Executions

[RayInJapan 0]

Not that we don't have enough controversial threads going already, but I just saw in the news that the United Nations has a committee that just recommended executions be outlawed.

 

Thoughts?

[damian 0]

I really can't comment until I am the close relative of a victim.

 

However, in the meantime I say executions are barbaric, no matter how barbaric teh crime.

[Ocean11 0]

Executing people is not a good idea. Allowing the State to kill its citizens sets the wrong moral tone. Requiring somebody to be the executioner is a repulsive idea. And encouraging the families to seek revenge and attend the execution is not healthy.

 

But as for 'outlawing' it, we all know how well outlawing things work. Best to let the people of each country decide - and for those countries that have decided against, not to send people to their deaths in the executing countries.

 

(I see that Asahara Shoko has predictably been set up for execution. I thought to myself "He'll be doing some levitation at last". This is the rather nasty sort of thoughts that you get living in a hanging country.)

[Stefan 0]

Uncivilised!

 

America is a great country with some fantastic people, but the fact that some states still allow execution especially the ELECTRIC CHAIR????

 

Baffles me.....

[mikazooki 0]

yeah, i think their time has come... they used to fill town squares with punters eager for a peak, whereas now, i hear, they only manage to fill a small room, if that.

 

what the public wants now is flower shows, with plenty of pretty ribbons and tinkley music. its called cultural progress. the future is pink and yellow and u know rainbow like.

[nzlegend 1]

No more executions but for the most evil of offenders those absolutely beyond rehabilitation - life incarceration in humble quarters, no nice prison cells, no TV, no videos, simple food and yes cheeseman no cheese. Make them work, whether it be growing vegetables for their sustainance or highly guarded gangs of prison workers picking rocks out of farmers paddocks. Severe and backward you say? for murderers, rapists and their evil cohorts it would be on sweet justice far more justice than dying.

[badmigraine 0]

Leaving aside the "death penalty or not?" question, it has always amazed me that executions are carried out in such strangely complex and often ineptly painful ways.

 

As said above, the electric chair? Come on. That is horrific!! Who thought up this one? Sheesh. Maybe the intent was to establish a horrible way of dying as a criminal deterrent, but I doubt that it works and you could never prove this anyway.

 

The gas chamber? I heard that is horrible and not as quick or painless as you might imagine.

 

I'm no expert, but aren't there lots of quick, painless and cheap ways to execute someone? What about that gas that dentists use to put you under? What about an injection of a lethal dose of anaesthetic so you just go to sleep?

 

Even a guillotine seems more humane than the electric chair, gas chamber and firing squad.

 

Sheesh.

 

And what's with the spate of death-row inmates being found innocent through recently-presented DNA evidence?

 

Stats prove blacks in the US are several times more likely than whites to get the death penalty for the same kind of crime.

 

Another angle on this issue is the extreme cost of keeping someone in jail for the rest of their life. This is not cheap, folks.

 

It was a better solution the Pommies had when they shipped their convicts to Oz. Is there a place we could send the baddies, like Snake Plissken in "Escape from New York"?

[Fattwins 0]

I have never believed in the death penalty and never will. To hold the moral ground you have to have higher morals lockem up and keep them there. Does it cost a lot yes. Will they have the time to think yes. If we made a mistake can we change it yes.

[amandanism 0]

the un should get on singapores ass then.

 

once when crossing from vancouver to seattle the guy at immigration/customs asked me if i ever went to watch executions in singapore, he had a huge grin on his face. as if this was some sort of a weekend past time.

 

what kind of sick person asks this?

[badmigraine 0]

Oh please. Watching executions is something many people are interested in, even today.

 

Some countries actually fill stadiums with people who come to view stonings and executions.

 

You can view executions in the US and books and movies about them have been bestsellers. Check out Norman Mailer's prize-winning bestseller/movie "The Executioner's Song", about the murderer Gary Gilmore. Look at the popularity of the "Faces of Death" vid series in the US. There is a Japanese series that is basically the same.

 

Throughout European history, hordes of people have gathered with gleeful or morbid curiosity to watch hangings, beheadings, gladiatorial death battles, public torture, etc.

 

In some African villages mob justice is a fact of life, and lots of people come out to watch it without joining in.

 

I do not say you and I want to watch it.

 

I merely state that plenty of people throughout history have been interested in watching it, many still are and do watch it, and this appears to be a facet of human nature.

 

We may profess disgust or disbelief, but our personal reaction does not change this fact. It's also going to be hard to size up and opine on the death penalty while professing do deny that a lot of people are interested to watch this kind of thing.

 

To go one step further, why is is "OK" to have a multi-billion-doller movie/TV industry heavy on cop, violence, death, destruction and murder movies/shows that even teens can go and watch...but "sick" to profess interest in seeing an ostensibly evil murderer get executed in the name of the law?

 

Doesn't this seem backwards to you?

 

How many murders did we see in, say, the latest James Bond flick? The Matrix movies? Hannibal Lecter, anyone? The Godfather series?

 

Isn't that sicker?

 

Oh, that is just fiction, so it doesn't count...well, the interest in seeing people get blown away hardly seems "fictional" even when it is just characters in a story.

 

But if you don't buy that argument, how about all the movies about true, real-life mass murderers? Real criminals? Real disasters, real wars?

 

I am not trying to make a deep or detailed point here, all I am saying is we don't need to pretend that only sick people are interested in this stuff.

[mikazooki 0]

well there goes the flower theory

[Stefan 0]

Good point!

 

Sorry must dash..... Someone is being Hung, Drawn and Quartered in my village square at 1:30.

 

Well you know how us Europeans are!

[Ocean11 0]

badmigs, your point basically boils down to 'justice or (pornographic) catharsis', with the latter favoured.

 

Catharsis in films and on TV is fine, but not so good as a principle of law.

 

(I saw 'Monsters Ball' on video last weekend and hated it for being a crap film. But that last family scene puts a lot in perspective. Executing somebody from a family punishes the whole family more than if the criminal is imprisoned.)

 

And unless I've got it completely wrong, the legal costs of getting somebody executed outweigh the costs of keeping them in jail for life - another reason why the hangers and zappers and gassers want to cut the legal safeguards out.

[snowboard_freak 0]

To be honest i don't know where i stand on this.

 

If it was someone i knew and loved who was going to be executed then i'd be saying, hell no executing people is wrong.

 

But then i think of all the rapist and serial killers, phedophiles (sp??) etc who are the scum of the earth and just wont change their ways. Why should they live when they have killed and emotionally scared people for the rest of their lives. Why shouldn't they be executed?

 

That said it should be done in a humane way.

 

I'd like to say that i don't neccesarily believe this post, but i am trying to illustrate the other side of the coin.

[Ocean11 0]

The 'killing in a humane way' thing is a red herring. What difference does it make if takes 2 seconds or 10 minutes? It's the waiting and preparation and anticipation that is just as repulsive as the killing itself. You think waiting on death row for 6 years is going to be different because it'll be a lethal injection at the end of it rather than gassing? That's just a cover story to make society feel better about snuffing its members.

[snowboard_freak 0]

I'm not convinced Ocean.

 

If you where going to get executed and there was a painless way that was kinda quick or a long winded painful way, which would you chose?

 

I know which i would go for.

 

I agree that waiting for it would terrible but still, i'd take a quick painless death over a painful ong one.

[RayInJapan 0]

I'm gonna wag this one, cause obviously I really don't know, but I'm gonna say that the 6 or 10 or 20 year wait for a prisoner to finally be executed doesn't bother them. I mean, come on - they've already killed someone intentionally and without prejudice so why would the wait bother them. I'm guessing they're doing 1 of 2 things: Thinking of a way to escape, or celebrating that despite the fact they got caught, they're still alive.

 

Me personally - I believe in the death penalty. Not as a deterrent to crime - most killers don't give a rats ass that they might get caught and get the death penalty. They are only thinking of themselves and how good the evil they are doing feels.

 

Hitlers Nazis gassed millions of Jews during WWII. Should we have just let the killers have a life sentence for a crime that horrific? I don't think so.

 

And when I appy that thought process to the guy who raped and killed a child somewhere, it doesn't matter to me the killer only killed one person - they deserve the same penalty.

[Ocean11 0]

What do you think of this scenario;

 

In Iran, or China, or Cuba, or the US, somebody is murdered and sentenced to death for it. But the family of the murdered person are against the death penalty, however bad they feel about the murderer. They say, "Not in my name". Should the State still go ahead with the execution, and kill another person to satisfy 'the outrage done to the society' or whatever the rationale is (in spite of the wishes of the actual people wronged)?

 

And indeed, in the US and Japan, isn't it the case that if the family is hot for an execution, an execution is more likely to be granted? I've heard that in Japan, a death sentence is more likely when the family demands it. Doesn't that make a mockery of justice being the same for everybody?

 

Answers please from all you executioners out there.

[RayInJapan 0]

Unless we all carry around cards in our wallets that say "If I get murdered, I forgive the person, please do not execute them", then its all hearsay as to the desires of the victim.

 

In many places in the US, family members of the victim are allowed to testify at the sentencing portion of the trial. Some family members do in fact ask for leniency and get it. Why they ask, is something I cannot comprehend. Different backgrounds obviously, but still very difficult to put myself the shoes of someone who forgives a murderer.

[xxx 2]

I'm not religious, but aren't good Christians supposed to forgive?

[Fattwins 0]

All this talk about death I just hope the rain stops.

 

The death penalty will be around for a while to come. If we have it Id rather see it dragged out. Too many times the courts have been wrong.

[snowboard_freak 0]

xxx - the bible does teach forgiveness. it teaches a lot of other things as well. Unfortunatley a lot of the modern christians do not follow the teachings to the full extent and thus not all christians will be forgiving. for a christian (or anyone actually) to forgive somone for murdering someone close to them would require a huge amount of courage and strength.

 

Call me a barbarian but if someone i knew was murdered in cold blood i would not hesitate in seeing that bastard killed.

[enderzero 0]

I think there is another point here that was barely touched on. You can argue all day if it is okay to kill a cold blooded murderer, but the fact is we as humans are not perfect, and over the history of the death penalty, 100s and 100s of innocent people have been killed. A crooked cop, a vengeful witness, whatever the case - our justice system is not flawless. No matter how you feel about an eye for an eye, if even one innocent person is killed it is completely inexcusable and reason enough to ban it.

 

Also, the death penalty, in the US at least, is with great prejudice to the poor. If you have the money for the right lawyer you will not fry. How is this justice? The poorer or less intelligent criminals get tricked into believing they are fine with public defenders which does not warrant the same respect from the court as one of the high profile defense attorneys.

 

There are a ton of resources out there for information on this. Start here http://www.ncadp.org for some interesting stats (for American info at least).

[grungy-gonads 54]

 Quote:

for a christian (or anyone actually) to forgive somone for murdering someone close to them would require a huge amount of courage and strength.

But isn't that what its all about, isn't that what a good christian would do?

[Ocean11 0]

I believe the good Christians have an escape clause: it's acceptable to kill in self defense, and the death penalty is the self defense of the state. Or so some of them say anyway...

 

There are so many arguments against it, but some people just want to have their revenge, and have it as horrible as possible.