all for the humane approach to death penalty

[pumpkinsaren'torange]

This post of mine is geared towards all the bleeding-heart liberals who oppose the death penalty. My hopes is that you read my following missive with an open mind, if not, it was good exercise for my fingers to type this little spiel. Parts of it might be a bit graphic or gruesome for your liberal little hearts, but I would hope you can/will see both sides of the same coin - as there really ARE two sides to every coin.

Imagine your little five-year-old (or any other tender, young age) daughter was brutally raped, stabbed multiple times all over her little battered body, along with other signs of torture such as burn marks and intense trauma, such as her head being severed from her body. Then, her poor little body left behind by the creep to be buried in a shallow grave somewhere in the woods to be picked and preyed upon by all sorts of ravenous flesh-eatting animals. If that doesn't get you...imagine it was your mother, or sister...how about that? Somebody raping and killing your mother? Wouldn't you want justice served? If you say ..."no, let's just rehabilitate that poor guy who killed her" ...well, then, I think you are lying to yourself.
The following crime happened in a town not far from mine, a little girl was tied-up spread eagle to the bed-posts and repeatedly raped and sodomized, kicked and defecated upon. Nice, huh? You wanna save that creep who did that to her?? Give me break.

Now, I will try to break-through to your anti death-penalty sentiments by offering you a humane way of executing these scums-of-the-earth. The following is the most cost effective and humane way to execute a perpetual murder/rapist, and, they won't feel a thing. (which in my opinion is too bad..they should feel everything their victims felt, and more). This is the answer: simply replace the oxygen in their surroundings with nitrogen gas. With nitrogen asphyxiation the "victim" *rolls eyes*(ha ha, i mean murderer won't feel a thing...won't even realize or recognize any of the impending signs that he;s about to bite the big one. He will experience no final, desperate need to breathe, no chocking, clutching sensations like burning in his lungs, because as far as his body is concerned it is breathing normally. He won't conciously know he is dying. The carbon monoxide will not be builiding up in his blood stream ..that way it will not be causing the sheer terror and panic that comes with not being able to grasp a final breath. He will simply pass out WITHOUT any discomfort when the oxygen in his blood finally falls too low due to the nitrogen gas in his environment causing oxygen displacement.

In summary, nitrogen asphyxiation is the perfect method for expunging scum-of-the earth rapists and murderers(as i stated before) ..and, hey..it's cheap, readily available and environmentally safe as well as easily stored and disposed of. It [nit. asp.] is the most "kindly" means to deal with a perpetual killer because the condemned would experince no pain except for the pain created in his own guilty mind as he awaits for his execution. And...a bonus..the guy's organs would still be viable and unharmed and suitable for donation.

Isn't the primary goal in any humane execution the loss of conciousness and sensation? yes? yes, it is and that's how it should be done...Nitrogen gas.

 

[RichardJA]

Simple question. Why give these people a simple way out by taking their lives, instead of locking them up for their whole life and making them suffer. Yes that would mean taking away their rights and five star prisons.

 

[zanket]

pumpkinsaren'torange - If people will be executed then I’m all for the most humane method. Why do you suppose your proposed method is not already used?

Often the scum-of-the-earth is innocent of the crime and therein lays a big problem with the death penalty. Consider China, where the appellate process is so short that the government need not make a strong case. Because there can be no appeal, the death penalty increases the risk that you will be executed for political reasons or to avenge someone else’s crime. Killing a person for killing makes no sense to me. Studies show that the death penalty is no more a deterrent than is life in prison.

If my daughter were brutally raped and killed as you described I think life in prison without the possibility of parole would be sufficient justice. Rather than revenge I’d want the murderer removed from society to protect others.

 

[pumpkinsaren'torange]

Simple question. Why give these people a simple way out by taking their lives, instead of locking them up for their whole life and making them suffer. Yes that would mean taking away their rights and five star prisons.

who's to say that that would be "giving them a simple way out"?? who's to say what really happens when a person dies...maybe they really would go somewhere where they would be eternally raped and sodomized themselves. it's purely speculative...but, you never know. besides, keeping them alive is a wast of taxpayers money. and, IMHO, all 5-star prisons should be a thing of the past. i don't care which congressman cries about it. maybe the best thing would be to live a good, honest , and moral (golden-rule) life, then, we wouldn't even have to worry about executing people.

 

[pumpkinsaren'torange]

pumpkinsaren'torange - If people will be executed then I’m all for the most humane method. Why do you suppose your proposed method is not already used?

*** you know as well as i do, that it is not ALWAYS used. i am proposing that that is the only method used.




Often the scum-of-the-earth is innocent of the crime and therein lays a big problem with the death penalty.

** i understand that. i should have prefaced my thread with the premise that the acccused has been sufficiently proven guilty. completely guilty..as in the case of the little girl i mentioned, the 3 partners involved all ratted on each other. cut and dried case. kill them all.

Consider China, where the appellate process is so short that the government need not make a strong case. Because there can be no appeal, the death penalty increases the risk that you will be executed for political reasons or to avenge someone else’s crime.

*** believe me, i understand your concern. but, i can't change the way i feel about my agenda towards cold-blooded killers that have been convicted without a shadow of a doubt. i am sorry about China, but, i live in the USA, and, maybe that shows a lack of sympathy/empathy on my part. but, i am concerned with the US means of "disposing" of criminals. ...not China's. that does not make me hard-hearted, just biased. and, as i pointed out in another thread of mine, aren't we really all biased to our own agendas, if we are to be perfectly honest with ourselves?

Killing a person for killing makes no sense to me. Studies show that the death penalty is no more a deterrent than is life in prison.

*** bs on the studies. how on earth can you say it is no more a deterrent? if there are less killers around because they have been executed, then, that in and of itself is a good thing and we might feel more safe on our streets. and, yes, it might give a possible future murder food for thought. let's be consistent with metering out the death penalty, then, the murderer-to-be might reconsider.

If my daughter were brutally raped and killed as you described I think life in prison without the possibility of parole would be sufficient justice. Rather than revenge I’d want the murderer removed from society to protect others.

*** i am sorry, i know you believe what you are saying, but, the easiest person to fool is ourselves...did you realize that. i don't believe that if your daughter were brutally murdered, sodomized and raped you would sit by passively and ask the judge for leniency for the creep, you would want his life. please be honest with yourself. thanks. death penalty is not revenge, it is a warning and a truth.

 

[Xevious]

I've mentioned this before, but here in Texas, we use lethal injection. I must also point out that our legal system imposes a unique requirement on the Death Penalty:

The jury must rule unanimously that the person being executed represents a danger to society.

As far as I understand it, no other state has such a requirement. In other states, sentences are given by the judge. I think this requirement should be given Nation-wide. At least then, those who oppose the death penalty and serve in the jury over an accused criminal can pronounce him guilty without fearing that they themselves executed him. I get the feeling that some Juries let a man off just because he faces a death sentence.

You will find that there is no treatment for many cases. A man who is mentally ill and uncureable will continue to victemize others until he is dead. I've heard too many stories of child molesters who were imprisoned and released from a mental hospital only to molest children again, and again. You put them in prison, and they don't live too long. If there is one thing hardened criminals hate it is child molester. He ends up being Bubba's playground.

 

[RichardJA]

hmmmm, so you want to put someone to death and hope they get punished after they die? And what if they don't?

Ummmm, ever tried talking to people who have passed on?

 

[pumpkinsaren'torange]

talking to the dead? no....

no, and that was my point (sory of, sorry, if it didn't come across that way). we can't say for sure whether they would or wouldn't go someplace that would give them what they deserved or not...but, i would hope there would be a hell of a place waiting in eternity for them. know what i mean? if not, it would still get the scum off the streets; safer in that respect for all of us, you included.

 

[zanket]

Originally posted by pumpkinsaren'torange
you know as well as i do, that it is not ALWAYS used. i am proposing that that is the only method used.

I wasn’t aware that nitrogen asphyxiation is ever used. Is it?

i understand that. i should have prefaced my thread with the premise that the acccused has been sufficiently proven guilty. completely guilty..as in the case of the little girl i mentioned, the 3 partners involved all ratted on each other. cut and dried case. kill them all.

That doesn’t sound cut-and-dried. The five youths recently found innocent—after a decade behind bars—of rape in New York ratted on each other too. The prosecutor has a tried and true strategy: either rat out your friend or you’ll spend an extra twenty years behind bars. The many innocent people released from death row were all initially proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. It turned out that major flaws in the justice system skewed the proof. For more info see the Innocence Project.

believe me, i understand your concern. but, i can't change the way i feel about my agenda towards cold-blooded killers that have been convicted without a shadow of a doubt.

There is seldom a conviction without a shadow of a doubt. Typically the doubt is significant.

i am concerned with the US means of "disposing" of criminals. ...not China's.

There are similarities between the two countries. Consider that when Bush was governor of Texas and that state’s highest judiciary, he refused to review death row cases as was his responsibility. I think he did that for political gain. Not only did his lack of action increase the chance that innocent people were killed, but it also increased the odds that murderers were left at large to kill again. If Texas had no death penalty then fewer innocent people would die in the long run. Support for the death penalty is support for the killing of innocents.

how on earth can you say it is no more a deterrent? if there are less killers around because they have been executed, then, that in and of itself is a good thing and we might feel more safe on our streets.

You’d be safer with the killers stuck in prison, as I described above.

and, yes, it might give a possible future murder food for thought.

If it did on average then I’d be more amenable to the death penalty. But it doesn’t as studies show.

let's be consistent with metering out the death penalty, then, the murderer-to-be might reconsider.

If the problems in the justice system that lead to the killing of innocents were fixed nationwide, I’d be more amenable to the death penalty. But the public has made it clear that they have little intention of fixing the system.

i don't believe that if your daughter were brutally murdered, sodomized and raped you would sit by passively and ask the judge for leniency for the creep, you would want his life. please be honest with yourself. thanks.

Why is it so hard to believe I wouldn’t seek his life when all of the democracies of this world save one have voted for life in prison as the maximum punishment? Millions of people demonstrably share my viewpoint.

death penalty is not revenge, it is a warning and a truth.

Absent an effectual warning, if you would want his life, that’s revenge.

 

[RichardJA]

yeah and that was my point, you are just guessing that after this life they will be punished, for all you know it could very easily be an easy way out for them by putting them to death.

 

[pumpkinsaren'torange]

zanket

don't believe that if your daughter were brutally murdered, sodomized and raped you would sit by passively and ask the judge for leniency for the creep, you would want his life. please be honest with yourself.

zanket, i'm sorry...but, i don't believe you. maybe if in real life somebody killed and raped your daughter(i don't know if you have one or not), you'd feel quite differently about sparing the murderer's life. i believe you'd want to go out and cut the guy's balls off. be honest with yourself.



and, to the other questions posed...yes, we have used Nitrogen as a form of gassing...i am sure you are aware of that, ...i don't like being baited.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

You're not thinking beyond your own grief.

Pumpkins, I've read your sensible and sensitive writings for some time now. I'm surprised and sad to see our bunny-lovin' pal weighing in on the dark side of an issue.

You call us "bleeding-heart liberals," meaning that we make judgments based on our feelings. Well, at least it's our positive feelings that we're tapping into. You folks' stand on this issue is just as firmly based on feelings, but they're your darkest ones: anger, hatred, vengeance. (And I ain't no damn liberal. I'm a libertarian. Abolish the income tax, the war on drugs, and the government's stranglehold on education, charity, energy, health care and technology.)

You ask, "Wouldn't you want justice served?" But what you are screaming for and prying open the prison doors in order to dispense is not "justice." Justice is not "an eye for an eye," you killed my daddy so I'm a gonna kill you and then your son will kill me and then my son will put a stop to it by bombing your entire evil village and then your clan will invent nuclear weapons...

The whole point of "justice" is that we are members of a civilization and that civilization teaches us to rise above our base emotions so that we can make the world better, so that future generations will not have to suffer as much grief as we have.

There is a very large section of the world that still believes that Old Testament crap. Take a long hard look at it and see if you can find one shred of "justice" there. Your way has been tried for thousands of years and it just doesn't work! Folks are still killing one another. How much longer do we have to indulge your darkest fantasies of barbarian-style revenge before you admit the possibility that there might be a better way?

You ask, "Do you wanna save that creep who did that to her?" Of course I don't. If I caught him in the act I'm sure I would be overcome by my primitive emotions and try my best to wring this neck. And if we catch someone in the act of extracting revenge in the heat of the moment, I will lead the cry for "Let him off. He's acting out of pain and grief."

But once civilization has a chance to intervene, I expect more from us collectively than individually.

You have simply not thought your scenario all the way through. You folks all do the same thing. You get to the part where the perp is dead, and you just sit there grinning and saying, "At last, it's over."

Trouble is, it's not. Let's put this in perspective. You are an innocent person who just had a loved one killed by another human being. You of all people know at that moment just how that feels. It's unbearable. You wouldn't want anyone ever to feel that way.

So there you are in the courtroom. They caught the suspect and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is the killer (and we'll conveniently sidestep all of those issues!) The jury agrees, and it's your lucky day, Hizzoner Buford the Last Living Redneck is the judge, and he hands down the death penalty.

You start walking out of the courtroom with this great feeling of relief, and what do you see over on the other side? The bad guy's folks. His brothers and sisters, his wife, his children, his nieces and nephews, his minister, his best buddy who tried so hard to steer him onto the right path. (I'll leave out his parents, in case you're the last unrepentant Freudian who blames our parents for everything we do because we're too weak to exercise our own free will.) And they're all crying. They all feel exactly the way you do. They just lost someone they love, and they didn't do a damn thing to deserve it.

WHY DO YOU WANT THOSE PEOPLE TO FEEL THE WAY YOU DO? You know how much it hurts, that it will never go away. What possible excuse do you have for wishing that kind of pain on another human being?

You call that JUSTICE? You call that HUMANE? I call it SICK!

If my wife were murdered and I had to walk out of a courtroom bearing not just my own grief, but knowing that all those other people felt just as bad as I did, I don't know if I could bear it. And I'll tell you something else. If I didn't storm into the sentencing hearing, grab the microphone, and make the most impassioned, tearful plea on behalf of that nasty asshole's family, my wife would come back and haunt me for the rest of my life. Instead of eventually being able to fill my heart with happy memories of the time we'd been granted to spend together, pride for all the good deeds she accomplished and the lives she had changed for the better, every time I closed my eyes I would see that family standing in the courtroom crying their eyes out.

You wanna talk about JUSTICE? Well that would not be JUSTICE for my wife, for me, or for that family.

And it's not even justice for the bad guy. He gets eternal rest while we all suffer. Don't you dare bring up that heaven and hell crap, that belongs in the Dark Ages with the "eye for an eye" crap. When we're dead, we're dead. If you didn't believe that you wouldn't be so sad that your loved one is dead, all you gotta do is wait and have a reunion in heaven.

Please, Pumpkins, give civilization a chance to work. Don't keep this planet mired in the Dark Ages for another thousand years because you can't quite see beyond the end of a trial.

 

[pumpkinsaren'torange]

ok. just please answer this question honestly: did John Wayne Gacey deserve or not deserve to be executed? please look into your mind's heart and see the truth? do you guys remember him? if not...look him up and see his horrifc deeds perpetrated.

my beliefs on this matter do not change who i am Fraggle, please don't be saddened on my behalf. i am who i am.;as we are all who we are because of our culmination of experiences. i can still love...i love greatly, i love bunnies, yes ....i disdain violence. and, no...killing a killer to me is not violence...it's retribution. it's necessary.

 

[zanket]

Good perspective Fraggle Rocker.

Originally posted by pumpkinsaren'torange
and, to the other questions posed...yes, we have used Nitrogen as a form of gassing...i am sure you are aware of that, ...i don't like being baited.

No I wasn’t aware. I did a search on Google and found only one site that mentions nitrogen asphyxiation as an execution method and then only as a suggested alternative to the hydrocyanic gas used in gas chambers. Can you provide a reference?

did John Wayne Gacey deserve or not deserve to be executed?

Nobody deserves to be killed, no matter the nature of their crime. I would support execution only if it reduced violence. It doesn’t.

i am who i am.;as we are all who we are because of our culmination of experiences. i can still love...i love greatly, i love bunnies, yes ....i disdain violence. and, no...killing a killer to me is not violence...it's retribution. it's necessary.

I urge you to add to your experiences a reading of the Innocence Project, where you can learn about how our decrepit judicial system would rather kill the wrong person than allow a DNA test to exonerate (and I don’t make that statement lightly; read the stories). The Innocence Project tallies 123 innocent people freed from prison, many from death row. When an innocent person is executed the odds of the real killer being found drop significantly. In light of the facts, supporting the death penalty does not show a disdain for violence, it shows a preference for it.

 

[Tyler]

Pumpkin, your arguement is not uncommon. In fact, anyone who's been here about a month has likely heard it. The last time we discussed it wasn't too long ago...
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16216

There's a rather simple replay, but to be honest I'm in no way expecting you to agree to it. Still, why not give it the ol' college try?


"Imagine your little five-year-old (or any other tender, young age) daughter was brutally raped, stabbed multiple times all over her little battered body, along with other signs of torture such as burn marks and intense trauma, such as her head being severed from her body. Then, her poor little body left behind by the creep to be buried in a shallow grave somewhere in the woods to be picked and preyed upon by all sorts of ravenous flesh-eatting animals. If that doesn't get you...imagine it was your mother, or sister...how about that?"

I don't know if you're aware of this, but there's a reason that law has banned someone who is close to a victim to be a judge/juror for quite some time. Do you know that reason? The law is suppose to be based on logic - not pure emotion. I'll tell you what I told stargirl when she raised the same point: I would want this person dead because of my instinctual emotions. Like most human beings, however, I am capable of taking logic above my emotions and realizing that I am hardly the one to hand down the punishment. This type of personal vengence is about as just as Stalinism.


"well, then, I think you are lying to yourself"

Just a note; it's generally not a good idea in an arguement to assume too much. Especially in your opening statement. I realize that you will likely tell me this isn't a formal debate or anything, but you must recognize that you are trying to argue your point and in doing so it is in your best interest to follow this advise.


"You wanna save that creep who did that to her??"

No, I think he deserves solitary confinement.


"who's to say what really happens when a person dies...maybe they really would go somewhere where they would be eternally raped and sodomized themselves"

Haha. Please, god almighty, tell me you aren't going to base your arguement on something completely unprovable? I'm sorry, pumpkin, but you've already lost if you're doing that.


"it's purely speculative...but, you never know."

That's right. Just like I never know that Extremist Islam isn't the true way. In which case, what the fuck are we doing killing Islamic extremists? We're sending them to their virgins!!!!


"besides, keeping them alive is a wast of taxpayers money"

Common knowledge; execution costs more than life in prison.


"IMHO, all 5-star prisons should be a thing of the past."

What makes you think that max-security prisons are 5-star? Or nice in any way? I've actually had a cousin in a medium-security prison. He was there as a financial link to a crime org. in Toronto and, obviously, was no tough guy like the rest of the crew. Leg and arm broken and raped within 8 days at the jail.


"who's to say that that would be "giving them a simple way out"??"

You'd rather be raped and beaten and keep from seeing any human being you love for the rest of your life than die? You got some wierd desires, woman.


"i understand that. i should have prefaced my thread with the premise that the acccused has been sufficiently proven guilty. completely guilty"

I suppose you're aware of the disturbing facts of how often people are proven innocent years after proven "completely guilty"?


"bs on the studies. how on earth can you say it is no more a deterrent?"

Well now, are you taking a page from muscleman and the sorts? This is the worst arguement I've ever heard. No, scratch that, it's not an arguement at all. It's just stupidity. "Fuck stats, my opinion is right! Stats are lies!". Great arguement you got there pumpkin.

And we can say it because it's the truth. Nations with the death penalty have never had lower murder rates. Canada's a nice example. How is that if you go 25 miles north of Buffalo you get 1/10th the murder rate in a much more diverse and bigger city?


"death penalty is not revenge, it is a warning and a truth"

A truth? My god, woman. You are muscleman!


"i would hope there would be a hell of a place waiting in eternity for them"

Well I'm glad you have hope. It's nice to see you want laws to be based on your hopes.


"it would still get the scum off the streets; safer in that respect for all of us, you included."

So then what do you ahve against life in prison?


"...killing a killer to me is not violence...it's retribution"

Sadly, society has not moved on from this ancient feeling from the days when women weren't human and slaves were a commodity.

 

[Adam]

Pumpkinsaregroovy

I don't oppose killing someone who did something like in your example. I don't have much of a problem with the killing bit. However, the state should never have the right to kill its citizens. Why?

1) At the moment in the USA, about 15% of death row inmates are found to be innocent, either before or after they are killed.

2) The state should no have the right to make someone a coward who would kill a bound an unarmed man.

3) The state could use this to get rid of dissenting voices.

Now, I suggest that the second problem can be fixed by giving victims, or relatives of the victims, the option of killing the criminal.

 

[%BlueSoulRobot%]

Originally posted by pumpkinsaren'torange
Isn't the primary goal in any humane execution the loss of conciousness and sensation? yes? yes, it is and that's how it should be done...Nitrogen gas.

lol@humane execution, nice oxymoron.

I think execution should be based on prolonged cardiac arrest. You can still lose your conscious and remain technically "alive". (Not sure about comatose people. Are they conscious, in a subconscious way?)

I understand your desire to do justice, and if I were in the same situation (having had my daughter beaten and raped), I would definitely feel the same. I don't know ... this is hard to decide. As for a quiet annihilation, yes, I think nitrogen is a good idea. Personally, I go for torture. Induced insanity: watch the man tear himself to shreds in a padded room while I stand behind protective glass.

However, there is a saying: "An eye for an eye will only result in the world going blind."

Something to ponder.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Asked and answered.

Originally posted by pumpkinsaren'torange
Just please answer this question honestly: Did John Wayne Gacey deserve or not deserve to be executed? Please look into your mind's heart and see the truth.

I don't remember Gacey. But since I'm currently working in Washington, I'll just substitute the names of Muhammad and Malvo, the Montgomery County Snipers. Do they deserve to die? Perhaps. I certainly have no sympathy for them and if one of the forty or fifty bereaved members of their victims' families managed to get off two shots in a fit of grief, as I said before, I would personally help them avoid arrest and prosecution. I don't hold individuals, especially individuals overcome with unbearable sadness, to the same standard as Human Civilization.

But I also know that Muhammad has children and Malvo has a mother. I come back at you with the same question, which you have cleverly managed to avoid answering, just as all you hangin' judges always do because you have to put that part of yourself in suspended animation to get away with these thoughts and not feel ashamed. Do those people, who have done nothing wrong (at least no worse than any of us), deserve to suffer abject grief? If so, please explain why? Please explain how the deaths of their loved ones will cause such a tremendous improvement in the world, in everyone's happiness, in our sense of security, justice, whatever, that it is worth sacrificing the ETERNAL emotional well-being of at least three perfectly innocent people?

We know that the death penalty is worthless as a deterrent. That in a nation of laws it costs far more money to execute someone (with the mandatory appeals and everything while we're making sure we really got the right man THIS time) than a lifetime in prison. That in prison they will be treated like cockroaches because they shot children. So what exactly do we gain by killing them?

I've told you that I already have looked into my mind's heart, and I have seen the truth. I'm two or three times your age so perhaps I can see a little more deeply and clearly. My wife and I have talked about this because that's the kind of stuff you get into when you share decades of your life and you become part of each other. If one of us were murdered, the survivor would be absolutely sick with grief. And then he or she would resolutely march into the courtroom and stand up for the principles that they know the other one would be proud of.

Judges often listen to victims' kin, because they have tried enough of these cases that they can't escape the truth either. Killing people only punishes their families. If a judge hears a bereaved wife say, "Please don't kill that man because I couldn't stand being even partially responsible for making his wife feel the way I do," he knows that he will have his own nightmares to deal with if he doesn't heed her. The last gift I could give my wife would be to avoid having her death set off a chain reaction of grief. And her knowledge that I absolutely will do that if necessary is one of the things that gives her peace while she is alive. I got my genders twisted somewhere in there but it doesn't matter, we both feel the same way. She was born with it, and sometimes all it takes to be a good man is to know when your wife is right.

Listen to your elders, child. We're not all full of shit.

I disdain violence. and, no...killing a killer to me is not violence...it's retribution.

God, that's straight out of George Orwell! Promise me that you'll print that out and tape it up somewhere and read it back once in a while. "Killing" is "violence" by definition. It doesn't matter if you're killing someone who's trying to rape you or a chicken you want for lunch, it's still killing and it's still violence. It is indeed retribution, but why the hell do you say that like it's a good thing, like it's an excuse? Retribution is one of the darkest, shittiest emotions we have. If the only justification for something is "retribution," that's an admission that there is NO justification. I guess one of the reasons I have such a short fuse with the partriarchal, monotheistic religions, is that even when they occasionally get something right, their "followers" don't "follow" it. "Vengeance is mine, says the Lord." I would have a lot more respect for the so called disciples of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed if a few of them acted like they believe that.

It's necessary.

Maybe 3,000 years ago when you couldn't count on a government to last long enough to keep its prisons guarded, or the woods were so full of bandits that they would just break the jail open and pull the guy out. It's not "necessary" today, unless you believe that sating people's baser lusts is a "necessity." Don't they already get enough of that from Jerry Springer and "wrestling?"

 

[%BlueSoulRobot%]

1) At the moment in the USA, about 15% of death row inmates are found to be innocent, either before or after they are killed.

Before? So they're innocent, and they're killed any way? lol

2) The state should no have the right to make someone a coward who would kill a bound an unarmed man.

Err...so we give the man a knife and if he makes so much as one menacing move, he gets shot in the head? :bugeye:

Now, I suggest that the second problem can be fixed by giving victims, or relatives of the victims, the option of killing the criminal.

Then there wouldn't be any execution at all! Unless ... that's what you were trying to say.

 

[%BlueSoulRobot%]

Do those people, who have done nothing wrong (at least no worse than any of us), deserve to suffer abject grief? If so, please explain why? Please explain how the deaths of their loved ones will cause such a tremendous improvement in the world, in everyone's happiness, in our sense of security, justice, whatever, that it is worth sacrificing the ETERNAL emotional well-being of at least three perfectly innocent people?

I'm glad that you can care and feel compassion for the perpetrator's families, because they too are going through intense emotional injury, in that their loved one has committed the crime, broken their trust, and is now going to leave forever. It might even be a worse burden than the ones held by the victim's family.

Unfortunately, not everyone can forgive, and not everyone can repent.