AIBU to think the death penalty should sometimes be used?

[Gide]

In cases such as mass murderers, paedophiles, rapists? Obviously only if there is absolutely no doubt at all about their guilt.

Katarzyna79
Raw emotions is exactly why relatives of victims shouldn't be involved in justice to the perpetrators.
An eye for an eye benefits no one and can only create more injustice if a person is wrongly accused.
If we could swap the life of a criminal by its victim, then maybe the death penalty might make sense.

The examples from India are not relevant. That's lack of justice.

The other thing about the death penalty that makes me uncomfortable is it is literally "washing our hands" of people who are "broken" or "evil", refusing to reflect as a society. It's more comforting to write someone off as a wrong 'un.

I think it's far more productive to think about how these people came to do what they did, because in some (not all) cases, we should perhaps be looking at how the 'production' of a murderer reflects on our society. I think that looking at prevention is more likely to help than having death as a deterrent.

lweji i think everything is dkewed towards justice and mercy for the perpettator of the crime. Thecase in india isnt relevant to you or me it is to the fsmily left behind without theit daughter. Go tell her we are more civilised no to the death penalty.

I wont be changing my mind on the death penalty.

I do feel quite indifferent to the execution of convicted murderers and if we get it wrong then we learn for next time.

What do you mean get it wrong?
As in botched execution or the wrong person?
How could we make up for killing the wrong person?

Thecase in india isnt relevant to you or me it is to the fsmily left behind without theit daughter.

I didn't say it wasn't relevant to me.
I meant it wasn't relevant for the death penalty debate. The main problem in India is that such criminals aren't convicted at all.

The case in india isnt relevant to you or me. it is to the family left behind without their daughter. Go tell her we are more civilised, no to the death penalty.

India still has the death penalty. It doesn't seem to have stopped rape and murder.

The US with the death penalty also has more and more violent crime than Europe.

The argument that "if it was your child you would feel differently" is based purely on emotion and nothing else, and is precisely why punishments are given out by the justice system and not the victims. Interestingly the countries who do allow sentences to be carried out by the victims are also countries who have questionable human rights records.

And all that being said, statistically it isn't common for families of murder and rape victims to go and seek their own revenge. We don't hear of murder suspects being killed by the families of the victims on a regular basis do we? Which would imply that the emotion that you would want them to die is more of an instant reaction rather than a long-term one.

I have no doubt that if someone killed my child I would want them to die. In fact if my child died I wouldn't want to live any more, so killing their killer wouldn't be a big deal for me even if that meant I would get the death penalty for doing so. Except that it goes against all my human instincts to kill another human being. So while in my heart I might think it on an emotional level, in my head I know that it would never happen that way, and that me murdering someone wouldn't make me any better than they were.

theyrw bloody corrupt the police can be bought. Did you hear recently they killed a street vendor over the price of a hot beverage. They claim its a democracy far from it a bloody farce.

America has the death penanlty in some states

I said they could decide if it was an acceptable punishment for the judge to decide on not whether it should be applied. At least then if the jury said no to the death penalty then it would be off the table.

Sorry, but I couldn't let this go - the jury does not instruct the judge, ffs. The judge instructs the jury.

lweji i would argue its because its too easy to acquire a gun in the usa.

America has the death penanlty in some states

I think most people are aware of that, including the poster upthread who campaigns in the US to release prisoners on death row who have been wrongly convicted.

There are many ways of killing without a gun.
Still, the death penalty hasn't discouraged serial killers and violent criminals in general at all.
And as people have explained earlier it may actually lead some criminals to prefer to kill more victims so that they're not identified.

Not in my name.
It would make us a less civilised society and improve nothing for anyone.

Some confusion here. In many (perhaps all) of the States which have the death penalty the jury decides whether it should be passed or not. (Whether it is carried out depends on appeal judges, clemency boards, governors, the process takes years, some die of natural causes in the meantime).

In Britain the jury found guilty or not guilty, if guilty the judge had to pass the death sentence, and the Home Secretary said Hang or Don't hang. And it took a matter of weeks.

I don't think you'd find a jury of twelve to say Guilty, no matter what the evidence. When majority verdicts began in 1967 the rope was still only temporarily topped until 1970, although nobody thought it would be back, and majority verdicts were specifically ruled out in any future death penalty case.

I don't think we should have the death penalty but we do need longer sentences for murder.

2 men were sent to prison for murdering a 20 year old soldier yesterday. There's CCTV of them shaking hands in the street after they beat the shit out of him one of them showing other people how they kicked him. They got 13.5 and 16 years. They'll be in their 30s when they come out. It's not enough.

but we do need longer sentences for murder
I agree.

If it was my child yes I'd want to kill the perpetrator and I'd probably fantasise about doing it with my bare hands. That's a completely understandable, but primitive, emotional response - like a crime of passion I suppose. But the point is that the state should remain impassive, should be above emotional reaction. It should behave rationally. And murder to compensate for murder makes no sense at a state level.

I think that even if it is proved beyond doubt that somebody did commit a terrible crime or admitted to it, that the death sentence is still completely wrong.

I can't justify in my mind how killing someone/committing a horrendous crime is wrong but that killing someone as a punishment for that could be right.
I don't agree with the the death sentence at all. What I do agree with is that prison should be far harsher and act as more of a deterrent and punishment

Some posters have pointed to Anders Breivik as someone who is 100% guilty and thus can be "safely" executed.

Think how this would work in practice. The state would have the position of not executing murderers in general but would have the option to say "but we can execute him, we can execute her, we can execute that other one over there". Maybe it could be organised so that the state didn't make the choice but it would be done on the basis of a public poll. Having "death penalty for the really bad ones" sounds utterly horrifying.

A justice system having different degrees of guilt (not the same as different degrees of offence) is a terrible idea.

andrew, that's true in some states, where the jury has to identify an aggravating factor which makes the death penalty an option and the judge decides the sentence. But it's a slightly more complicated picture than that - in Ohio for example, three judges decide the sentence but only if the defendant pleads guilty. In California and Delaware the judge can overrule the jury.

So what pineapple is proposing for the UK matches what happens in some US states but not what used to happen when the UK had the death penalty.

All academic, of course, as it would never be reinstated in the UK.

Think how this would work in practice. The state would have the position of not executing murderers in general but would have the option to say "but we can execute him, we can execute her, we can execute that other one over there"

An excellent point, you'd get people executed not on the basis of whether their crime warranted it, but on the basis of whether the conviction was sufficiently safe. It would be a case of ' person a and person b are both guilty of murder: person a, we 'know' you did it so we'll hang you, person b we think you did it so we won't.'

That doesn't seem like justice to me, especially as the wealthy would be able to employ lawyers who could muddy the waters and throw up enough chaff to make it look less certain.

More than that, you'd have the government of the day caught up in some scandal or approaching an election suddenly publishing a list of really bad ones for the chop to curry some favour.

If there's any element of choice in applying the death penalty to some murderers and not to others there's a real risk other factors will intrude in making the choice.

Yes, 'it's election time, let's show we are tougher on crime than the ther lot by stringing a few up'

It already happens in the US, nauticant.

During the 1992 presidential election campaign, the then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton made a point of authorising and overseeing the execution of Ricky Rector, who had murdered a police officer and given himself brain damage in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Clinton was condemned in some circles for this, but as we know, it didn't adversely affect his campaign at all - likely it increased his popularity, with Rector being a "cop killer".