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View Poll Results: What are your thoughts on the death penalty? | |||
I think it's an important and valid method of punishment. |
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10 | 22.22% |
I think it should be illegal. |
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16 | 35.56% |
I think it should only be used for those who have committed the most horrific crimes. |
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12 | 26.67% |
Other (see below) |
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7 | 15.56% |
Voters: 45. You may not vote on this poll |
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#1 | |
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#2 | |
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Australia, a person could have hope. Outside of the truly innocent, who through some majestic act of will hold on to hope, no inmate would ever have anything to hope for again. There's no parole. There's no getting out unless you were actually innocent. Your sentence is up, when your life is over. None of that is remotely like what happened in Australia. Even exile would offer more to hope for than this prison environment. At least in exile, you might be able to find a quiet place in the wilderness where you could live out your days. This isn't even that. Cheers Aj
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Proud member of the reality-based community. "People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up." (Terry Pratchett) |
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#3 |
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I agree that putting someone in a vaccum would be mental torture for the vast majority of the population. I just cannot justify the expense of keeping people that have been proven (through DNA, repeat identification, etc) to commit heinous crimes alive for decades and I can't imagine what the mental state of an innocent person wrongly accused and sentenced to that punishment would be like in the time it would take to discover the truth. In the end, to me, it would be more cruel to die a slow death every day and then down the road be thrust, unprepared, into the world as it stands at that moment than being sentenced to the death penalty.
But that's what is interesting about us humans. We're different and falliable and just doing the best we can. |
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#4 | |
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As far as the innocent person, I think that the issue is whether we can retrieve someone from it. I don't know what this would be like, although as I have developed this idea over years of writing, I have refined it in my mind for maximum psychic impact. If there is anything left in someone that can be called human, this place will have an impact on them. But I believe that people are astoundingly resilient. People survived the death camps, people survived the gulag, people survived Sarajevo and people survive war. Perhaps people could survive this. But if they're dead, they're gone. Cheers Aj
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Proud member of the reality-based community. "People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up." (Terry Pratchett) |
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#5 | |
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Justice –noun 1. the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness: to uphold the justice of a cause. 2. rightfulness or lawfulness, as of a claim or title; justness of ground or reason: to complain with justice. 3. the moral principle determining just conduct. 4. conformity to this principle, as manifested in conduct; just conduct, dealing, or treatment. 5. the administering of deserved punishment or reward. 6. the maintenance or administration of what is just by law, as by judicial or other proceedings: a court of justice. 7. judgment of persons or causes by judicial process: to administer justice in a community. 8. a judicial officer; a judge or magistrate. 9. ( initial capital letter ) Also called Justice Department. the Department of Justice. —Idioms 10. bring to justice, to cause to come before a court for trial or to receive punishment for one's misdeeds: The murderer was brought to justice. 11. do justice, a. to act or treat justly or fairly. b. to appreciate properly: We must see this play again to do it justice. c. to acquit in accordance with one's abilities or potentialities: He finally got a role in which he could do himself justice as an actor. For myself, it's along the lines of Newton's Laws of Motion...action/reaction to be exact...like a pendulum. They (criminals) swing to the extreme left and the punishment is the corresponding swing to the right. Justice, to me, is not only the determination of a proper punishment but the administering of the punishment that should be equal to or greater than the crime. As for any potential innocents surviving that sort of punishment....surviving is not living and my experience with people with who have survived extremely traumatic events has shown me that, in many of those circumstances, death would have been kinder. Thanks for the debate and have a good night. |
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#6 |
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If I'm ever convicted of a crime I didn't commit, I would prefer life to death.
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#7 |
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People who are wrongfully convicted and given death sentences don't always give up hope, even if it's the hope that someone, somewhere might believe their story and fight for better rights for prisoners.
Check out the West Memphis 3: http://www.wm3.org/ These three were (I believe) wrongfully convicted of murdering 3 boys here in Arkansas and have been in prison for the last 17 years. Damien Echols has been on death row that entire time. He has written a pretty thoughtful book and has given countless interviews about being wrongfully convicted and how it has affected not only his personal life but the people who believe him to be innocent. Some of these people have been fighting right alongside him for 17 years. Briefly, these boys were convicted of murder by a backwoods judge here in Arkansas and a prosecuting attorney who painted them all as "devil worshippers" simply because they had black hair and wore Metallica t-shirts. The ENTIRE case was built on circumstantial evidence and it was recently found (as recent as last month) that new DNA testing has proven that NONE of these 3 boy's DNA was found at the crime scene. It was a modern-day witch hunt by ignorant people and a prosecutor who was trying to win a campaignship for judge. He later DID win and has thrown out multiple requests for new trials and appeals even though he prosecuted the first case. Conflict of Interest anyone? It's cases like these that bolster my stance on the death penalty. Damien Echols, Jesse Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin would all be dead right now. A synopsis of the trial and convictions is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_3 Prepare yourself if you choose to read it. It will make you sick to your stomach at such a gross and obvious miscarriage of justice. And these are 3 White boys from Arkansas. Imagine if they had been Black.
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#8 |
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I am absolutely, unequivocally opposed to the death penalty under all circumstances.
It actually scares the shit out of me that we live in a world where other people get to decide if someone lives or dies based on breaking rules of society. Now, before anyone twitches, Im not at all saying that people who rape, murder, commit child molestation, etc. don't need to be punished, but I am greatly bothered by different people receiving the death penalty based on the systemic oppressions in our world. For example, adultery is punishable by death in countries such as Yemen and Iran. If adultery is defined as "sex outside of marriage", I would venture to guess that a great many of us would be dead had we lived in those countries. Is it fucked up that these countries kill grown adults who want to have sex with one another consensually? I think so. Now think about this, homosexuality is punishable by death in countries such as Yemen and some parts of Nigeria. 100% of the people on this website would be dead if we lived in those countries. Is that fucked up? I think so, but those are the laws of those countries. My point is that I don't think that human beings, no matter their level of education, class, creed, or history, have a right to put another human being to death. Punish the shit out of them? Yes. Throw them in prison? Yes. Rehabilitate them? Yes. Kill them? Not for me, no. I think about the thousands of men of Color in the prison systems in this country and how the crimes they committed were often perpetrated under an oppressive and intentional system of power abuse. Does that mean that these people aren't responsible for their crimes? Absolutely not. I think that if you are an adult and you rob, rape, murder, etc. then you have to pay for your crimes. Do I believe that many of these men raped, robbed, or murdered because they were trying (in a fucked up way) to gain power? Maybe. Again, not diminishing the fact that there are people in this world who do terrible, evil things. There are. Still, I think about the people who do terrible things because of what they have been through, people who are wrongfully accused, people who are mentally ill and still put to death. I think of those people and know that there is a better, more humane way.
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. . . Last edited by Medusa; 12-03-2010 at 08:27 PM. |
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