Bring back capital punishment?

[LittleMaroonRidingHood]

This thread was prompted by the news item about a possible discovery of the remains of a victim of the 'Moors Murderers'.

Should Capital Punishment be re-instated for murder ?

YABU - The value of the offender's life should not be negated by the offender's crime.
YANBU - When someone sets out with intent to deprive someone of their life, then they automatically forfeit the right to get any older.

Several reasons for being against capital punishment;

• murder is wrong, irrespective of who is killing or being killed
• it doesn't bring the victim back
• it's proven not to work as a deterrent (places with a death penalty typically have a higher rate of violent crime)
• it costs more than life imprisonment
• it places guilt on the loved ones of the victim
• nobody benefits from it

No, it’s absolutely barbaric.
Also, brother is a barrister, apparently we don’t hear about most releases due to innocence of crime because the press wouldn’t be reporting on much else. Innocent people are released daily, it’s just that it’s not always a ‘big crime’, so we don’t hear about it.

Absolutely not.

it places guilt on the loved ones of the victim

Surely they only feel guilt if they don't want the perpetrator to be killed? If they want him dead, why would they feel guilt?

No definitely not but not for the reasons you've outlined.

1. It's not a deterrent

1. It's state sanctioned murder

1. If even one innocent person gets killed by the state it's one person too many. You can let someone out of prison but you can't go back after you've killed someone.

If they don't want them to be murdered, it matters not one iota where the death penalty is imposed. And they have to live with that forever. Most people are rational and do not seek out murder as vengeance.

I’d love to see capital punishment for rapists, ir people liek that guy who kicked his girlfriend in the stomach until she lost their baby because he didn’t want to pay child support, but the problem is that when we had capital punishment, it was also used against innocent people who’d been found guilty by a flawed process eg racist police just arresting the newrest black man. You can’t apologise and free someone after they’ve been executed.

There are also women in prison right now for ‘murder’ of their physically abusive husbands, who the women killed to protect their children. I think those women are heroines, but a legal system with capital punishment would have executed them.

No.

Most people are rational and do not seek out murder as vengeance.

I guess I'm irrational then, because if someone raped my child, I'd want them at least dead, at best alive and suffering.

Eh, how does that make you any better than the offender?

Which is why we have a judicial system rather than a system whereby the emotions of the relatives decide on things.

You think someone who tortures a child murderer is on the same level as the one who tortured/raped/killed an innocent child?

Absolutely not.
The people who decide what is and what is not a crime should not have the power to allow capital punishment. It's that simple to me.
All well and good when it's "only" the scum of society but it can easily become a slippery slope to murdering dissidents in the wrong hands/wrong government. Better to have an absolute red line that the state can not kill anybody.

I was always for capital punishment until I had a long talk with my dear father when he said the problem with it is that if someone is discovered to be innocent at a later date, you cannot bring them back!

A system that tries to focus on "rehab" rather than punishment. If they are in for life, they should be suffering in that time.

But where do you draw the line? Is there really any line between good murder and bad murder? If we put the power to end someone’s life into someone else’s hand what does that make them?

I think that neither has the right to hurt another person like that regardless as to what they have done. That is what the justice system is there for, is it not.

Terrible idea. I don't think it works at all, as it seems to me most murders fall into two categories:

• Killer is mentally unwell/has serious personality disorder and so won't be put off by death penalty
• Killer commits act in a moment of red mist and if they could turn back time and make a choice of course they would not do it, so if the fact they were about to kill another human being didn't stop them in the moment, neither would the thought they could face the death penalty.

You said "how does that make you any better?"

They might both be in the wrong, but the one who tortured and killed someone innocent is worse than the one hurting them in revenge

The justice system is no longer built around "punishment" or making people suffer. You might be surprised if you look up the reoffender rates in places like Norway where the focus is heavily on rehabilitating people back to society compared to here.
If we take away human rights from those we consider "beneath" them, we open the door for those rights to be taken away from us at some future date.

It depends what they've done. If they are proven to serially offend with no remorse (and can thus never be safely released into the public) then I do think it should be an option. If an offender is redeemable, then by all means we should rehabilitate them. But if they commit horrific crimes and can't be rehabilitated, then I don't see why the taxpayer should spend thousands to millions of pounds over the offender's lifetime paying for them to be locked away.

No I don't think it should.

Admittedly though when seeing some recent cases of horrendous child abuse that results in death I would like to see the fuckers responsible die. And slow.

No. And anyone who supports the death penalty or torture (as the person above), would you be willing to do it yourselves? To inflict the pain and hear the screams?

Really? You’d be happy to do some torturing?
Think about that for a minute.

What would that make you?

Do you know how expensive the death penalty and the appeals process is in the US?