View Single Post
Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2004-08-08, 21:30

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mass Appeal
You can't replace the years and relationships lost but at least they would have the chance to make knew ones and through counseling they would be able to heal the emotional scaring. I would suggest everyone go see the play Exonerated. It's about several individuals who were on death row but later released. All thier stories are horrible and point out how screwed up our system is. Most of those people I'm sure contemplated suicide at one point or the other but all have begun to go about life as before their incarceration. If asked would they rather have been executed or been given the chance to rejoin society I'm sure they would choose the later.
Death... or being let free... yeah, gee, that's a tough one, isn't it?? :P

Quote:
How is the discussion of the rightness or wrongness of the death penalty distracting from the greater picture of system reform.
Because the anti-death penalty groups concentrate on the *PENALTY ONLY*. They never seem to discuss how the same exact system that seems to be incapable of handing out death penalties is also handing out *other* punishments just as poorly. The most commonly used argument I've seen is that well, the system isn't perfect, so execution is bad. Um, no. That means that the system is imperfect, and needs to be fixed so that *any* punishment handed out is to the proper person. It's mixing two separate issues, and the net result is that a perfectly acceptable punishment is denied to society, while the *REAL* problem, that of a system that convicts wrongfully, is allowed to exist, because as soon as that penalty is eliminated, the groups in question quiet down... and nothing of any *substance* is ever fixed. It's the usual knee-jerk response of putting band-aids over symptoms, and avoiding the seriously difficult core issues at hand that cause the symptoms in the first place because gee golly, that's *hard*. And wowzers, if the *symptom* is buried, then everyone can pat each other on the back and say "Aren't we great people??" Sad.

Quote:
If someone attacked my family or friends and lethal force was required to prevent harm to them I would most certainly do whatever was neccesary. However, after the situation was resolved and the criminal was safetly behind bars I hope I would still not carry a blood thirst for that person's life. Society needs to take the moral high ground in these situations and not stoop to the level of the killers we condem.
It's not blood thirst. It's simple economics and resource allocation. There are individuals who have, through their own voluntary actions, proven themselves unfit to interact with society without providing a danger to others. Why should society take money and resources away, from say, educating a child, or feeding a family, to keep that animal alive? They can't be let into general society, and using societal resources to keep them alive just cheats everyone. Just get rid of them, and use the money for something that is productive, instead of just a waste. It's just that simple.
  quote