behind the death penalty, just in case for some reason we may have to face it one day.
2) We can't be 100% sure in every case that the person being executed is actually guilty of the crime demanding the sentence.

I'm strongly suspecting that #1 is the primary reason, because people (as far as I've seen) are generally selfish or narcissistic in nature. That narcissism would possibly explain things best: we're afraid to set a rule or law to a certain point just in case we may have to face the consequences later. For example, I would theorize that we don't all agree on a law that says "if person A kills person B they must be killed by person C, who is excused from facing the penalty of death if person C kills person A in direct response to the action of person A killing person B." We can't have a law like that because if we ever find ourselves in the "person A" position, we'd like to have an opportunity to defend ourselves, EVEN IF we think we'd like that law is completely fair for anyone but ourselves .

To summarize a complex thought: We have death row because as self interested people, we'd like to have the opportunity to defend ourselves, or at least delay the inevitable as long as possible because we worry that we could possibly find ourselves in that position one day.

reply to post by AndrewJay


Dear AndrewJay

Idea “lets make all the killers in our jails soldiers and give them really powerful weapons”

One really should think these things through.

The reason they are in jail is one they are stupid and two they can not be controlled.

Stupid we can work with but it is really about control.

Army recruit 16 – 17 maybe 18 ideal, the ability to make them more afraid of the NCO or officer than the enemy perfect.

It is all about control, control, control, control, and more control.

Really the last thing you want to do is give someone a really powerful weapon and wonder which way he will point the thing.