Florida lawmaker wants to bring back electric chair, firing squad

Spiritsoar,

Ignore the primary argument in the body of text, focus on tiny details.

Oh, yeaaah... this is Tilted Politics.

Anyway, I think you're pulling an Uncharted and taking a general comment as a personal attack.

You're right: If you're calling your position an emotional response, I can't really argue with that.

Remixer,

Too funny.

Say, don't you have some more grandiose stories about your tall tale life accomplishments to contribute to the thread? I'd imagine you were involved in setting up a more refined capital punishment process in Eastern Europe in the late '90s. Your dissertation on new checks and balances in the penalty phase of a trial, the necessity of third party investigations and the implications of new forensic science in the appeals process was a masterpiece.

It's blatantly obvious that the TFP staff is has no interest in curtailing your trolling and that's absolutely fine with me.

I have no problem with resorting to name-calling with a vocabulary that only Dictionary.com can provide.

 

"Your edit window, will be closing in 1 minute."

 

Being a bit sensitive today, cowboy?

First I saw spiritsoar not get your point, so I advised him to read your comment again. After he still didn't get it, it was a much better use of my time to make fun of you.

Take it down a notch with your exaggerated reaction.

 

I think the point that MM & Soar is trying to make is that Death is Ugly and that the jury and proponents shouldn't lobby for the death penalty without fully appreciating how uncomfortable death could be.

On the flip side, death happens all the time, and aversion to death is a by-product of a 'enlightened' society. Similarly, the criminal justice system's "client" is SOCIETY. Not the victim. Not the perpetrator. Not the jury. The primary goals of capital punishment are 1.) Deterrence, 2.) Incapacitation and 3.) Retribution. Shifting the onus of to the executioner/jury/whohave you really serves none of these goals.

Permitting capital punishment is basically the state and population's judgment that the death sentence is a fitting punishment. In other words, states should be permitted to express their morals through codification in criminal law. If you really want to abolish the death penalty through the 8th Amendment, it's really undemocratic. 9 people decide that... 50 jurisdictions can or cannot do something. But that's what makes Supreme Court law so sexy.

*ETA* FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP
--- merged: Oct 22, 2011 7:03 PM ---
I think the larger argument can be framed in a cost-benefit analysis:

Costs:
1.) Something like Mean Cost of $7 mil per execution:

Source: http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-penalty/us-death-penalty-facts/death-penalty-cost
Amnesty International

But Fuck California. They don't count. The 9th Circuit is almost always invariably reversed by the Supreme Court.

2.) Risk of executing the innocent. Execution is a distinct form of punishment from all others in it's finality and irreversible nature.
3.) "Savage" nature. Basically gives snooty Canadians and Germans the argument that Americans are savages. And Unlightened. Whatever. Our crime rates are way higher.

========================================

Benefits:

1.) Deterrent effect, amount of deterrence undetermined--some say it's effective, others say it's not. Death Penalty is supposed to radically re-weigh a rational murderer's cost-benefit analysis.
2.) Retribution. Gives Murdered/Raped-Sally's mommy satisfaction in knowing Teenage-Sally's murderer suffered a similar death.
3.) Incapacitation. Dead people can't commit more crimes. Unless they're zombies.

In short, you can weigh the argument really in terms of "Pain of Death/Risk of Error v. Deterrent Effect/Retribution."

That someone cites Chile as an example of the death penalty as ineffective is absurd. Don't forget the strong criminal justice system there (very low corruption), good economy, and general prosperity.

Oh and I'll leave a captain obvious comment here: "Water may be wet, but not when it's dry."

 

Chile was, of course, one example of several to exemplify the absurdity of the "brown people only stop murdering others with the death penalty" argument. Nevermind, of course, that the burden of proving that assertion is on who made it.

Now, what is really absurd is using "good economy" and "general prosperity" for why Chile (GDP per capita at PPP 15000) has a lower murder rate than the US (GDP per capita at PPP 46000).

Of course, all of that is an aside. The burden of the whole "non white" argument is on those who made it. To make that argument without providing any evidence, and then try to nitpick data that disproves it without ever providing their own evidence is sort of lazy and convenient.

 

Yes, because GDP Per Capita the only explanation for crime. Nevermind 1.) Cost of living standards in each country 2.) Respective poverty lines in each country 3.) differing unemployment rates.

Oh wow, hey look, Chile's cost of living is lower in the USA. and...Can it BE? THEY HAVE LOWER % of people living in POVERTY than in the US? AND Chile has a lower unemployment rate? No way.

But Hey. Crime must be low in Chile because they ABOLISHED the death penalty. Right?

This is probably why I should never comment on these threads.
--- merged: Oct 22, 2011 7:54 PM ---
Please excuse me while I insert another meaningless platitude here.

 

Hey, that's funny. The guy who has spent 90% of his time in this thread complaining about the quality of conversation round these parts is actively lowering the quality of the conversation.

What's with all the eyerolls? When are we going to see the new Twilight? Can your dad drop us off down the street from the theater?

I ain't hating. We're all adults here. Just observing.

edited for on-topicness

I don't know that rationality plays a huge roll in the deliberations of murderers. I'm not privy to too much hands-on info, but I've seen, like, at least 30 episodes of Law and Order. I think it is rare the murderer who thinks, "I'm going to kill that motherfucker. Fuck shit ass. I'll show that bitch.... Oh, wait, this could get me in some serious trouble. I'd better just stay home and see which website has the best deal on shiatsu massage chairs."

 

I promise, I wasn't trying to do that. At the beginning, your military analogy clarified your point. So I get it, the government enables the death penalty. But don't the people have any say in it? I mean, don't the people have at least a little say in whether they agree with the idea through a decision to abolish it in their state? I admit that this is an abstract concept, and little attention is probably paid by your average citizen. On a smaller scale, and I'm admitting a little bit of my ignorance here, but isn't the decision to put someone to death decided by a jury during the sentencing phase of a trial? (After a little research, I've discovered that jurors who are against the death penalty can be relieved for cause from a capital case, I guess you learn something every day.)

Regardless of past emotional response to method of execution (which I guess makes this a huge derail from the OP, sorry), I still don't think as many people would be willing to rule in favor of death penalty if they had to do the deed themselves. I'm not really sure what an emo response is, so if that is one, I apologize I guess.

To be honest, I'm not adamantly against the idea, like mixedmedia, I just don't know whether I'm all for it. On one hand, screw life in prison. I mean, what does that accomplish? It's killing someone anyway, just slower. On the other, the death penalty is final, and it removes any possibility of exoneration. So I suppose if I were pressed to make the decision myself, I would have to vote against it, because one innocent person put to death is too many. But man the idea of life in prison gives me the chills.

I suppose I can be guilty of that sometimes. I have no desire to continue on distracting from the conversation in the discussion of it.

 

Some guy opened fire on school kids yesterday. He shot and killed a mother who was shielding the kids. Does this guy deserve the death penalty? Fuck yes. String him up by his balls and stone the sick bastard.

 

Hey man, if you like watching pretty boys on the big screen, that's cool. But I'll have to decline your invitation to watch Twilight. Thanks though.

Can't help but roll my eyes when people have no idea what they're talking about.

It's also funny that you claim I'm lowering the quality of discussion and you're the one introducing "Twilight" in to it.

This is why you should stick to being an I-Banker. Most States reserve Capital Punishment for pre-meditated murders. For that most part, that involves *planning.* Heat-of-the-moment murders tend to fall within 2nd Degree Murder and Manslaughter.

But hey, why argue when we can make awesome drive by attacks? *ETA*:

 

Street justice, man.

 

I'm bad at the internet, or getting middle-aged, or too militarized, or used to working with ambulances, I don't know. What the hell is *ETA*: ?

The only use of that abbreviation I know is Estimated Time of Arrival. And that just can't be it because it makes no damn sense in that context.

Hopefully clarification of this will make "*ETA* FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP" in your earlier post make more sense as well, but I somehow doubt a clarification of abbreviation will do that.

 

Please look up what "PPP" means.
Also, the lowest quintile in income in Chile has a lower share of total income than the lowest quintile in the US.

But before we go further down this rabbit hole, let me do a refresher course in logic and inference. The argument isn't that abolishing the death penalty reduces the murder rate. The argument is that the death penalty doesn't reduce the murder rate. So I don't have to establish a causal link between abolishing the death penalty and reducing the murder rate. I just have to point to the lack of evidence that the death penalty lowers the murder rate. Hence the straightforward statement that a lack of correlation equates a lack of causality.

Now, please go ahead and roll your eyes and play the victim. But really, how the fuck do you expect these things to go? You present or support an absurd position (the one on non white countries and the death penalty), and then we all just stand around in awe of your brilliance? That you don't even have to support your position, but can just nitpick whatever other people post? But please, if you have to keep posting about how you "should never comment on these threads," go ahead and take your own advice and stop acting like you are doing all of us a favor.

 

Not to intrude on your arguments here, but I'm going back to something I was thinking about earlier. How could the death penalty be a deterrent? I'm not talking about the statistics or any of that, you all either know or claim to know more about that than I do. I'm thinking from the frame of mind of the murderer who didn't decide to go shopping for a massage chair. Is "If I do this they're going to lock me up through about a decade of appeals and then maybe kill me if a fellow inmate hasn't done it first" a better deterrent than "If I do this I'm gonna be locked up for life?"

 

Even with Purchasing Power Parity, there is still about a 10% lower rate of individuals living in Poverty in Chile than in the USA. In addition, the unemployment rate is still lower in Chile than in the US.

My point is that there's third factor causation that you're not accounting for. So pointing at prosperous countries without capital punishment, as evidence that capital punishment doesn't lower the crime rate, isn't entirely valid unless you control for economic circumstances.

I never said I supported this argument, or did I ever make the argument. Way to go, buddy.
--- merged: Oct 22, 2011 11:19 PM ---

"Edited to Add" And of course. Fapping. As in I'm doing a brain dump on irrelevant information that will probably never make a difference, nor convince anyone to ever change their position.

As RE: your second point. Have you visited Prisons? As a military person, I'm sure you can appreciate the structure in these types of institutions--3 square meals a day, medical exams, an actual cot (instead of the cold floor that you and I sometimes have to sleep on).

The *idea* behind the death penalty is that Joe Snuffy won't murder Mrs. Snuffy for insurance money because he is afraid of death and knows he will suffer an execution if he kills Mrs. Snuffy. While the emotional or spur of the moment murder renders the deterrent effect useless, it's *supposed* to deter crime.

Now whether the death penalty really does deter murder is up for debate.

And there's retribution. Which some people don't think is a legitimate state goal.

 

In all honesty, I have never had occasion to visit a prison, so admittedly TV (the ones about actual prisons, not Oz) and what I've heard is the only insight into the prison system I have. But I haven't really ever heard of it in the "3 hots and a cot" that people tend to equate to the military. While I've gone without hot meals, or a cot, or a roof, I at least always get to say that somewhere along the line I signed up. But I've never been homeless either, so I suppose prison might be a step up to some people. Also, the military isn't run as a mob culture run by gangs and violence, so there's that. In any case I don't suppose I can understand the mentality because death seems much simpler and preferable to life in prison.

I suppose it's still a matter of short vs. long term, but crime prevention is a huge, complex, society encompassing goal. People like that they can say "Yea, that guy's dead, society is improved" and go back to their lives. Or go back to their campaigns, either way.