DC sniper Muhammad set to die by lethal injection

[spidergoat]

My argument that the death penalty is bad because the court system often makes mistakes and prosecutes an innocent person, or deprives a defendent of their constitutional right to a fair trial. Having one case that happens to be clear in terms of guilt does not change this fact.

As bad as it is to be deprived of your freedom in prison, there is time to correct legal mistakes.

 

[Repo Man]

The inability to restore life to an individual who has been mistakenly put to death is neither stupid, nor irrelevant. You have refuted nothing. Your posts are deteriorating to the equivalent of a touchdown dance.

Everything is open to a degree of doubt. There is a high probability that the sun will rise tomorrow; but there is always the possibility of some previously unknown cataclysm causing the sun to explode with no warning. Unlikely is far from impossible. While I'm reasonably satisfied that this man is guilty, humans are fallible, and are also capable of deceit. Perhaps the death of an occasional innocent person is irrelevant to you, but it is troubling to the overwhelming majority of people.

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

Before you express your opinion about a case, it does help if you actually know about it. There was NO DOUBT about his guilt.

This is as clear cut case as it can be.

People aren’t executed unless there is “NO DOUBT” of their guilt in the eyes of a jury and the case is “as clear cut as can be”. Everyone that has been executed has been executed on the basis of “NO DOUBT”.

But, as has been said, we know that innocent people have been executed. They were executed on the basis of “NO DOUBT”, yet now we know that mistakes were made.

I know you don’t have many neurons to work with, but if you try to apply what little you have to this issue you may realise something about the nature of “NO DOUBT”.

Here’s a recent example of the dubious nature of “NO DOUBT” and how a clear cut case can turn out to be anything but clear cut when evidence is re-examined.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/24/justice.willingham.juror/index.html

 

[spidergoat]

That is not the criteria. The criteria is "beyond a reasonable doubt".

 

[Syzygys]

Having one case that happens to be clear in terms of guilt does not change this fact.

No, it just makes it IRRELEVANT. Since we are discussing a case with a clearly guilty criminal, your "fact" is irrelevant and offtopic.

But please, keep bring this up, because my Alzheimer keeps acting up...

I see Repo Man just repeated the same old, so there is no point in addressing his post. Anybody else with something new?

I want to hear why Muhammad shouldn't have died:....*

* Space aliens are not acceptable defense...I know, I am a big meanie...

 

[Syzygys]

People aren’t executed unless there is “NO DOUBT” of their guilt in the eyes of a jury

I appreciate the personal attacks, but a real argument whould have been : Priceless

Now you are making an argument that Muhammad should have lived, because OTHER criminals have been occasionally executed wrongfully.

Honestly, who the fuck CARES? As long as Muhammad for sure in your eyes was guilty, you can not make that argument, because (you guessed it right) it is irrelevant.

Now if you say that he should have been tortured for the next 10 years, that is actually a GOOD and ACCEPTABLE argument. Maybe not very nice, but actually logical.

So are you making the sadist argument or the usual stupid one? And please be slow, because I am not very smart to catch your drift if you go fast...

 

[Syzygys]

Really guys, the stupidity of your arguments just raining down on me, so let's use an analogy:

Let's say you are my boss and I did something really wrong for what I should be rightfully and legally fired. But I would tell you this as my defense:

You can not fire me, because in the past there were people wrongfully fired and what if there is a small chance (put here space aliens) that I didn't do it but somebody else did it? So, you can take away my bonus or not give me a raise, but you can not FIRE me.

Makes sense? Of course not...

Now get your act together and just tell me you are sadist. Nothing is wrong with that, although I have a good counterargument against it. You know me...

 

[Repo Man]

Comparing taking a life to losing a job? And you are characterizing the arguments of others as stupid?

Please don't quote him folks, I'm through reading his bilge.

 

[Repo Man]

For anyone interested in actually discussing this:

The innocence Project has exonerated seventeen people who were waiting for their date on death row. That's right, seventeen people who had been convicted and sentenced to death were found to be innocent. Who knows how many innocent people have been executed?

For more reading, here is The New Yorker's story about Cameron Willingham, which goes into far more depth than Hercules Rockefeller's link above.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

I'm struck by how vengeful and bloodthirsty people are.

Indeed. The death penalty is nothing but revenge writ large, and revenge is the most evil and destructive of all human emotions. It starts a cycle that can't be stopped. You end up with the Hatfields vs. the McCoys, avenging killings that happened so long ago, in an era with different rules, so it's impossible to be sure who (if anybody) was in the right. You end up with a cesspool like the Middle East, where people are killing each other over something that happened more than a thousand years ago.

The fundamental rule of behavior that makes civilization possible is: You don't get to kill people just because you're angry at them. You only get to kill people in self-defense.

If you come home and find someone who has just finished raping your wife and is now coming after your children with a knife, of course no one is going to fault you for being overcome with emotion and fishing your gun out of the drawer and shooting him. Technically it's wrong but we will cut you some slack under the circumstances.

But if you go to the trouble of wrestling him to the floor while your shuddering wife bonks him with a frying pan, tying him up, calling the police, enduring the humiliation of his trial in which your wife is cross-examined by bottom-feeding lawyers who make her appear to be a drug-addicted slut, and finally he is safely locked away in a cell where he can never again hurt anyone except another felon...

and then the fucking goddamned shit-for-brains government kills him anyway . . .

then why should any of us bother relying on the authorities? It is so much easier, and generates so many pleasant endorphins (and consumes far less of our tax money), to just take matters into our own hands and execute everyone we believe to be a felon. Hey why stop there? Let's execute everyone we believe to be a drag on civilization. I would start with the religious people, you all know how I feel about their negative contribution to civilization. Anybody want to join me? Or have I made my case?

Punishment entails a portion of revenge.

Revenge is one of the many relics of the Stone Age that civilization is supposed to curb. Although as with the other Stone Age relic of religion, it hasn't been entirely successful.

The purpose of a "justice" system is to reduce the probability of crimes being committed, and to make us all feel safer. The death penalty does not deter anyone from committing a capital crime. Most murders are crimes of passion and people in the throes of passion don't think about the consequences. As for the rest: mob hit men are professionals who are quite sure they'll get away with it; serial killers are playing a game and dare us to catch them; mass murderers have a point to prove and are willing to take the risk; terrorists are martyrs; street thugs are only capable of thinking six hours into the future; and psychopaths just don't think like we do.

The best we can do is keep the ones we catch from doing it again, and life in prison takes care of that.

Society has the right to avenge its grievances. That's part-and-parcel with Justice. I also cheer when rapists get sent to jail. Is there a problem with that? I mean, they are being kept in cages. Am I some sort of masochist?

If you put someone in jail and it turns out you screwed up, you can let him back out. If you kill him you have become the murderer.

If you put someone in jail his children can come visit him and learn by example that they don't want to grow up like that. If you kill him all they know is that you're the motherfucker who killed their daddy and some day they're going to come after you, and perhaps your entire family. Revenge begets revenge, as a quick look at the Middle East will remind you.

I'm human and it's human to want to see evil-doers suffer their punishment.

Are you saying that all human urges are to be accommodated? That the entire point of civilization is not to elevate us above our animal instincts? That I can rape that hot chick across the street and shoot the bastard who fired me? Do you really need to lose this argument in public???

Isn't this why we have wars? Because despite our best efforts our countries are always led by men who can't overcome their Stone Age instincts?

And was there ever a motive established?

I've been living in the Washington region since a few months before the Beltway Snipers went into action and Chief Moose, the head of my county's police force, is acknowledged as having solved the crime and caught the perps. His motive was to intimidate his wife into taking him back by showing her how violent he could become if he was crossed.

Or was he just a woo woo in waiting? A psychopath maybe?

It didn't occur to him that in order to get away with his crime spree he was not going to be able to divulge his identity, so his wife would never know it was him. So let's just say that he was really, really stupid.

Someone mentioned he expressed no remorse.

That's true. Considering that he did a surprisingly decent job of representing himself after firing his lawyers (the judge did not see any reason to force him to accept the services of an attorney), he was clearly coherent and said what he thought. He was definitely a sociopath.

Doesn't it make you think just a little bit? Especially about those poor chaps seeing active service right now? One minute the killing is sanctioned and fully supported by the state; the next it isn't.

My point exactly. If the government EVER sanctions killing someone who is not presenting an immediate threat, it has started you down the slippery slope. And it has pushed you down that slope at the worst possible moment: When you're consumed by anger, usually over an injury that you blame on somebody else whom you don't like anyway.

During the 1960s I marched on many picket lines in the civil rights movement. Yet despite the fact that I am also an uncompromising pacifist, I never carried an anti-war picket sign. My reasoning was that when your opponents, by definition, believe that violence is sometimes a legitimate means for resolving a disagreement, the stupidest thing I could do would be to stand out in the street and disagree with them.

There have been innocents executed before where there was seemingly no doubt about their guilt. Just because you are utterly confident he was guilty doesn't mean it was so. Since it is impossible to grant life again, and guilt or innocence is much harder to establish with absolute certainty than some would like to believe, the risk of executing an innocent person is a very valid argument against the death penalty.

I agree. "'Tis better to let a thousand guilty men go free than to execute on innocent man." Given what I've read lately, I'm fairly certain that the ratio is considerably lower than 1000:1. Nonetheless that argument is not sufficient to obviate capital punishment in all cases. In this specific case, for example, there is absolutely no doubt about the sniper's guilt. (I hew to the convention of never naming these people because I don't want to satisfy their customary wish, which is to be remembered by history.)

The key point has to be that it is uncivilized to ever condone killing someone except in self-defense. Revenge is just focused anger and if anger is allowed as a reason for killing then civilization is diminished. If people have to devote some of their time and effort to protecting themselves from each other, that reduces their ability to contribute to civilization. So why don't we all go back to being nomadic hunter-gatherers who can righteously kill the people in the tribe in the next valley if they show their faces, because they're competitors for our scarce resources.

I'd rather see him rot in jail the rest of his life and die of cancer or something. The fucker got off easy.

A very good point. Killing someone does not punish him. He's dead! He can't feel the humiliation of being defeated by someone he considers his inferior, the shame of being regarded by his community as a monster, the disappointment of never being able to fulfill his dreams, or the sadness of not attending his children's weddings and his wife's funeral.

The only people you punish by killing someone is the people who loved him. His parents, his children, his friends, his priest, his scoutmaster, his therapist... every asshole has a bunch of people who loved him and tried their best to reform him, and those people don't deserve the pain of watching you kill him just because you can't be civilized enough to stifle your Stone Age instinct for revenge, the way you somehow manage to stifle your other Stone Age instincts. When's the last time you organized a raiding party to steal the food of the tribe in the next valley? (I'm using "you" loosely here, forgive me if I lose track of which of you I'm responding to at the moment. You know who you are.)

No there isn't. This is as clear cut case as it can be. Is there some kind of website where they teach how to make stupid and irrelevant arguments against the death penalty? Because I keep getting the same old stupid arguments that I already defeated back in kindergarten.

So we're calling each other "Stupid" now, are we? And you want to go up against the Linguistics Moderator, the published author, the man who makes a living by writing and editing, the person who's had more letters to the editor printed than everyone he knows put together, the guy whom the lady with a master's degree in English married because he's the only person she could never defeat in an argument?

You, a relic of the Stone Age who should go live with your own kind in Afghanistan, where revenge killing is considered honorable, and where because of that civilization is on the verge of collapse?

 

[Tiassa]

Mod Hat - What do you expect?

Mod Hat — What do you expect?

I appreciate the personal attacks, but a real argument whould have been : Priceless

Hey, Syzygys, maybe if you don't like what people have to say to you, it would be advisable to actually post something constructive, useful, and at least marginally intelligent. This thread is presently closed so I can clean up after your provocation.

So why don't you spare us all the empty-handed (and -headed) innocence routine?

Seriously, if you want to come into EM&J, attempt to provoke those who disagree with you, and then lie to us all by playing the poor, innocent, oppressed voice of justice, just skip it.

So don't lie to us, Syz. And spare us this moronic, dishonest pretense. You walk in swinging, don't stop and bawl when someone pops you in the teeth.

In the meantime, nobody is going to go around and tie everyone else's hands behind their back and sew their mouths shut just so you can feel like you've gotten yourself into a fair fight.

Bottom line: If you wish to continue with your all-bark, no-bite provocation, do it somewhere else. Get your attitude problem under control, because if I have to go around cleaning up after you, I'll just prevent you from making the mess in the first place. Easy enough?

Call it a warning.

• • •​

General Policy Note (Take this seriously)

In my opinion, members will find their experience at Sciforums much more rewarding if they don't fret about petty thug trolls. If there is actually a substantial point to respond to in a given idiotic post, take that up. Doesn't mean you can't have a chuckle about how badly a troll is embarrassing himself, but here's the thing:

When I first undertook moderation of EM&J, I found it a pleasant exercise, since most of the members made the jurisdiction fairly easy by not going out of their way to disrupt or provoke. And, over time, barring the occasional troll here and there, it's largely stayed that way. As a result, I've had the luxury of letting people pretty much run loose here. However, recent changes challenge that luxury. To the one, the number of members who simply can't figure out that posting illogical or fallacious arguments in an ethics dispute is about as paradoxical as it gets around here, even more so than calling an atheistic pep rally the Religion subforum. And, to the other, moderators and the administration have recently undertaken certain changes that, while presently somewhat limited in their scope, do have broader implications. Simply because we are still wrangling over the finer details of a generally ad hoc plan doesn't mean I can ignore the fact of these changes. We might consider, for instance, that the discussion among moderators has even gone so far as to muddle the difference between arbitrary profane insults and descriptions of behavior. While we seem to have worked that one out for the time being, the trend is clear. Sciforums is slowly exploring routes back toward its original vision, which is a scholarly virtual community once characterized by its former motto: "Sciforums — Intelligent Community". Thus, while I draw distinctions between good faith and bad, provocateurs and vigilantes, scholars and comedians, and other such classifications, and while I certainly favor one general group over the other, the reality is that in reeling in the trolls, we also have a responsibility to reel in the vigilantes. Truth is that there are plenty who can't tell the difference. For instance, one might walk in the door denigrating the opposition both generally and specifically, and then get upset about the "personal attacks" that come in return. Really, after a while, if you deal with enough of these people, there comes a chilling discovery that these people aren't kidding. They really don't get it.

So the scholars (even those with a sense of humor) who operate in good faith, while they have my sympathy, should seriously consider whether or not the obvious retort to a troll is worth the effort. In the long run, if you let these trolls get obnoxious enough without further inflaming their paranoia and anger, it's a lot easier for us to finally put a foot down and throw their sorry asses out the door.​

I will attempt a couple things on my end that will hopefully make the whole process of reporting an offensive post seem more effective; in truth, I pick up most offenses while just wandering through the various discussions. But, in the meantime, people are always welcome to contact me directly via private message if they feel that would be more productive. Just copy the post number and include a note regarding your objection.

(For the record, my first attempt failed, as I just discovered that what I want to do is impossible. I'll see what else I can come up with.)

So help me out, folks. Please don't feed the trolls. And how dare you make them cry. Really, they just don't get it, so until we decide to hold a Stalinist purge or some such, it will be a slow and laborious process to restore our community to its former, idealistic pursuit of grandeur and scholarship.

• • •​

This thread is temporarily closed. It will return to open discussion when I have attended to its most obvious needs.

Update: Whoops. Forgot to close it. Carry on. I'll do my cleaning as the discussion carries on.

 

[madanthonywayne]

Indeed. The death penalty is nothing but revenge writ large, and revenge is the most evil and destructive of all human emotions. It starts a cycle that can't be stopped. You end up with the Hatfields vs. the McCoys, avenging killings that happened so long ago, in an era with different rules, so it's impossible to be sure who (if anybody) was in the right.

That's true, when carried out by one family against another. Which is why we created governments and courts to administer justice fairly.

But in turning over the administration of justice to an impartial body, the goal was never to allow the wrongdoers to escape punishment. And no punishment is adequate to atone for the crime of murder short of death. Anything less leaves the scales of justice unbalanced.

If you come home and find someone who has just finished raping your wife and is now coming after your children with a knife, of course no one is going to fault you for being overcome with emotion and fishing your gun out of the drawer and shooting him. Technically it's wrong but we will cut you some slack under the circumstances.

But if you go to the trouble of wrestling him to the floor while your shuddering wife bonks him with a frying pan, tying him up, calling the police, enduring the humiliation of his trial in which your wife is cross-examined by bottom-feeding lawyers who make her appear to be a drug-addicted slut, and finally he is safely locked away in a cell where he can never again hurt anyone except another felon...

and then the fucking goddamned shit-for-brains government kills him anyway . . .

then why should any of us bother relying on the authorities?

Again, we rely on the authorities to ensure the impartial administration of justice, not because we want criminals to escape punishment.

Hey why stop there? Let's execute everyone we believe to be a drag on civilization. I would start with the religious people, you all know how I feel about their negative contribution to civilization. Anybody want to join me? Or have I made my case?

No, you haven't made your case at all. Advocating the mass slaughter of people who have commited no crime other than not believing what you believe does little to help your case.

I hew to the convention of never naming these people because I don't want to satisfy their customary wish, which is to be remembered by history

There we agree. I wish the media would also follow that policy. Don't name the bastards. Call them scumbag number 4, 5, etc. This is especially true, I think, of school shootings. These people want to be remembered. Take that away, and you remove a major part of their motivation.

A very good point. Killing someone does not punish him. He's dead! He can't feel the humiliation of being defeated by someone he considers his inferior, the shame of being regarded by his community as a monster, the disappointment of never being able to fulfill his dreams, or the sadness of not attending his children's weddings and his wife's funeral.

I'm sorry, but that argument is complete bullshit. If it were true, why in the hell do guys on death row fight tooth and nail to avoid execution? Why the endless appeals and plea bargins to avoid execution? People love life. So long as there is life, there is hope. Depriving someone of his life is the ultimate punishment.

You, a relic of the Stone Age who should go live with your own kind in Afghanistan, where revenge killing is considered honorable, and where because of that civilization is on the verge of collapse?

There's no need for that. Us Americans support "revenge" (the death penalty) by a wide margin.

 

[iceaura]

But in turning over the administration of justice to an impartial body, the goal was never to allow the wrongdoers to escape punishment. And no punishment is adequate to atone for the crime of murder short of death. Anything less leaves the scales of justice unbalanced.

I'm no longer surprised, but still a bit baffled, by people who think that on one hand a government can't regulate a bank in the community's best interest, and on the other that a government can do something like balance the karmic scales of the universe at the point of "justice".

How would we balance the scales of justice for a mistaken execution - hang the judge? Shoot the prosecutor? Electrocute the jury foreman? At least the average murderer has the excuse of hot blood or pressured circumstances.

As any American should know in their bones, by reflex, by instinct, no government can be trusted with the power of execution of any of its citizens.

We shouldn't even have to examine the trial records of Chicago, Texas, or Florida, for the drunken attorneys, the grandstanding DAs with political ambitions, the invented and planted evidence, the withheld exculpation, the rogue police, the dysfunctional forensic labs, and so forth - never mind the serious stuff of political oppression - to understand that government should always be held accountable for its actions, and if you can't make it produce the person and justify its treatment of same, it is no longer accountable.

 

[superstring01]

The purpose of a "justice" system is to reduce the probability of crimes being committed, and to make us all feel safer.

That is a portion of justice. The other portion of justice is to--in effect--balance the books. This very fact is why our justice system in the USA asks what the victims' desires are for the perp. The harmed are entitled to closure, part of this closure comes from knowing that the criminal is made to suffer for his transgressions.

You can try to redefine justice into meaning whatever you want, but when humans in this country ceded certain "powers" to it (the power to avenge, for example), it's job is to exercise those powers in a more level, fair manner.

Does it make me some primitive savage? Okay. Sure. I'll settle on that. I'm not particularly passionate about capital punishment, but I also put my self in the place of the victim. If my dad or sister were killed, I'd want the killer to be killed. The government's job is to carry out justice, including killing from time to time.

The death penalty does not deter anyone from committing a capital crime.

Besides tickets and warnings for the average person, justice rarely prevents any crimes, Fraggle. Those things come from proper parenting and a balanced system. Once a person reaches the stage of committing heinous a crime, the thought of punishment rarely comes to their mind. Therefore, punishment and--yes--balance becomes the purpose.

Most murders are crimes of passion and people in the throes of passion don't think about the consequences. As for the rest: mob hit men are professionals who are quite sure they'll get away with it; serial killers are playing a game and dare us to catch them; mass murderers have a point to prove and are willing to take the risk; terrorists are martyrs; street thugs are only capable of thinking six hours into the future; and psychopaths just don't think like we do.

Which is the point I was making. Executing a person is about taking their life. A person can exhaust their right to live, IMHO. Once that point is crossed, they should be put to death.

This business about saying that a government that kills is a government of murderers is idiotic. The government is a super-human entity. It has powers that NONE of us can exercise, which include sending people to war, taking your money and property and locking people in cages. Taking life is one of those powers.

The best we can do is keep the ones we catch from doing it again, and life in prison takes care of that.If you put someone in jail and it turns out you screwed up, you can let him back out. If you kill him you have become the murderer.

Now your debating about evidence and I'd be with you on that. In cases where the evidence meets certain criteria; actual video footage, DNA evidence, significant eye-witnesses, etc., come to mind as adequate proof of a crime. If that crime is murder, then it may well warrant the criminal losing the right to live.

If you put someone in jail his children can come visit him and learn by example that they don't want to grow up like that.

I'd like to see any study showing that children who visit their daddy's in jail end up better adults. If not, I'll chalk that up to lofty speculation, which is your right, but not one I agree with.

If you kill him all they know is that you're the motherfucker who killed their daddy and some day they're going to come after you, and perhaps your entire family.

Really? Well, then they'd probably be the type of scum to end up in the cell anyway.

Revenge begets revenge, as a quick look at the Middle East will remind you.Are you saying that all human urges are to be accommodated?

Obviously not. Thus the government takes the power to carry out certain forms of justice. I'm no fan of the Middle East, but their issues stem from far different issues than capital punishment. Japan executed people up until this year (and the appointment of the new Justice Minister--who opposes capital punishment--is seen only as a temporary moratorium) and is the closest thing to a crime free nation on Earth. Their model is the gold standard in evidence gathering and balanced punishments. They are nothing like the Middle East. Having a single, or even small number of things in common with the ME doesn't worry me a bit.

That the entire point of civilization is not to elevate us above our animal instincts?

In a word: yes. But there's no evidence that ending a human life who is a horrific murderer makes us animals. It could well mean that we are balanced in our justice, especially when a person is executed after a thorough investigation, multiple trials and appeals, and final review by various government boards. That satisfies me.

That I can rape that hot chick across the street and shoot the bastard who fired me? Do you really need to lose this argument in public???

I have not problem with that.

Isn't this why we have wars?

Maybe. We have wars because human beings are inherently insecure. Religions, raw materials and--in many cases--females amplify those issues with men. I see no reasonable like between humanely executing a heinous criminal and world wars.

If the government EVER sanctions killing someone who is not presenting an immediate threat, it has started you down the slippery slope.

NO it has not. We live every moment of our lives on the "slippery slope." There is no flat ground at the top or the bottom. We arbitrarily chose our position on that slope and just hold on and try not to slip further up or down. But there is no stable ground. Every generation chooses what point on that "slope" is the appropriate place for comfort. I find it appropriate, right now, to hold my footing on the place where I'm okay with my government executing murders (and serial child rapists, but that's a pipe dream).

~String

 

[iceaura]

Japan executed people up until this year (and the appointment of the new Justice Minister--who opposes capital punishment--is seen only as a temporary moratorium) and is the closest thing to a crime free nation on Earth. Their model is the gold standard in evidence gathering and balanced punishments.

Too many of their criminals confess, under vague circumstances. They have little protection against unreasonable search, and no privacy with regard to police inquiry.

Their punishment system seems to work in tandem with organized crime, to keep order. Order is kept - at a price.

A person can exhaust their right to live, IMHO.

And you trust the Texas DA to decide when that has happened?

This business about saying that a government that kills is a government of murderers is idiotic.

If not that, if not accountable, then a government that cannot be held to account - that kills with impunity, for its own reasons and in its own interests.

Now your debating about evidence and I'd be with you on that. In cases where the evidence meets certain criteria; actual video footage, DNA evidence, significant eye-witnesses, etc., come to mind as adequate proof of a crime.

Be sure and hold your local judicial setup to your standards - and when you can't, watch them set their own. That's before they manufacture evidence, coerce witnesses, and screw up the forensics.

The intrasystem goals come first. The State acts in its own interest, first and always.

You can try to redefine justice into meaning whatever you want, but when humans in this country ceded certain "powers" to it (the power to avenge, for example), it's job is to exercise those powers in a more level, fair manner.

Never cede to a government the power to execute its citizens.

The myth of "avenge", of "closure", of "balance", like other fairytales of a benevolent kingdom and a wise king, should not fog better judgment. Every government that can kill can kill for treason against that government, for example. Every legal system runs on government lawyers.

The Biblical observation that "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord" is not an idealistic appeal to transcendence: it is a flat, pragmatic assertion of fact. You can't get revenge. No killing balances another. Meanwhile, the State has taken on a sinister role - and throughout history, no State has failed to take advantage of that opportunity.

 

[Syzygys]

Indeed. The death penalty is nothing but revenge

Kind of sad that you, the moderator of the linguistic forum says this. Go ahead, replace revenge with payback or justice and you are good to go.

And what's wrong with payback? You expect to get paid for your work or good deeds, why not for bad deeds?

And if we are already at it, what's wrong with revenge? That teaches the perpetrator something...

I didn't read the rest because you are too wordy, but I never namecall. If I state someone is stupid, than he is.

Now, has anybody actually answered why specificly Muhammad shouldn't have died? Don't generalize, let's talk about this particular case! Oh but no, you don't dare to talk about a specific and particulary gruesome and guilty case because, well, you don't have a non-sadist argument.

 

[Tiassa]

This and that

What about "state-sanctioned" theft? (Taxes)

State-sanctioned locking-in-cages? (Imprisonment)

State-sanctioned forced labor? (Conscription)

Taxes as theft is a rhetorical device.

Imprisonment is part of what we call the "correctional system". In this context, it serves two purposes:

(1) To quarantine dangerous individuals in order to prevent greater harm to society.

(2) To rehabilitate criminals so that they might someday contribute to society, instead of rot in prison at the public expense.​

Now, admittedly budget concerns and lust for revenge have made the correctional system a political disaster to such a degree that it is hard to see the correctional aspect. But revenge is a colloquy:

"Fine! Then I'll have to call the judge, and that means you'll go to jail. You're one phone call away from getting a human booster shot from a guy named Molly!"

(Family Guy)​

As to conscription? I oppose it entirely.

The state, for better or worse, is a "super human" entity with rights that individual citizens don't have. This includes the taking of the occasional human life as a punishment for a crime.

I think that's more a modern justification of libertarianism than anything else. To the other, you sound kind of like an Anarchist. Government is conventionally legalized coercive force. Whether or not that government has a right to take a life as punishment for a crime is a matter of convention. Capital punishment can be more expensive than life imprisonment, especially if we want to make sure we do it right; any crime-reducing effect it has is negligible at best; it is subject to superficial sympathies—e.g., racial disproportion in death sentences for similar crimes. These are huge problems with vast human implications that people ignore because they want revenge.

Nonetheless, in the United States capital punishment is available under the law. This, incidentally, is why I opened my part in this thread with anything but a general argument against the death penalty; this simply isn't a case to hang capital punishment by.

Such as it is, I would think that the execution of a convict should be something of a solemn affair. We hear a lot in American political rhetoric about the value of human life. If we turn homicide into a public spectacle, or reduce it to bloodlust and revenge, we are seriously devaluing human life. It's a problem facing the American collective psyche. But there is something perverse about settling in with popcorn and a Pepsi to watch the opening of a war. And there is, likewise, something severely amiss about the idea that we should find glee in killing anyone.

Personally, I think we should have kept John Allen Muhammad alive and institutionalized where we could pick his brain. A lifetime of psychiatric investigation is the least he owes society, and the more data we have, the better we can see the important patterns. But people aren't really interested right now in long-term approaches to crime and harm reduction. They'd rather have revenge. And yeah, there's something screwed up with that, too. I mean, if you had a choice between—

(A) Executing a murderer in five years for a murder that happened last Monday, or,

(B) Having nobody to execute because there was no murder last Monday​

—what would you choose?

If you had to choose between slaking your thirst for revenge and not having lost a parent or sibling to murder, what would you choose? If you look at the next victim, would you tell them you look forward to executing their murderer, or that you want them to live a full, happy, decent life?

In the long run, this is one of the basic choices we make. Maybe we feel better knowing people in prison are miserable, or that a murderer will be poisoned to death, but this only means more people will get hurt or killed. And I don't just mean more in the sense that there will always be crime. I mean, if you could have ten murders in your city next year, or a hundred, which would you prefer? Would you take the hundred because revenge is cheaper and quicker than real solutions? How would you explain that to the other ninety?

We can't ever be Ebenezer Scrooge. That is, there are no Ghosts of Victims Past, Present, and Future to plead that we change our outlook. We will never have the chance to say to someone, "Well, maybe we could have stopped your murder if we tried to do something constructive about crime, but revenge is just that much more rewarding. Sorry. You're it, and better you than me."

• • •​

Now, has anybody actually answered why specificly Muhammad shouldn't have died? Don't generalize, let's talk about this particular case! Oh but no, you don't dare to talk about a specific and particulary gruesome and guilty case because, well, you don't have a non-sadist argument.

Oh, quit whining. If you had a real point to argue, you wouldn't need to fall back to anemic sarcasm.

The reality is that executing this man accomplishes nothing substantial. It satiates people's need for revenge. From the moment of his conviction, he was no longer a threat to anyone, and could serve humanity in a practical sense had he been institutionalized so that doctors could learn more about criminal psychiatric deviation.

In the meantime, nobody has actually offered a logical reason why Muhammad should have died. It's all about revenge.
____________________

Notes:

Adler, Allison. "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows". Family Guy, #3ACX03. FOX Broadcasting Corp., New York. January 17, 2002.

 

[madanthonywayne]

Imprisonment is part of what we call the "correctional system". In this context, it serves two purposes:

(1) To quarantine dangerous individuals in order to prevent greater harm to society.

(2) To rehabilitate criminals so that they might someday contribute to society, instead of rot in prison at the public expense.​

LOL. You think anyone emerges from prison rehabilitated? If anything, they simply learn to be better criminals. What else would you expect after several years of associating with nothing but other criminals?

They'd rather have revenge. And yeah, there's something screwed up with that, too. I mean, if you had a choice between—

(A) Executing a murderer in five years for a murder that happened last Monday, or,

(B) Having nobody to execute because there was no murder last Monday​

—what would you choose?

If you had to choose between slaking your thirst for revenge and not having lost a parent or sibling to murder, what would you choose? If you look at the next victim, would you tell them you look forward to executing their murderer, or that you want them to live a full, happy, decent life?

That is an absurdly false choice. We are no where near understanding the human mind well enough to prevent all murders. I expect we'll develop some method of FTL before we fully understand the human mind.

The reality is that executing this man accomplishes nothing substantial. It satiates people's need for revenge. From the moment of his conviction, he was no longer a threat to anyone, and could serve humanity in a practical sense had he been institutionalized so that doctors could learn more about criminal psychiatric deviation.

Prison is a fertile ground for recruitment by Islamic extremists in the US (and elsewhere). Keeping Muhamed alive may well have allowed him to pass on his twisted views and led to still more innocents being slaughtered.

 

[quadraphonics]

How would we balance the scales of justice for a mistaken execution - hang the judge?

Well, that would put a whole new spin on the term "hanging judge."

I agree with most of your arguments against the death penalty, BTW. A large, imperfect system is bound to execute some innocent people even in the best of all worlds (and that's without worrying about what real governments might do), and by some reasonable counts we've already executed something like 30 innocent people since reinstituting the death penalty.

But I have a hard time getting my hackles up about it here. I just don't have any serious doubts that this guy is guilty of numerous cold-blooded murders. It's sort of no-harm-no-foul, to me.

Maybe I'm just desensitized. I have been having real trouble caring about the Ft. Hood massacre, for another example. Army men getting shot at? Isn't that what they signed up for?

 

[Syzygys]

Who the hell mentioned REHABILITATION? Oh is that Tiassa again? I don't read him, but rehabilitation is OFFTOPIC, since both criminals in this case would have got/got LIFE without parole.

Please stay on topic people!

Now Malvo, the kid is going to stay in prison for 70 years, if he has good health, since he was 17 only and he could easily live up to 87. Rehabilitation my ass....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Boyd_Malvo