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Point made, but best to remove it. It is a bit much

Fair enough.

 whembly wrote:

Spoiler:

 Traditio wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So to summarize, and to make sure I understand you correctly: You don't care if the state doesn't follow the law when executing people and it's okay if innocent people die as long as a jury convicted them and I should care about Hillaries emails and my postman instead?

I didn't say any of those things. This is a gross mischaracterization of what I said.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
D-USA:

I tell you what.

This was in Oklahoma, right? Give me the name of one of the convicted felons who were subjected to a "botched" execution. Then tell me what his crime(s) was/were. Tell me the name(s) of his victim(s). Tell me the sufferings that his victim(s) endured, what they had to go through.

And then explain to me why I should care in the slightest that the agents of the State "botched" his execution.

Actually... I think the debate is whether or not these "botched" executions triggers the "cruel and unusual" clause of the 8th Amendment.

I honestly don't know... but, "gut feeling" is that it is, but I'm biased in this*.

*for the record, I'm against death penalty pretty much for the same reasons why I'm against the abortion procedures.

Just wanted to give this a thumbs up. Not saying that I agree (or disagree) on either issue, but moral consistency, yay!

whembly wrote:I'm going to disagree with you that "Life imprisonment isn't enough". If it's truly life w/o parole... man, that's horrible. We can quibble over how they're treated in prison but, the fact remains, they're not free. Freedom is a precious thing and the fact that being confined in a box for the rest of their lives... knowing that they'll NEVER be released, is some serious mindfeth. It may not act as a deterrance, be we can take some solace that these peoples are quarantined from society (which should be any prison's purpose).

Life imprisonment is horrible enough and there are documented case where the victim's family plead the courts to NOT recommend the death penalty.

They may not be free, but they're still alive.

They don't deserve to live.

They deserve death (and a painful one at that).

 Traditio wrote:

whembly wrote:I'm going to disagree with you that "Life imprisonment isn't enough". If it's truly life w/o parole... man, that's horrible. We can quibble over how they're treated in prison but, the fact remains, they're not free. Freedom is a precious thing and the fact that being confined in a box for the rest of their lives... knowing that they'll NEVER be released, is some serious mindfeth. It may not act as a deterrance, be we can take some solace that these peoples are quarantined from society (which should be any prison's purpose).

Life imprisonment is horrible enough and there are documented case where the victim's family plead the courts to NOT recommend the death penalty.

They may not be free, but they're still alive.

They don't deserve to live.

They deserve death (and a painful one at that).

You're not qualified to make that decision.

I mean, it could be argued that you really aren't qualified to comment on anything in the OT given your usual behavior.

Peregrine wrote:IOW, torture people to death to satisfy the bloodthirsty mob.

Replace "bloodthirsty mob" with "the demands of justice," and that's basically what I am saying. Torture is probably optional, though definitely recommended.

What's next, having a public execution process where the guilty (and any unfortunate innocents who happen to be wrongfully convicted) are slowly chopped apart and the bloody chunks of flesh are thrown to the mob?[ Ooh, maybe we could have a reality TV show where people compete to find the most painful tortures to inflict upon the supposedly-guilty? Or, you know, you're a Christian, maybe you'd appreciate a little revenge on behalf of your religion's martyrs and go for the opportunity to throw the supposedly-guilty to the lions?

There's nothing, in principle, morally evil about feeding convicted criminals to lions (the moral problem here is, not the severity of the punishment, but the innocence of the Christian martyrs). In fact, a favorite Roman punishment of mine is the one they administered to parricides: tied up in a sack full of poisonous vipers and then cast into the river Tiber.

And in principle, why should it not, in principle, be permissible to dismember a criminal who himself dismembered his victims?

Thankfully the real world is generally run by people whose highest priority in life isn't "make sure the people I think are guilty are sufficiently tortured to death, no matter how many innocents I have to kill in the process".

"Actually guilty," not "I think are guilty." I'm not arguing for random executions. I'm arguing in favor of the execution of those who have been convicted of heinous crimes (e.g., murder).

And tell me, Peregrine, let us suppose that you didn't have this "innocent people might die" argument. Let us suppose that we could determine, with 100% accuracy, who is guilty of a capital crime or not, and there were no chance of convicting an innocent person.

Would you object any less to capital punishment?

I see. So we're no longer talking about a literal balancing of the scales, we're considering "victims" that are mere concepts rather than actual people. This is sure a convenient way to justify whatever harsh punishment you like. After all, it's not like "justice" as a concept has any physical loss to point to, so you can just assume that the only possible balance for the crime against "justice" is being tortured to death.

Do you really not see the natural proportion between murder and the death penalty?

Besides the obvious one that "I don't care about the consequences of my actions, this rule says I'm right" is the kind of incredibly superficial and empathy-lacking ethical argument that only sociopaths and children make?

So consequentialism vs. a caricature of deontology?

A caricature of deontology that I have not endorsed or presupposed in this thread?

Besides, consequentialism is much more permissive than anything I'm arguing for.

I think that it's only permissible to torture convicted criminals.

The consequentialist would be forced to say that it's permissible even to torture innocents, if only a greater good resulted.

If we're up to the point where we're arguing "there's nothing wrong with feeding people to lions or torturing them", we've moved on from the original topic enough that we're done here.