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The chaotic end of the death penalty

Discussion in 'Tilted Philosophy, Politics, and Economics' started by Street Pattern, Jul 26, 2014.

  1. Street Pattern

    Street Pattern Very Tilted

    But anesthesiologists will (already do) refuse to take part, even to that extent.

    The death penalty is simple and easy and problem-free, if you take away the pseudo-medical trappings.
     
    • Like Like x 2
  2. rogue49

    rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

    Location:
    Baltimore/DC
    If you want a good "chest-beater" headline to try to kill off the death penalty,
    then the vaunted FBI just gave it to you...

    Federal review stalled after finding forensic errors by FBI lab unit spanned two decades

    Now, this is a better argument...but unfortunately, it won't get the attention by the media or outage as the "torture" mistake that just happened.
    Of course, there is a difference between Fed & State law and application...but the premise is still good and one big log to add to the flames.

    But you just can't compete...stats & details vs. blood & gore.
    People just seem to flock to the Summer movies more. :rolleyes:
    The irony...
     
  3. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    The state clearly needs to find better ways to kill people.

    If they're going to kill people, make it painless, make it quick, make it detached.

    Turn the subject into an object to remove the human element. Erase the subject's name. Erase the subject's citizenship. Erase the subject's identity. Erase the subject's humanity. Remove all human elements. Automate the process completely.

    Then optimize the process to make it happen at a much faster rate, thereby closing to timeframe from crime to punishment to a matter of minutes or hours, not years.

    This will avoid "cruel and unusual punishment."
     
    Last edited: Jul 31, 2014
    • Like Like x 1
  4. Plan9

    Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

    Location:
    Earth
    Ah, the death penalty.

    I miss it already.
     
  5. Shadowex3

    Shadowex3 Very Tilted

    It's not killing people that takes a long time, it's the mandatory appeals.
     
  6. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    The appeals would have to be denied.
     
  7. Shadowex3

    Shadowex3 Very Tilted

    At which point we remove everything that seperates justice from bloodlust.
     
  8. rogue49

    rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

    Location:
    Baltimore/DC
    Now, that's an absurd taking a thought to an extreme.

    You don't have to erase their history.
    You don't have to remove their sense of self.
    You don't have to get rid of their appeals. (although, you may want to limit them within reason)

    Society is taking a difficult action on a human, not shucking a clam.
    You cannot dehumanize it, you just make it more efficient. (and not even that to an extreme either)

    You're going from one extreme scenario and substituting another extreme scenario.
    It doesn't have to be a gladiator match.
    It doesn't have to be as if you're guiding a cow thru a slaughterhouse.

    Let's be realistic & uncruel about it.
    There are going to have to be checks & balances about it like any other legal act.
    But once it gets to a point, you have a proper and efficient scene, like you would any medical action.
     
  9. Plan9

    Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

    Location:
    Earth
    A sense of humor is like fiber, @Rogue49...

    You need some of it in your diet to keep you regular.

    Baraka is a squeamish hippie that thinks the death penalty is wrong because XYZ.

    I'm a soulless fuck that believes in executing people by appropriate means if it meets ABC criteria.

    For reasons that remind us all of high school debate team, it's hard to take these kinds of threads seriously for long.

    Abortion, death penalty, firearms rights/control and legalization/decriminalization of recreational drugs are topics that pit brother against brother like no other.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2014
    • Like Like x 1
  10. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    It is only absurd because what you want is itself absurd.

    You want to take an inherently violent act and medicalize it, perhaps as a way to sanitize it morally speaking.

    This despite medical and medicine referring to the science and practice of diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. And then there's surgery, which is the treatment of injuries or disorders through incision or other manipulation.

    Where does the killing of criminals fit in there?

    It doesn't.

    You want to be realistic? You can't be uncruel about an inherently cruel act.

    You can't kill what may be an otherwise healthy human being who may otherwise want to live and call it uncruel. Such an act is unavoidably and invariably a willful act of causing pain and/or suffering (both physical and psychological). Furthermore, it seems odd that we should go to all ends to ensure a quick and painless death to a criminal who didn't likely go to such ends. What's the point of this process? This can't be retributive justice. It must be something else. It is more akin to my "absurd" measures: the erasure of a human being.

    If you don't want to dehumanize the situation, then you must face the human aspect: The process of capital punishment from sentencing to execution is cruel and unusual punishment.

    Removing the deliberately painful aspect of capital punishment doesn't make it humane. It simply makes it less censured amongst certain populations. This may explain why the U.S. is just one of 21 countries who conduct it, being behind only China, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia for the most executions in the world last year (sitting ahead of Yemen and the Sudan).

    What strange company to keep.
    --- merged: Aug 1, 2014 at 10:22 AM ---
    I'm the one who's soulless, bro.

    Whoever sheds man’s blood,​
    his blood will be shed by man,​
    for God made man​
    in His image.​
    – Genesis 9:6 [attrib. Moses (via Yahweh)]​
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 8, 2014
  11. rogue49

    rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

    Location:
    Baltimore/DC
    No, there is a way to kill without being cruel.
    As Temple Grandin showed in how we process cattle for slaughter.
    Or how we put down animals, even those we love.
    Or how we allow terminal or incapable patients to die...within medical environments.

    You're trying spin an inhuman or cruel extreme argument to support your inherent bias against the death penalty.

    Medical isn't just about life...but how we use our tools and knowledge to affect the body.
    Humans are animals...exceptional ones, but still a part of our bodies.
    We use medical concepts as the way to study and work with those bodies...most often to help & heal...but sometimes to assist passing.

    In the case of the death penalty, society has determined through a formalized process to terminate the life of a human.
    Unlike an instant emergency situation like vs a criminal.
    Or in a war or military situation, which is debatable too...but that's not the case here.

    You may argue that the principle is wrong in the first place. (which from your past posts, you tend to support if not encourage)
    You may argue that the process is incorrect too.

    But the implementation of death does not have to be cruel in itself.
    It's like the difference between swatting a bug or pulling it's legs and wings off bit by bit.
    Or making a impending death linger...teasing a person about how much pain it is about to have...or keeping them from death while you do so.

    I could make the reverse argument, saying imprisoning a cognizant person for YEARS is cruel.
    A psychological torture...that has lingering and long-term affects.
    "How could you do THAT to a person??" (which is rhetorical...and said to make my point)

    A human is a human.
    Their life is theirs...and we don't want to erase their history by intent. (we're most often simply forgotten in the blur of time and volume)
    But we're talking about here is a human that is a danger to other humans.
    So you just want to allow this human to roam free...and at will take other lives or cause severe pain??
    No??
    Then you need to take steps.

    What you do is debatable...and the extent...and the process by which you determine it and execute it is debated.

    However, don't make it like you're being more "humane" by arguing that the death is cruel itself.
    Because I'll just come up with one that makes you just as inhuman with your long imprisonment. (just as bad as a logical fallacy)

    We were not debating if the death penalty should be used or not.
    There was a whole other thread dedicated to it. (We both came down to different sides, if I remember correctly)
    What I was noting here...was we don't need to make it extended or ambiguous or messy as it can be currently.
    Which was the issue in this event.

    Basically, there's a clean way of doing it. **If you find it necessary.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2014
  12. Plan9

    Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

    Location:
    Earth
    It's kinda like one of engineering axioms, huh?

    Easy, cheap, humane and moral.

    Pick two.
     
  13. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    More like, pick one:

    1.

    Criminals are like meat, really.

    Meat that people just throw away. (What a waste!)


    2.

    Criminals are suffering because they don't belong in this world.

    We must help them die by forcing them to die.


    I wonder which one Iranians pick.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2014
  14. Stan

    Stan Resident Dumbass

    Location:
    Colorado
    I have no moral problem with the death penalty. Nothing else seems appropriate for the Chuck Mansons of this world. I'd prefer a firing squad to lethal injection Bingo, let's stop pretending execution isn't messy and violent.

    I have a huge problem with the accuracy of our criminal justice system. We seem to get it wrong on a regular basis. I'm not sure how we write laws that allow for the execution of a John Wayne Gacy, while preventing errors and misconduct. I'd rather lock up Chuck for life than execute a single innocent person.
     
    • Like Like x 2
  15. Plan9

    Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

    Location:
    Earth
    This seems to be the sticking point for a lot of squeamish people.

    The same people that assume hamburger just comes off a tree in one pound, plastic-wrapped packages.
     
  16. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    It's not the squeamish people. It's the people who seem to have "no problem" with the death penalty.

    Execute someone first and maybe come to that conclusion.

    Until then, having "no problem" with the death penalty is simply having no problem with dead criminals you'd prefer dead. Godwinly, it's easy to want Hitler defeated, but it's not so easy to storm the beaches of Normandy.

    I'm sure lots of people have "no problem" with shrink-wrapped beef because they don't have to slaughter and butcher their own cows, but the truly squeamish become vegetarians.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2014
  17. Plan9

    Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

    Location:
    Earth
    ...

    Suggesting that it's easy to talk about the thing because so few people are willing to do the thing and using D-Day as an example is a little silly. I mean, we did storm the beaches and eventually stomp the shit out of them.

    One might even suggest that America, one of the last superpowers to use the death penalty, is okay with it because they're not afraid to storm beaches.

    Assuming at least two thirds of the US population is either ignorant or apathetic about all major high school debate team topics, it's the same small slice of the pie carrying the nation forward. As it is in many countries around the world.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2014
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  18. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    Oh, for fuck's sake, let's stop beating around the bush: The death penalty is still prevalent in the U.S. because of conservative extremism and religious fundamentalism.

    America! Kind of like Iran but whiter, more Christian, and just a tad more democratic!
     
  19. Plan9

    Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

    Location:
    Earth
    Listen, cockblock...

    If the state doesn't kill these guys via capital punishment, my collection of serial killer memorabilia is never going to reach that premium price on EBay and thus I'll never be able to retire in Antigua.
     
  20. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    You'll have to settle for Belize.


    (Your face is a cockblock. :mad:)
     
    • Like Like x 1