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T8R posted:There are also plenty of easy to imagine and quite a few real cases where supposedly clear and unequivocal guilt has been later proven incorrect. People can be framed, law enforcement can plant evidence, judges and juries can make mistakes, appeals can be denied wrongfully. These things are impossible to eliminate in society. I didn't say it would be easy, I said I didn't think it would be impossible, if we put our minds to it.
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Mar 1, 2017 02:08
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T8R posted:It wasn't John, it was an impostor who looked like him. John's wife is lying. The blood was planted on the bundle. The impostor purchased or stole the gun. John was coerced by the police; alternatively John is being blackmailed into lying about his guilt. Perhaps someone has threatened to kill his friends or family. There is no DNA evidence belonging to John in your statement. Maybe aliens were controlling his mind? Consider that the deficiencies in evidence you bring up are satisfied. An even more "perfect storm" than the one I described. At what point do we reach the wall where reasonable doubt, or even plausible doubt, crosses over into "there is no such thing as proof or truth?" You can't have a justice system where "nobody can really know anything" is a compelling defense in the face of extremely good evidence. It would be wrong to punish anyone for anything, since no guilt could ever be established under any circumstances. It's absurd. It also undermines any utilitarian penal system. If we can never under any circumstances be made to believe a perpetrator actually committed a crime, but instead see all crimes as fundamentally unsolvable mysteries, we can't incarcerate him to protect others or to deter crime. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Mar 1, 2017 |
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Mar 1, 2017 02:13
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Gazpacho posted:Actually I'm kinda good. The US penal system, OTOH, is so screwed up that I'm not sure capital punishment is even the worst thing about it. If it's wrong, it is a final wrong and not a grinding one. I'm not entirely convinced it is better for an innocent person to be condemned to life imprisonment in some hell than to be put out of his misery.
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Mar 1, 2017 02:25
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WampaLord posted:Which is why our system tries to convict people beyond all reasonable doubt and yet it still fails. Let's not compound that failure by killing people. We should probably end capital punishment in the US. But, I don't think it's wrong for people guilty of murder to get the death penalty.
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Mar 1, 2017 02:26
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WampaLord posted:Then why do you lust for murderer blood so much? I don't at all, I just don't think it's wrong to execute murderers. If we have to treat people as ends in themselves, not as means to some other end, then we can't justify the death penalty as a deterrent, only as a just punishment. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Mar 1, 2017 |
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Mar 1, 2017 02:27
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T8R posted:A society with an incorruptible justice system, that doesn't even make accidental mistakes, in a society without lies, where people are unable to game the system? If you wish to go that far, then surely such a perfect utopia wouldn't have murder either. A perfectly run society like that wouldn't even need the death penalty "just in case". This society isn't real, and never will be; it is pure imagination. It contradicts the nature of society itself. The steps you need to take in order for your supposed morality to be true will inevitably self annihilate. Morality cannot exist in a vacuum, it must be tested against reality. Your morality cannot exist, because it will never be true in reality. Killing murders will never be moral, because we will never eliminate the risk towards innocents. It's just incoherent insanity to go down that road. The same twisted sophistry can be applied to any kind of decision. Suddenly we are all first degree murderers, and no one is. The notion that because some people believe there is no truth and nothing can ever be proven, no crime can ever be solved and no punishment is ever justifiable is absurd. It means perspective has been lost. It might, if that kind of insanity were ever relevant, be relevant to the question of whether we ought to have the death penalty imposed in our country, but it it has nothing to do with whether or not executing a guilty murderer is moral or immoral. "Executing someone who is innocent is immoral" is something most people can agree on. I believe if someone is guilty of murder, it is not immoral for him to be punished with execution. "It's immoral to execute innocent people" is not an objection. Someone else objected that it is immoral to force someone to execute a guilty criminal, but history has shown there has never been much trouble finding willing executioners. He also objected that it might create "unrest" to execute a murderer, but decisions about whether someone lives or dies should not be based on whether it might create "unrest." hakimashou fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Mar 1, 2017 |
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Mar 1, 2017 09:13
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End boss Of SGaG* posted:You're flipping out about some sort of universal haze of meaninglessness, but these arguments are based on the opposite of uncertainty: the fact that innocent people can be and are convicted, and the fact that the appeals process is more expensive than keeping someone in prison forever if necessary. What moral or practical reason overrides that? It's not like we have too little prison space, and there's much easier and better ways to reduce prison populations. I never said we should keep the death penalty in the US. Someone said it was wrong to execute people who are guilty of murder, I don't think that's true.
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Mar 1, 2017 09:30
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Vindicator posted:Then why are you making arguments about whether we're sure some hypothetical defendant is guilty or not? That's entirely irrelevant to the argument at hand, and all I've seen from you is an assertion that you think it's better that innocent people be executed rather than spend life in prison. Someone wanted to discuss it, and it's interesting.
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Mar 1, 2017 10:56
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fantastic in plastic posted:The central symbol in the dominant religion in the United States of America is the blood sacrifice of an innocent man for the purposes of cleansing the sins of the guilty. I doubt the death penalty will be going anywhere any time soon. That's true of plenty of places though to be fair, and the gruesome crucifix iconography is pretty big in Catholicism, which abhors the death penalty.
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Mar 1, 2017 13:40
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Ytlaya posted:edit: You might notice that in the below post I'm never addressing the morality of the death penalty itself. This is because "is it okay to kill people who commit terrible crimes" is ultimately a moral judgement and you can't really prove that it's immoral. So I think it's more useful to focus on the inevitable cost of innocent people dying and weighing that against the "benefits" of the death penalty (which pretty much just amount to "revenge"). I don't know that it is impossible, I think it might just be very difficult. It doesnt have to be perfect in order to prove someone is guilty of murder. I'm not sure that you and I could hash out how to make a system that only gave the death penalty to people who were actually guilty, but I think if enough time and effort and brainpower was put into it, it wouldn't be impossible. And when guilty people were given the death penalty for committing murder, it wouldn't be morally wrong.
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Mar 2, 2017 02:16
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ratbert90 posted:The death penalty is lovely just because we as a society should be better than a murderer. It isn't murder to execute someone who is guilty of murder. We are better than a murderer, much better in fact, since we are giving someone their just desserts, instead of wrongfully depriving them of their life. Doing a good thing instead of a bad thing.
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Mar 2, 2017 02:19
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WampaLord posted:I do as well, so why is there so much emphasis on the "justice" of it from its proponents? Some people believe in justice.
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Mar 2, 2017 02:19
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falcon2424 posted:This also seems like a kind of weak argument. It only 'works' because people apply it selectively. Exactly right. Arresting a criminal isn't the same as kidnapping him. Collecting taxes or imposing a fine isn't the same as robbing someone, executing a murderer isn't the same as murdering somone. The essence of punishment is depriving somone of his rights, whether to life, liberty, or property.
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Mar 2, 2017 04:47
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Submarine Sandpaper posted:Have you read the story of the 15 year old boy who was indefinitely detained at riker's and eventually offed himself, for having what amounted to his own backpack? That is kidnapping and torture, there are systematic unjust fines levied at the poor and PoC. The state murders people unjustly as well. I'm so happy cops ignore you and would probably be punished for killing your children in cold blood, but don't pretend that is universal even within your local municipality. Did you hallucinate about me typing something suggesting it was universal, or that the US justice system was good?
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Mar 2, 2017 05:18
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tin can made man posted:So in the same breath you admit the justice system is incapable of reaching a level of confidence in guilt to administer the death penalty, but re-assert your belief in (and, judging by the tenor of your other posts in this thread, the sense of sheer obligation towards) the utter extermination of a murderer. In that case, who's going to end the lives of murderers? The justice system is clearly untrustworthy, so it'd have to be you to pull the trigger, wouldn't it? Our justice system might be incapable, but I don't believe it is impossible for any justice system ever to be so. And in cases where a perpetrator is indeed guilty of murder, it is not morally wrong to execute him for it. I don't agree that executing a guilty murderer is itself murder, any more than arresting a suspect on good evidence of a crime is 'kidnapping' or imposing a fine to punish a wrongdoing is 'theft.'
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Mar 3, 2017 06:40
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NoDamage posted:It's completely pointless to discuss a hypothetical world where the justice system makes no mistakes in order to make an argument about whether or not the death penalty is morally justifiable. Why even bother? It's a waste of time. Some people believe it is somehow wrong to execute guilty murderers.
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Mar 3, 2017 09:08
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Drewjitsu posted:This is a pipe dream. In order to pursue a justice system that cannot make mistakes, it must undertake a complete surveillance of its citizens to do so. Better surveillance is one way to mitigate the risk of wrongful conviction.
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Mar 3, 2017 09:08
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Drewjitsu posted:Dude, just stop. We can never get the desired result you want, without giving up other fundamental freedoms. Most people will not agree to giving up those freedoms, so we're back to an imperfect system. So no death penalty. My only response is that the US should probably get rid of the death penalty, but not because it is morally wrong to execute murderers.
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Mar 3, 2017 10:35
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NoDamage posted:Who cares? I don't understand why there are 7 pages of arguments over a hypothetical moral situation which has no bearing on policy in the real world. You should see a library some time!
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Mar 3, 2017 10:36
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tin can made man posted:Is it morally wrong to punitively rape sexual predators? Should private citizens be able to lobby to volunteer to be a state-sanctioned Rapist in the way they can for Executioner? I dunno if it's morally wrong to. As for the private citizens thing, the state must have an absolute monopoly on punishment. I'm a very firm believer in the state. It's mandkind's greatest invention. As for why murder justifies death, I guess because it is such a unique crime it is a special case. Nothing else but death really approximates death. No punishment fits it better. Death penalty for murderers has a perfect symmetry in a way it's very difficult to achieve with other examples. No.
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Mar 4, 2017 00:18
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Ytlaya posted:As a hypothetical, do you think it is okay to rape rapists? I really dont know, never thought about it. Why do you think it would be immoral?
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Mar 4, 2017 00:21
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There is no accurate measure of human suffering, and we can't truly see inside anyone else's head anyway, so its complicated and difficult, and perhaps even impossible, to assign exactly equal suffering to a perpetrator as to his victim. But in the special case of murder, this becomes moot, since the victim is dead, and executing the perpetrator will make him exactly equally dead. Its one instance where its very easy to tailor the punishment to fit the crime with absolute certain equivalence and perfect symmetry.
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Mar 4, 2017 01:24
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tin can made man posted:Lots of crimes other than murder leave behind a dead victim. Is Involuntary manslaughter also a capital offense? What about negligent homicide? How does this apply if a killer is coerced, misled, or mentally incompetent? How far removed from the corpse can a person be for execution to apply - should every wartime US commander in chief be executed? The justice system seems to do a pretty good job of differentiating between different degrees of culpability in murder cases. Its certainly something people have thought and written about a lot. A few pages back I gave a spitball list of examples where I think the maximum degree of culpability holds. quote:I think we can agree that for the question of whether or not it is moral to execute people who are guilty of murder, we can use "guilty" to mean something along the lines of "fully culpable, responsible, and deserving of punishment."
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Mar 4, 2017 02:08
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tin can made man posted:But the victims in those other crimes are equally as dead as the victims in a murder case. By your own logic, a life for a life is the only symmetrical and just punishment in the case of a dead victim. Why is it that some corpses deserve symmetrical justice but other corpses don't? Or, rather, how is it possibly just to attribute a "corpse for a corpse" policy to some corpses, but not others? They're all equally dead due to the actions of another party. I don't know if that's my logic unless you just read that one post. My (Kant's) actual logic goes something like: A person who chooses commit murder also chooses to die at the hands of an executioner. The justification for doing it is that we have an obligation to treat the killer as an equal, a human being, with human dignity, and the right to make choices about his own life and have them be respected. One of the most difficult Kantian positions is that we owe punishment to the perpetrator and act wrongly, by him, if we don't impose it. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Mar 4, 2017 |
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Mar 4, 2017 02:20
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Ytlaya posted:To be fair, hakimashou is presumably talking about limiting the death penatly to situations with some much higher burden of proof. The problem in that case lies more with the fallibility of the people administering justice than with the laws themselves. No, limiting it to cases where the perpetrator is not just factually guilty of causing death by action or inaction, but morally culpable as well, since he made the deliberate choice to kill the victim. Spilling your coffee on your lap in the car and running someone over, or shooting a gun off in the air and the bullet landing on someone, or some other lapse in judgement, or even just driving down the road and having someone dive out in front of your car aren't all the same, and aren't the same as the examples. When a perpetrator chooses to commit a murder for a reason, especially to obtain some benefit for himself, or do some other malicious harm, those are the clear cut cases of moral guilt. If we have to treat people as ends in themselves, rather than as means to some other end, then the most egregious crime is killing someone to advance selfish ends.
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Mar 4, 2017 02:24
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Calibanibal posted:what if the victim is resurrected using the dragon balls, do you still execute the murderer Actually a very good question. Also applies to attempted murder.
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Mar 4, 2017 02:27
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tin can made man posted:So all murders done in the name of political change, wartime progress, or self-preservation should also be punishable by death? Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. It's very complicated. As for self-defense, most people agree that there is a right to defend yourself from harm or death. Taking that right away from criminals is one way that we punish them. Remember, all punishment involves depriving someone of his rights. Whether we are justified in doing so or not is what makes the punishment just or unjust.
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Mar 4, 2017 02:39
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Ytlaya posted:If I steal $500 the state should require that I pay no more or less than $500 as punishment, because the punishment must match the crime. 500 dollars was lost by the victim, but you also committed a crime against the state/all citizens by stealing at all.
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Mar 4, 2017 12:16
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bitterandtwisted posted:You could apply it to literally any punishment/crime combination no matter how cruel and unusual. Guillotine is pretty dignified, all kinds of really fancy French people got guillotined.
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Mar 4, 2017 12:18
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T8R posted:A ridiculous blanket statement regarding the motivations behind the intent of all murderers. Murderers rarely walk into the police station and demand execution. You missed it. The choice to commit murder is also the choice to be executed, they are inseparable and one and the same. The act of committing murder is the act of choosing to be executed. The very easy solution to the problem is "don't what to get executed? don't commit murder."
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Mar 4, 2017 12:19
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bitterandtwisted posted:You could say the same for any crime/punishment combination, no matter how draconian, cruel and pointless. I could probably say that stuff but I don't think I would. Come to think of it I could say anything!
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Mar 4, 2017 12:24
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bitterandtwisted posted:Are you going to even attempt to explain why those are different? They aren't punishments that fit the crimes, like the death penalty for murder is. And laws against blasphemy are unjust in a way that laws against murder aren't. Maybe if you cut someone's hands off, and then had your hands cut off in turn or something. Treat others the way you want to be treated, after all. Hasn't this stuff already been covered?
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Mar 4, 2017 12:28
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bitterandtwisted posted:Irrelevant (also I disagree) Don't get too worked up over that. "Don't want to get executed, don't murder anyone" is just helpful advice, not some fundamental theory of justice. It might or might not exist to justify extreme punishment, but it is itself justified by fair and proportional punishment. Consider it phrased differently, but meaning the same thing: "don't want to receive a fair and just punishment, in proportion to the crime you have done? Don't do the crime." Now any objection based on some other person, somewhere else, using it to justify something different can be set aside. An excessive or disproportionate punishment is arbitrary, and treating people arbitrarily instead of according to their deserts, based on their choices, means not treating them as an equal with equal dignity.
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Mar 4, 2017 13:01
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bitterandtwisted posted:All punishment based on subjective notions of fairness are arbitrary. That's probably less true when it comes to executing murderers than it is for anything else.
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Mar 4, 2017 13:35
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Proportionality seems to be the least subjective notion of fair punishment. The death penalty for murder is as proportional as you can possibly get. It's truly identical. You don't have to take into account anything about the perpetrator's subjective experience of the punishment, or the victim's subjective experience of the wrong, since they are both identically dead. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Mar 4, 2017 |
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Mar 4, 2017 13:57
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See above.
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Mar 4, 2017 14:22
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bitterandtwisted posted:You didn't answer it above. Not true, there is a discussion above about guilt and culpability. Also any post that touches on the categorical imperative. It's up there.
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Mar 5, 2017 12:42
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N. Senada posted:The idea of punishing someone by making them the victim of the same crime is such a childish notion of justice that I have a hard time understanding why anyone would use it as a rationale. Like maybe it feels right, but that's not a good reason. Preventing crime or deterring it are some rationales for punishment, but there is also a different school of thought according to which punishment is something that people deserve because of wrong actions they choose to take. I have an issue with the notion that 'don't do that, how would you like if somone did that to you?' Is a useless idea. It's the foundation of empathy, that something happening to someone else is like it happening to you, that other people experience things just like you do, and that they are equal to you. The fact you don't want to be murdered by bobby should give you a reason not to murder him. Since if you don't want to be murdered by bobby, you can understand why murder is wrong. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Mar 5, 2017 |
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Mar 5, 2017 12:47
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T8R posted:Plenty of people commit murder and get away with it. Plenty of people believe they can get away with it, and get caught. Plenty of people are found guilty and not executed. It's bad when people get away with murder because justice isn't done, they should be punished for what they did, like they deserve to be. Anyway I've tried explaining the idea that an action legislates a maxim a few times but I don't know how to get it through to you, I apologize. If I can come up with a better explanation I will post it. Morally speaking, what you do to others, you simultaneously do to yourself, since you are equal to other people. It's like a light switch connected to two lights, if you turn one on, you also turn the other one on. One action does both, one choice does both. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Mar 5, 2017 |
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Mar 5, 2017 12:51
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Chomskyan posted:Excluding self-defense it's wrong to kill people, even murderers, rapists, etc. They're still human beings, entitled to basic human rights. Also even people who commit atrocious crimes sometimes change. The world isn't black and white. Some people come to deeply regret their crimes and commit to living good lives moving forward. This is a positive thing for society and we should encourage it. But it can't happen if they're murdered by the state. I would argue that it's not wrong to execute murderers, because it's what they deserve. Also, they are entitled to some rights, but by the act of committing murder give up their own right to live. Taking a right away from someone else is simultaneously giving it up yourself. It's impossible to take away somone else's right, and still keep your own, it's a contradiction. If we are going to treat people according to their deserts, based on the choices they make - which we are obliged to do if we want to be treated according to our own deserts - then we must punish them for their crimes. hakimashou fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Mar 5, 2017 |
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Mar 5, 2017 12:57
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