Then you can say the same for life in prison, or any prison for that matter. Very simplistic and unrealistic.
But life in prison is a
more civilized alternative to murdering him for revenge! If you feel that a person needs to be removed from society because you can't trust him not to commit the same crime again, then at least try for the most civilized way of doing that. Killing his whole tribe is the least civilized, followed by torture, then humane execution, and finally inarceration. One of its many advantages is that it is reversible if you discover that you screwed up and he's not really guilty. DNA analysis typically exonerates one-tenth of the prisoners on Death Row. What do you suppose the next generation of technology will do?
Imprisonment also has the advantage of not leaving us with blood on our hands. Killing someone has to be left as an absolute last resort, the only means available on short notice to defend yourself or your family against egregious violence, or to defend civilization against wanton destruction. Fighting off the perpetrator, tying him up, waiting for the police to put him in handcuffs, locking him in a cell where he can't do any more harm, putting him on trial, watching your wife and children be embarrassed to tears under cross-examination by clever attorneys,
and then killing him anway? That's nothing more than barbarism disguised as law.
I always laugh 'cause the people who espouse that fib are the first to look to cut someone *alls of when they walk across the lawn or scratch their car...usually.
I have no idea who you're talking about. Certainly none of the pacifists I know.
In any case, while most of us are capable of being roused to violence and feeling regret afterwards, we hope that we could not be roused to the level of lethal violence (or mayhem and mutilation, in your example) except in response to a threat of lethal violence against us.
I've never hit anyone in my life. And strangely enough, no one has ever hit me. What goes around comes around.
a juror should not have the inclination\emotion of "revenge" or they should not be on a jury and will most likely be eliminated. Goes with being impartial.
I'm not talking about the individual juror. Besides, the jury only determines guilt or innocence, it's the court that determines the punishment in most cases. I'm talking about society as a whole. Whenever you get people riled up as a group they are far more likely to lose their grip on civilization than they are when they're surrounded by civilized people. That's how wars start. Entire populations lose their veneer of civilization at once, after listening to the rabble-rousing speeches of their demagogues.
