Thread: Shall the criminally insane be put down like a dog with rabies?

Originally Posted by JMS

The yes crowd is woefully in the minority here

Maybe we can have a vote to have them put down

Originally Posted by Bruno

Maybe we can have a vote to have them put down

Originally Posted by ndw76

I tend to disagree with any form of death penalty because there is not yet an instant and painless way of doing it. Research done during the French revoultion (I don't know how scientific) found that the brain remains conscious for a few seconds after it is removed from the rest of the body. For this reason both beheading and hanging are not instant and painless. Then there is electrocution. By all accounts it is an incredibally painful and horrible way to die. Then with firing squads, the victim often takes up to 15 minutes to die as the heart pumps blood out of the body. Even if the shot destroys the heart the victim will still take a number of minutes to die. Shooting in the head is not viable as the intact head is used as part of the identification (have to make sure they shot the right person).
And there has recently been some legal action in the US as to weather or not leathal injection is a cruel and unusal punishment.
Then there is also the argument that if they are criminally insane they suffer from a mental illness and therefor are less culpable.

Having just read this I got a question. Does the government actually wait till after they are dead to identify them.They just pic a prisoner at random, kill them Then think to themselves I wonder if we killed the right person. Good thing we shot him in the chest.

I believe that was the practice in Australia when they had the death penalty. But of course I am no expert and may be wrong.

i know of 2 families thar were involved with a criminally insane husband, in both cases he murdered his wife and children slaughtered is more like it, so thats why my responce is sort of hardline, people that murder a child should die in excruciating painful torture filled death.

Originally Posted by jwoods

i know of 2 families thar were involved with a criminally insane husband, in both cases he murdered his wife and children slaughtered is more like it, so thats why my responce is sort of hardline, people that murder a child should die in excruciating painful torture filled death.

no they shouldn't. I am pro-death penalty, but it should be done humanely.

why, you ask? because it's not revenge. it's upholding the social contract. it's protecting society from future crimes the person might commit. the justice system is supposed to be impartial, logical, and unemotional. it's also explicitly forbidden from using cruel and unusual punishment. so while it's an understandable emotional response to want them tortured, it is absolutely essential that it be done cleanly and humanely, for the justice system to retain it's impartiality.

Originally Posted by jockeys

why, you ask? because it's not revenge. it's upholding the social contract.

Should the social contract be changed to allow for cruel and unusual punishment? As you've noted before, the death penalty not only serves to remove the murderer from society but serves as a deterrent to crime

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

Should the social contract be changed to allow for cruel and unusual punishment? As you've noted before, the death penalty not only serves to remove the murderer from society but serves as a deterrent to crime

an interesting question there, and one i've thought about quite a bit. personally, i think the answer is no. as much for reasons of maintaining unemotionality as well as PR reasons.

let's face it, a state that tortures appears tyrannical. i think regardless of laws on the book, it a country began torturing it's own citizens there would be a revolt of some kind. the state needs to maintain an air of professionalism and humane-ness, "we didn't want to kill this criminal, but for the good of society, it became necessary. it was done quickly and humanely." sounds a lot better and bolsters confidence a hell of a lot more than "this guy was ****ing me off and messing with my citizens, so i removed his nails with pliers, burned all his hair off and then disemboweled him."

the constituents of a given society must all (or mostly) believe in the social contract for it to work at all.

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

Should the social contract be changed to allow for cruel and unusual punishment? As you've noted before, the death penalty not only serves to remove the murderer from society but serves as a deterrent to crime

To allow the practice of torture would likely be a dangerous and slippery slope into a barbaric society from which we evolved centuries ago.

Data indicates that the death penalty has no deterrent value at all. I do however agree that execution is a removal of a criminal who has failed to function in society. I have often thought (especially after they made such a big deal about McVeigh's execution) that a condemned criminal should simply be disappeared.

As I already mentioned, cruel death penalty didn't work before, and it won't work now.
Death penalty is not a deterrent now, and it wasn't then.

Apart from the short drop hangings I mentioned they had something known as hanging, drawing and quartering. Basically, you got hung for a while, and before you died they brought you down again to cut out your intestines and when you were empty inside, they hacked off arms and legs. It still didn;t deter guy fawkes and his merry men from trying to blow up parliament.

And in the middle ages, there was even more gruesome stuff. And that didn't work either.
So on this I am with Jockeys. IF you are going to have a death penalty, it should be for the purpose of justice, not revenge.