Shelley of Retrospectacle has asked us:
Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if its conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty?
I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty. No government has, in my opinion, a right to cold bloodedly take a citizen's or visitor's life under rule of law. While I believe it also fails to act as a deterrent, and makes permanent any miscarriages of justice (of which there are plenty, ranging from prejudice against stereotypes to outright falsifying of evidence out of laziness), this is a moral issue. No greater harm can be done to a person or their families to take a life. I don't care if it is Osama Bin Laden or Adolph Hitler. If they have done wrong, punish them with imprisonment. Set them to forced labour. Don't kill them.
As to war, that is a different issue. A war of defence is something that is occasionally necessary to protect a society. Wars of offence and exploitation are unjustifiable, but to defend one's sovereignty and self-determination when it is under attack (real attack, not attack by abstractions like "terror") with reasonable force is well within the bounds of acceptability.
Why is the death penalty so wrong? It's because the sort of society that thinks its governments and judiciary have that right is an uncivil society. It is a society that treats the rights of individuals as secondary to expedience is a savage society that is susceptible to other abuses (and we indeed see these abuses in such societies). It encourages governmental paternalism and abuse of power. It inevitably marginalises groups that are not conformist, or are further marginalises the marginal. It is fundamentally inegalitarian, and undemocratic.
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I would be for the death penalty in rare cases of murder and torture if it were not for problems of evidence, human mental fallibility, and the problem of consistent allotment (why him, but not him?). But the biggest problem I see with the death penalty is the problem of the 12 idiots, known in America as jurors. I know this is cynical, but it is true. Clever people are usually screened out. I agree with Richard Dawkins, who argued that juries should consist of experts. Perhaps a new discipline with its own graduate program should be born, with trained experts, that have been rigorously screened. At this point I would settle for 12 lawyers in place of 12 ordinary citizens. At least the lawyers are aware of the rhetoric tricks used by their colleagues to distort the evidence. The reason our justice system works is that most people, something like 93%, plead guilty or no contest in order to reduce their sentencing.
I have always supported the death penalty because I believe that it is the only appropriate punishment for the crime of murder which, to me, means the unlawful, premeditated killing of one human being by another.
As I see it, there are actually two questions to be answered here: first, is the death penalty a just punishment for murder and, second, are there any cases in which it can be safely applied?
For me, justice embodies notions of fairness, of proportionality, of repairing harm or injury done to victims and of preventing offenders from profiting or gaining advantage from any offence committed.
The principle of proportionality is reflected in the sentencing structures in our countries. Minor offences are dealt with by imposing fines or requiring the offender to perform community service, for example. More serious crimes attract terms of imprisonment of various lengths.
By this principle, the most serious offence - that of murder - should entail the most severe punishment, the death penalty. Anything less, and the offender can be seen as having gained the advantage by escaping with his or her life where the victim has not. Even worse is the situation in the UK, for example, where murder incurs a mandatory life sentence but the average term of imprisonment actually served is in the order of 12-14 years. That is the law but it is not just.
The only effective objection to capital punishment is on the grounds of the possibility of an irreversible miscarriage of justice occuring. The answer to that lies in the answer to the following question: are there any cases of murder where the guilt of the accused has been established beyond any shadow of doubt? If there are, then the offender may safely be executed, if not, we are bound to settle for the lesser sentence of life imprisonment.
John writes, quite correctly, "No greater harm can be done to a person or their families to take a life." That is precisely why the only just response, however distasteful, is the death penalty. As an agnostic I have no belief in an afterlife. When you kill someone, you take something that is utterly unique and irreplaceable, quite apart from the grief and suffering it causes to others. I fail to see how anyone can argue that a few years in prison is a proportionate response.
I also have the impression, perhaps unjustly, that opponents of capital punishment tend to focus on the rights and feelings of the offender and that the victim, being dead, is written off. I say that, when it comes to the death penalty in a given case, we should carefully study the details of the crime and then, in our imaginations, try to relive the experiences of the victim's last minutes or hours. Only when we have some understanding of the shock, the terror, the pain and the grief felt by the victim can we say what sentence such suffering merits.
I consider myself a reluctant supporter of the death penalty - I feel in some cases it is necessary from a practacal and safety level (or, yes, some people are too dangerous to let live). However I only back that with extreme evidence and caution.
The problem with the death penalty in general is that it gets used as a propaganda tool, a rally for revenge (the rallies around executions make me ill - stop celebrating the death of someone and ask what you can do to make society less murderous), and it can of course be misused. If it was abolished, I'd have no trouble with it at all - I just feel one doesn't have to entirely write it off.
Or, in short, I'll tolerate a limited use of it, and can even see a need in some cases. But if there's alternatives, I'm gonna be happy with that.
Since you have said it is a moral issue, that automatically eliminates argument. It's your morality against mine. The argument that a nation with the death penalty is "uncivil" is simply a matter of personal opinion and definition. I could just as well say that a nation which does not place a high enough value on a person's life to require the ulitmate price for taking it is uncivil. Personally, I believe in the death penalty for murder in principle, but probably not in practice. That's because of too many instances of a person's being convicted and later proven innocent. I have seen jury trials as an observer and as a member of a jury, and I don't want to rely on them for my own fate. In addition, in too many cases the police decide who they think committed a crime and then proceed to find evidence to prove their beliefs, rather than looking at all the evidence and seeing where it leads. For example, in the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing, the FBI was convinced that a certain individual commited the crime and went so far as to ask the public for help in proving it. Of course it later turned out that a christian fundamentalist was responsible for that bombing and others. Good thing they didn't find enough "evidence" to try their original suspect.
But, as much as I oppose the death penalty in practice, I can't oppose it in priniciple. If someone murdered someone that I love, I would want that person to pay the ultimate, and in my view, only just price: forteiture of his own life.
If someone murdered someone that I love, I would want that person to pay the ultimate, and in my view, only just price: forteiture of his own life.
But Mark, no one's stopping you from killing your loved one's murderer. If you want revenge, go for it. Sure, it would be illegal, and you might face the death penalty as well. And you'd also have to face your victim's loved ones. But sometimes personal moral responsibility involves violating the law and taking your lumps for it. Instead, you want the state to take revenge for you, because you're afraid to take that responsiblity on yourself.
Just don't involve me in your petty little revenge schemes. Because that's precisely what the death penalty does.
In a modern representative democracy, the government is not some shadowy "them" out there. The government is us. When the state takes a life, I take a life.
I personally think the death penalty, when used for a murderer, is more just than war in defense of a society. When the death penaltly is used to execute a murderer, that persone is getting the fate that they gave out.
When a society goes to war, they are usually defending ideals, versus actual life. We can kill in defense of beliefs for the various types of freedom, but not for murder? And, when a society successfully defends itself from attack, it nearly always causes a greater death toll in the losing society. I don't understand how this can be considered moral, while the death penalty is not.
Well, HP, I don't consider wanting appropriate punishment for someone who kills someone I love to be petty. Perhaps your argument is, not to mention being gratuitously insulting. Why descend to personal attacks if you have a rational argument? Could it be that you don't actually have a rational argument, only an emotional one? And you beg the question when you call it revenge. If it be revenge, then any punishment for any crime is revenge. You have to decide whether the state can punish someone first. If you agree to that, then you have to decide to what extent a criminal may be punished. Why is it suddenly my responsibility to punish when it is the state's in every other case?
You may disagree with me, but your position is more moral only in your own mind.
There is an episode of the West Wing where President Bartlet is practicing for a debate. When faced with the question of whether he would want the death penalty for someone who killed his daughter, his answer is something to the effect of, "Of course I would, but that's why we don't let the families of victims decide punishments." I think when debating the death penalty it is important to avoid personal experience, even imagined. I bet that most human beings, faced with the choice in an emotionally charged period, would take a killer's life.
I think Mark Paris makes a good point about morality. Being against the death penalty is my own personal morality, but if I want to advocate for it's abolishment, I have to argue more than just subjectivity.
Where is the logic in pro-death penalty arguments? I don't buy death as the top setting on a "sliding scale" of punishment. First, our punishments vary very differently and don't follow a simple scale - compare, for example, possession of powder cocaine, possession of crack cocaine, rape, vehicular manslaughter, aggrevated assault, and first degree murder. A wide variety of punishments could be instituted for these crimes, and it is quite concievable that non-violent drug offenders could reap greater punishments than those who rape, assault or even kill. If taking a life requires the punishment of a life lost, why don't we kill drunk drivers? negligent elevator operators? doctors who operate without licenses? These people could all take lives, but it is only first or second degree murder that is typically eligible for the death penalty. Where is the certainty that this punishment is needed? It seems to me that our system is a muddle of punishments.
Secondly, as PZ mentioned and has been shown elsewhere, the death penalty is not a disincentive for crime. It is also expensive and poorly executed. I believe the death penalty is, and always will be, supported by (very understandable) human emotion. I heard a lecture from a former aid to Margaret Thatcher in London last March or so, and I was struck by something he said. A student asked a question about the importance of democracy and national concensus, and the lecturer answered that the death penalty is surely one thing he would fear to see come to a public vote - for that would mean the reinstitution of the death penalty (which is apparently popularly supported in England). I had thought the English had neatly tucked away the death penalty a long time ago (and of course, literally, they had), but it was clear to me that the reason was the leadership of the Labour party and the demands of EU membership, rather than true public concensus that forced the issue.
Ian Spedding writes:
Since you brought this up, I thought I'd ask a question that's been bugging me lately. I feel as though there ought to be a simple answer, but I don't see it. Why is it important that a legal system be just? Specifically, why is important that convicted criminals be punished as much as they deserve?
Assuming that a murderer deserves to be executed, and assuming that executing murderers (rather than sentencing them to life imprisonment) doesn't reduce the murder rate in a society, isn't it better to be merciful and not punish people to the extent that they deserve?
Ian Spedding wrote
For me, justice embodies notions of fairness, of proportionality, of repairing harm or injury done to victims and of preventing offenders from profiting or gaining advantage from any offence committed.
The principle of proportionality is reflected in the sentencing structures in our countries. Minor offences are dealt with by imposing fines or requiring the offender to perform community service, for example. More serious crimes attract terms of imprisonment of various lengths.
By this principle, the most serious offence - that of murder - should entail the most severe punishment, the death penalty. Anything less, and the offender can be seen as having gained the advantage by escaping with his or her life where the victim has not.
By that logic, the only way to respond to a nuclear attack is with a nuclear retaliation. I'm not a X-ian, but in this case, I think turning the other cheek is preferable to Armageddon.
Over all, I have to disagree with your philosophy and support Dr. Wilkins. The best way to show moral superiority is to hold yourself to a higher standard than others. "An eye for an eye" is barbarism. It doesn't matter what the other guy did. If you don't hold yourself to a higher standard, then you're no better than him. That's why I'm against nuclear proliferation. Thats why I'm against torture. And that's why I'm against the death pealty.
A long time ago I read some of the philosophical stuff on punishment. If I remember it correctly, there were three justifications for it - retaliation and retribution, protection of the rights of those who are harmed, and the "well ordered society". The first is the eye for an eye aproach of tradition. The second is based on a notion of natural right, and the third is a consequentialist argument that a society that allows negative acts will suffer in its order. I prefer the third justification, as there is no moral balance sheet that is evened out by harming the harmer, and there are, in my view, no natural rights.
arensb wrote:
If you take that view to its logical conclusion you could ask why punish offenders at all? Why not treat them as either driven by irresistible impulse or suffering from some form of personality disorder? In either case, they would be regarded as victims themselves, as patients requiring treatment to modify their inappropriate behaviour.
Of course, the treatment would have to be mandatory, not requiring the permission of the patient. It would be a form of forcible behaviour modification or brainwashing. Would that be a more acceptable alternative to punishment?
None of this addresses the injury done to the victim, of course, and justice, if it means anything, is about trying to repair that injury through reparation or restitution or, where such remedies cannot be applied, through retribution.
A further point is that a legal system is only really effective where it is trusted to uphold the rights of victims and ensure that the guilty are punished. For example, a couple of years ago in the UK, a convicted pedophile was beaten to death by a group of assailants in his own home. Police investigating the attack met a wall of silence in the local community, the implication being that they tacitly approved of what was done. It was an extremely rare and isolated case but I believe it illustrates what could happen if people lose confidence in legal system.
The Science Pundit wrote:
You could argue that the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction was actually effective in preventing a nuclear war.
I do not try to justify capital punishment as an effective deterrent, though, because I doubt there is any evidence for a deterrent effect from any of the other sentences currently prescribed for serious crimes.
The problem with turning the other cheek is that you could get you killed and you only get one chance at this life as far as we know.
I can imagine being faced with an assailant armed with a knife who demands my money. I hand it over without complaint but my attacker becomes enraged when he finds it contains little cash and stabs me before running off. As I lie dying on the ground I comfort myself with the knowledge that I have the moral high ground.
I believe it was General George Patton who said something along the lines of "Nobody ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." In other words, the moral high ground is of little use if you are buried in it.
If no one committed murder, there would be no executions and that would suit me just fine. The reality is that such a state of affairs is unlikely to happen any time soon so, like it or not, we are going to have to deal with murderers.
Imprisonment is not a just punishment because it means offenders have gained the advantage, they are alive while their victims are dead. Moreover, their victims have often suffered terribly and while prison is not a pleasant place to be it doesn't come close to the trauma that must have been experienced by victims. But, since more extreme torture is prohibited and only a few murder convictions are so safe as to support a death sentence, it is the best we can do for the present.
I'm not sure who said it, but nobody ever ended a war by trying to get even. Though my favorite death penalty quote has to be from Scott Turow, who said something to the effect of "I don't fault anyone for their stand on the death penalty. Throughout my life I've held them all."
So, morality's not even worth discussing, eh?
I have two additional reasons to oppose the death penalty, neither of them are necessarily moral stances, but do involve equal application of justice. The first is the fact that faulty interpretation of evidence can lead to the death of innocent accusees. I have met Chris Ochoa, who was cleared by evidence of a crime for which he had not only been convicted but was scheduled for execution. The Innocence Project has saved many lives from execution, people who were innocent. Randall Dale Adams and Joyce Ann Brown were both cleared of charges for which they were scheduled to die. They had been convicted based on false eyewitness testimony. Killing them would have been murder.
The second reason is that it provides a guilty criminal with an easy out. While the act of dying may be unpleasant, death itself provides an end to suffering. Of course I don't believe in Hell, and I believe that death brings oblivion. Imprisonment gives the inmate time to reflect on his or her sins, and if one of my loved ones were to be killed in a painful way then I would want the person that killed him or her to suffer for as long as possible. Maybe even as someone's prison "bitch."
Killing a murderer doesn't return a loved one.
Let me clarify my own position. I favor the death penalty in some cases in principle, but I oppose it in practice because in the US, at least, it has been demonstrated in general and in cases I have seen with my own two eyes that the death penalty is itself fatally flawed in its application. There are several reasons. To name but two, it is not applied uniformly and there are too many opportunities for an innocent person to be executed. But I think that it is hypocritical for me to favor the death penalty for the murderer of someone that I love but not for the murderer of someone else's loved one. So, I hold myself to the same standard in public as in private.
I was taken to task about not arguing the morality. No, it is not worth arguing because it is entirely in the eye of the beholder. The argument might be fun but it is pointless. There is no right answer.
Ian Spedding writes:
Yes, exactly.
The way I see it, punishment sends the message that "if you do a Bad Thing, then Bad Things will happen to you", and thus acts as a deterrent against crime.
But neither punishment nor justice are the end goal: these are just means toward an end: that Bad Things not happen to innocent people (in particular, to us). As it happens, retribution and punishment seem to work reasonably well, and such feelings may have evolved, by helping ape societies work.
But I'm wondering whether we can do better. What if there were some educational program or therapy or rehabilitation technique or something that could lower crime rates, but wouldn't be perceived as being just? (I.e., murderers, rapists, and thieves wouldn't be executed, flogged, or otherwise punished, and would wind up back on the street after the treatment was finished.) Such a system would be repugnant because it wouldn't punish offenders, but I can't think of a rational reason not to adopt it, if it really works better than punishment.
What is a criminal justice system for? That's really the question we need to answer here. Is it for retaliation, punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, or protection?
Retaliation and punishment are the province of savages and paternalistic authoritarians, neither of which are how we believe our government should act towards its citizens.
Criminal justice is a matter for the state because the state has the responsibility for maintaining civic order. In other words, it is there for protection. Period.
Deterrence and rehabilitation can both be useful ways of improving the civic order, of course -- so any criminal justice system that provides deterrence and/or rehabilitation is doing its job well.
The death penalty doesn't improve the civic order any more than life imprisonment does. It doesn't deter crime more than life imprisonment. And it obviously removes any possibility of rehabilitation. It also requires a perfect system of determining truth -- which we lack -- in order to avoid instances of fatal injustice.
Therefore the death penalty is not a useful part of a criminal justice system. Period. It's really not that hard, and doesn't really require the invocation of unarguable 'morals' at all. Governments are about pragmatic issues, not about morals. Pragmatically there is no reason whatsoever for a death penalty.
There may, of course, be pragmatic reasons for an elected official to support the death penalty, just as an elected official may for pragmatic electoral reasons support restrictions on free speech. It doesn't make it good policy.
Mike Haubrich wrote:
That's a problem with our jury trial system not the death penalty.
I aassume you'd be opposed to a policy of deliberate torture as punishment, but you're happy enough with a sort of incidental torture that's a by-product of the prison system?
No punishment or sentence ever 'undoes' the offence for which it is imposed.
arensb wrote:
It might, but I see that as an incidental effect of the punishment not the primary purpose.
Justice starts with a crime, with a victim who has suffered some sort of injury to their rights or person or property. The purpose of justice, as I see it, is to repair the harm done, as far as is possible, and to inflict proportionate retribution on the perpetrator so that they shall not have profited or gained any advantage from the offence.
In some cases, restitution or reparations might be entirely sufficient as redress for what was done, although this should not mean that the wealthy be able to buy their way out of trouble. Where the offender has little with which to make restitution then the gap should be made up by retribution.
In the case of murder, there is no possibility of restitution or reparation, only retribution. And proportionate retribution must mean the death penalty.
So people could commit whatever crimes they liked and, provided they completed some educational or therapeutic or rehabilitative program, they could be back on the streets none the worse?
And you would tell people that they would have to accept any offence committed against them, however heinous, as equivalent to an accident?
"Sorry and all that, but you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Too bad, but the guy who did it is in the program so all's well."
eyelessgame wrote:
We can talk about abstractions like justice, retaliation and so on all we like.
In terms of capital punishment, though, what it comes down to is something like the half-naked body of a young girl being found dumped somewhere in the countryside. She's been brutally beaten, bound, raped and strangled to death. It's about finding the man who did it and then deciding what, if anything, to do with - or to - him.
That's the reality.
People have been calling the death penalty a deterrent for a very long time; how's that working out so far?
Here in the U.S. there is something called the Innocence Project. Thanks to the hardworking folks there, over 170 people who were wrongly convicted have been exonerated, 14 of whom were sentenced to death. These are cases where post-conviction DNA testing provides the necessary evidence to free these people. What about all those wrongly executed prior to DNA testing? What about those cases where DNA testing cannot be helpful.
Ian Spedding wrote:
Actually, I prefer to start earlier, and prevent the crime in the first place.
That's actually two purposes: restitution to the victim, and punishment of the perpetrator. Just thought I'd point that out.
Proportionate retribution is "an eye, or something of equal value, for an eye". Why is this desirable? Wouldn't it be better to be merciful, and give offenders a lesser punishment, where possible?
Sorry, I was unclear. Prevention is an important part of what I had in mind.
Imagine that the US institutes social/educational program A, thanks to which there are only 100 murders per year in the entire USA. The murderers are caught, undergo treatment B, and are then released. Fewer than 1/10000 people who have undergone treatment B ever commit a violent crime again. A and B are intimately tied; you can't have one without the other.
Under the scenario I sketched out above, yes. The fact that criminals aren't punished is repugnant. But since the actual harm goes way down, wouldn't such a system be preferable to what we have now?
That's really what I'm asking: is justice desirable in itself, or would a system that prevents harm to begin with be better, even if it's grossly unjust?
"the crime of murder which, to me, means the unlawful, premeditated killing of one human being by another."
Rather vague. So there are lawful premeditated killings? Which ones? For that matter, what does "premeditated" mean? What determines premeditation? Were the Columbine killings premeditated? If the killers had lived, should they have been later executed?
Why should only premeditation be considered? The victim is dead in either case.
Many people argue here that punishment has to be less or equal to the harm perpetrator committed. However, we know for sure that we cannot catch and punish every criminal. In that case, unless we punish criminals more than the harm they cause, we will never discourage future crimes.
Let's say we fine traffic cops can reasonable stop and fine only 50% of speed limit breakers. Let's say the actual harm (or potential harm) they impose on the rest of us is x. In that case, unless we fine the speed breakers 2x or more, we will never discourage speeding.
Ashish wrote:
I've been arguing that it's the merciful thing to do, but not that it's the best thing to do. I'd like someone to explain to me why it's not a good or practical thing to do.
I'm pretty sure the calculus of deterrence doesn't work that way. Imposing harsher sentences for a crime doesn't necessarily reduce the number of instances of that crime. ISTR (Warning! Anecodal evidence alert!) that in Florida some years ago, the legislature passed a bill that allowed the death penalty for robbing convenience stores. As a result, the murder rate went up. Convenience store robbers would kill the store owner to keep him from talking. After all, by robbing the store, they had already committed a capital crime, and killing the witnesses would reduce the odds of getting caught, without making the punishment any worse.
According to David Brin in The Transparent Society, the single most important factor in deterrence is the chance of being caught. If that's true, then we could stop speeding by consistently enforcing speeding laws; it wouldn't matter if the fine were just $1.
Susan Silberstein wrote:
Little if any evidence for a deterrent effect, same as for all the other sentences imposed for serious crimes.
That's why I don't use it as a justification for capital punishment.
Exonerating innocent people is always a good thing. The Innocence Project is to be congratulated.
All it shows, though, is that the system of trial-by-jury is flawed and unreliable, not that the death penalty is unjust.
Is the Innocence Project claiming that all those that have been executed or are currently on Death Row awaiting execution are innocent? Are there none who were or are actually guilty of the crimes of which they were convicted?
arensb wrote:
Ideally, yes, but I don't see that happening any time soon
That isn't to say we can't work towards ameliorating the sort of social conditions that lead to some types of crime, but it is going to be very difficult to detect the sort of sociopaths who become serial killers, for example, let alone prevent them.
Fair point.
Why be merciful at all? I'm not saying you shouldn't be, but asking what purpose does it serve?
If showing mercy brings about a change of heart in the person to whom you are merciful, then I can see an advantage. But if it only serves to allow an incorrigible thug to go out and commit further crimes, where is the benefit?
Prevention is good, in principle.
An unlikely scenario, I think, but an interesting moral dilemma.
I think society at large would probably vote in favour of your program, providing no human rights were violated by program A.
I think I would vote against the program because, for me, justice is about setting right the wrong done to the individual victim, just as human rights, whatever their consequent benefit to society as a whole, are in the first place about protecting individuals.
Once you decouple justice and rights from the individual and give priority instead about to a political entity like the state you are on the road to totalitarianism.
I would say not. You could probably reduce the crime rate significantly by sentencing every offender, however petty, to public execution by firing-squad. It wouldn't be just, however - certainly not by my concept of justice - and I would not support it.
bernarda wrote:
A police marksman shooting dead a kidnapper who was threatening to kill a hostage would count as a lawful, premeditated killing.
"Premeditation" I take to mean the conscious exercise of choice that precedes an act where it would have been possible to choose to do otherwise.
A woman who snatches up a knife and stabs her abusive husband to death while he is trying to beat her would not be guilty of murder. If, however, she waited until the next night, sneaked into the husband's bedroom and stabbed him to death while he slept, that would be a premeditated act and she could be guilty of murder.
I would say the Columbine shootings were clearly premeditated and the two responsible should have received the death penalty had they lived to stand trial.
If we regard each individual human life as precious because it is unique and irreplaceable then, while killing someone by accident or through carelessness is bad enough, deliberately taking the life of another is the worst harm you can do to anyone.
Ian Spedding wrote:
I'll start with emotional arguments: if I were convicted of a crime, I would wish to be punished less severely than I deserved. Assuming that I'm not terribly different from other people (which has worked out pretty well for me so far), I conclude that others feel the same way.
All else being equal, I would also prefer to live in a merciful society than a perfectly just one.
Mathematically (or game-theoretically), mercy can serve as a dampening effect. If, for whatever reason, I killed your brother, then you might exact justice by killing mine. Then I would kill your sister; you would kill mine; you would kill my father, and so on and so forth, until everyone in our families was dead.
If, on the other hand, we were inclined to be merciful, then after I killed your brother, you would cripple my brother. I would retaliate by maiming your sister, and you would wound my sister. I would infect your mother with herpes, and you would drive mine to bankruptcy. Pretty soon, we'd get to the point where I retaliate by accidentally-on-purpose forgetting to tell you that there's a 50% off sale at the Strand.
Economically, every time someone's prison sentence is reduced by a year means one fewer year during which you and I have to pay for that person's incarceration, and one more year when that person has the chance to be a productive member of society.
In the specific case of capital punishment, it costs more to convict a person to death than to sentence him or her to life imprisonment, since capital cases are either automatically appealed, or practically always appealed. In addition, I believe that the standards of evidence are stricter for a death sentence, which means that the prosecution has to work longer and harder.
Obviously, all of these arguments must be tempered: releasing a serial killer after a night in jail may be merciful, but it's also stupid. But you can come up with such arguments at least as well as I can.
Right. When I say that mercy is good, I'm not suggesting that we be stupid about it. But to use your example, if our judges are good enough judges of character that they can tell who will have a change of heart, or who is genuinely remorseful and doesn't require the maximum penalty to be reformed, then why not be merciful?
I'm afraid I don't understand this.
True, but I was thinking of being unjust in the other direction: punishing people less than they deserve.
I understand that if a crime has a dealth penalty the perpetrator has no incentive to keep the victim(s) or the witnesses alive. But the general point that criminals (potential) look at both the probability of getting caught and the punishment (probability of getting caught * punishmemnt = expected punishment).
Spedding, ""Premeditation" I take to mean the conscious exercise of choice that precedes an act where it would have been possible to choose to do otherwise."
What is meant by "conscious exercise" and "choice" and "choose otherwise"? They are just approximate terms used because we don't have a good understanding of the reasons for human behavior. They are not scientific terms.
Gould in an essay "Kropotkin was not a Crackpot",
"First, nature (no matter how cruel in human terms) provides no basis for our moral values. (Evolution might, at most, help to explain why we have moral feelings, but nature can never decide for us whether any particular action is right or wrong.) Second, Darwins struggle for existence is an abstract metaphor, not an explicit statement about bloody battle. Reproductive success, the criterion of natural selection, works in many modes: Victory in battle may be one pathway, but cooperation, symbiosis, and mutual aid may also secure success in other times and contexts."
"There are no shortcuts to moral insight. Nature is not intrinsically anything that can offer comfort or solace in human terms if only because our species is such an insignificant latecomer in a world not constructed for us. So much the better. The answers to moral dilemmas are not lying out there, waiting to be discovered. They reside, like the kingdom of God, within us the most difficult and inaccessible spot for any discovery or consensus."
http://www.marxists.org/subject/science/essays/kropotkin.htm
People do what they do because of their genetic makeup and their environmental situation. To say that someone "chose" to kill someone is to ignore the real reasons for his act.
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Proportionate retribution?
Let's see.
Suppose someone kills one person. Surely proportionate retribution is to kill that someone. Suppose someone kills two people. Surely proportionate retribution is to kill that someone twice?
But obviously merely killing that man is not proportionate retribution. Surely that would involve brutally beating, binding, and raping him before strangling him to death. But he has no vagina. How do you rape him? Do you fuck him in the ass? That's not the same, is it? Oh, and -- I wrote "you", but given the sexual orientations most likely involved, you'd need to have a woman do that. Now, how does that work.
Proportionate retribution may or may not be desirable. It is not possible, people, face it.
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But the most important reason why I'm against the death penalty is not any such practical or moral question. It is theoretical -- it's the well-known argument that judges can err, at least in principle. Science can disprove but not prove (within methodological naturalism).
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Now let me turn to the emotional. If someone killed some member of my family, would I want the death penalty? No. Honestly. What for? It wouldn't undo anything.
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Now, finally, to the moral, and back to the practical at the same time:
Whether "an eye for an eye" is a "barbarism" is not the issue.
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Sorry, I forgot to mention deterrence. Once punishment is above a certain (rather low, and certainly not proportionate) level, I have trouble imagining how deterrence could work. A murderer, as opposed to a manslaughterer, already thinks he won't get caught; otherwise he wouldn't do it.
Once getting caught is certain -- not merely probable --, deterrence works. MAD worked quite beautifully.
(...Though it did have the by-product that we all had to live in constant fear an accident, or a flock of birds in front of some radar antenna, would trigger the end of the world.)
arensb wrote:
I'm sure they would. In fact, I'm sure they would want to avoid punishment altogether.
Should we pay any more attention to their wishes than they did to their victims?
I would prefer both. But if I had to make a choice, I would prefer a just one first.
An interesting speculation, but it raises several points.
First, didn't Dawkins mention a "tit-for-tat" strategy being successful in one of his books?
Second, my concept of justice does not allow 'collateral retaliation' or revenge against family and friends. Only the guilty are deserving of punishment.
Third, I doubt if people, being people, would react as consistently as you suggest. Thinking along the lines of mafia vendettas, I can imagine someone whose sister was killed wiping out the killer's entire family in revenge.
True, but if the cost of the prison system is the only consideration, why not abandon it altogether? It could be that the money saved would more than offset the increased cost of the higher crime rate that would follow.
I'm not so sure. I've seen it argued that, although the up-front costs of death penalty cases are higher than life-without-parole, over the period of the life sentence the overall costs are higher.
Not that justice should be decided by economic considerations, of course.
It seems to me that, in criminal cases, all standards should be set as high as they can. There are clearly far too many cases where people have been convicted on the basis of pretty flimsy evidence.
Because an injury has been done which must be remedied. Neither remorse nor forgiveness undoes that harm.
I'm sorry, I put it clumsily.
What I was trying to say was that a lot of discussion about justice deals in abstractions such deterrence, retribution, social compacts, the economic costs of crime and the duties of the state as it assumes responsibility for law and order in society.
It seems to me that if you forget that, first and foremost, there are victims who have suffered at the hands of criminals and who are entitled to have their grievances redressed, you are forgetting what justice is all about.
Worse, a state which regards the justice system as a means of general social manipulation, rather than being strictly concerned with repairing the injury done to the victim, is in danger of placing it in the hands of politicians - and we all know what they're like.
Susan Silberstein wrote:
By that logic, one should also be against all sentences, because people being wrongfully imprisoned is as great an injustice as innocent people being executed. When someone is exonerated after spending twenty years in prison, for example, we cannot return those twenty years any more than we can restore life to someone executed by mistake.
But I say again, this does not mean that the sentences are in themselves unjust. I means that the justice system is flawed and needs to be improved.
bernarda wrote:
No, they aren't. I never claimed they were.
But our justice system assumes that people are responsible for their actions.
We are not puppets pulled helplessly this way and that, not by strings, but by chains of cause and effect that stretch back in time until they are lost to sight.
We may be shaped and influenced by our heritage and environment but, within certain limits, we are able to decide between different courses of action. We can know what society regards as right and wrong and we can choose which we do.
It's hardly surprising that a man like Gould understood about the naturalistic fallacy.
If the killer could have chosen to do otherwise then, whatever the "real reasons" for the act, he or she is responsible and guilty.
If you truly believe in a deterministic universe then, to be consistent, you should be arguing that we abandon the justice system altogether. If we are not responsible for our actions then there can be no crime and no guilt. A person commits murder because that is what they were predestined to do and the victim's death was equally predestined.
To be more specfific, if you were the victim of a crime and the perpetrator were caught, would you tell the prosecution not to proceed against him because he had no choice but to do what he did?
We can talk about abstractions like justice, retaliation and so on all we like.
In terms of capital punishment, though, what it comes down to is something like the half-naked body of a young girl being found dumped somewhere in the countryside. She's been brutally beaten, bound, raped and strangled to death. It's about finding the man who did it and then deciding what, if anything, to do with - or to - him.
That's the reality.
Ian and I have gone around this particular buoy on a number of occasions in another forum (and I agree with John's position in pretty much all significant respects), but...
Ian, you have a romantic notion about people; they are either irredeemably evil monsters, or innocents. You are wrong; the reality of murder (in the UK, with no capital punishment and a low murder rate) is very much not the scenario pictured above.
The typical UK murder (35%) is domestic; killing within the family, or by a current or ex-partner. Nearly half of all female murder victims are killed by a current or ex-partner. Your dream of murder for murder would, to put it mildly, not help.
It seems to me that if you forget that, first and foremost, there are victims who have suffered at the hands of criminals and who are entitled to have their grievances redressed, you are forgetting what justice is all about.
Worse, a state which regards the justice system as a means of general social manipulation, rather than being strictly concerned with repairing the injury done to the victim, is in danger of placing it in the hands of politicians - and we all know what they're like.
You forget that the King's Courts' jurisdiction over criminal law arose for one reason and one reason alone - because the obsession with vengeance that your own arguments exhibit was and is profoundly societally destabilising. The justice system is precisely, and only, a system of social manipulation intended to keep order within society by discouraging/preventing crime and retaining central control and consistency of punishment of any crime that occurs.
David MarjanoviÄ wrote:
That's the general idea.
That would be ideal, but sadly we have to settle for just the once.
I'm not saying that your suggestions don't have merit.
Particularly in the case of sociopaths because, as I understand it, they lack empathy for the sufferings of others. This means that the only to bring home to them the suffering of their victim is to make them suffer something similar.
I just don't think you're going to get it past the civil libertarians.
Actually, it is, at least to the extent that we can vary the length of prison sentences according to the nature of the offence.
Which, of course, is what we do.
Actually, it's the whole current system of trial-by-jury that's the problem.
That's your choice.
But the fact is that no punishment ever undoes the original offence. Maybe we should give up the idea of imprisonment as well as the death penalty altogether.
It's a nice one-liner but it doesn't make a lot of sense if you think about it.
If you want to be really picky, you could point out that there would always be one person left at the end who could see.
Less picky, but more to the point, is that turning the other cheek - or eye - would leave the Good Guys blind and the Bad Guys seeing.
Spedding, "If you truly believe in a deterministic universe then, to be consistent, you should be arguing that we abandon the justice system altogether."
I forget the technical term for this type of fallacy, but there is no causal relationship between first part and the second.
"If we are not responsible for our actions then there can be no crime and no guilt."
Again, the same fallacy that I mentioned. If by guilt, you mean "did the accused do it or not", that has nothing to do with "responsibility" in your moral sense. A crime is simply a violation of the law which also has nothing to do your moral implications.
I rather like Barron's definition from Answers: "A wrong that the government has determined is injurious to the public and that may therefore be prosecuted in a criminal proceeding."
"A person commits murder because that is what they were predestined to do and the victim's death was equally predestined.
To be more specfific, if you were the victim of a crime and the perpetrator were caught, would you tell the prosecution not to proceed against him because he had no choice but to do what he did?"
It is boring to respond to such muddled thinking. As I may have previously said, society creates some rules(I am using simple general vocabulary for brevity, so please don't quibble about exact nuances.)to enable people to live in a group. Some things have been found to be, or are considered to be, harmful to collective living and are penalized.
Naturally there is range of severity of the penalties. But what is penalized is the person's behavior, not their "choice". "Guilt", as I said, only means something in the sense of being the real perpetrator.
Over time, our rules, aka laws, have become quite sophisticated and differentiated. There are all sorts of descriptions of degrees of "responsiblity" or "culpability". But most of the vocabulary has been handed down for ages and there is necessarily some ambiguity in terms that can be used either in a moral sense or in a factual sense.
So there is no problem for me in seeing perpetrators penalized and in having degrees of punishment. These things appear to be necessary to collective living. By punishing society is trying to correct its earlier failure to create acceptable behavior by the perpetrator.
Still, excessive punishment is not desirable and can even be counter-productive. The death penalty is undesirable, not for moral considerations, but practical ones. It is the dangerous thin edge of the wedge of excessive repression. Just where does one draw the line between a capital crime and others? Just be reading blogs on the subject, you can see that supporters of it have very different opinions of which actions, or crimes, should be included.
In the past, people were executed for things like blasphemy, and still can be in some muslim countries. The safest solution for society is abolition, both to prevent irreversible errors and to prevent expansion of the penalty for political purposes.
PS: See how long it takes to respond to confused thinking, in this case only four or five sentences.
It's a small part of the idea, it seems to me.
So you agree: proportionate retribution is in many cases not possible.
This is still a logical fallacy. Firstly, it assumes that no therapy or healing is possible for such illnesses. Secondly, it assumes the criminal will assume to get caught the next time; if he's wacky enough, he won't assume anything, period. Thirdly, it assumes the criminal understands what he has done and understands that his punishment is similar. What if he believes his victim is somehow inferior to him? (He doesn't need to believe he's Superman -- it's enough if he's a misogynist, for example.)
Nope. Sociopaths belong into a hospital, not a prison.
Fine, but this widening of "proportionate" does not make the death penalty comparable...
I am not talking about the United States. I am talking about the world as a whole. The jury system is largely unique to the USA. Elsewhere it's trial by judge for the most part -- and the judges are not elected. (I remember seeing the US elections of 2004 on TV: there was a poster by a "REPUBLICAN FOR JUDGE". I could barely believe my eyes: the poster implied "vote for me, because I will not be impartial!" Small wonder that AFAIK no other country elects its judges.) Judges sent by a bureaucracy still make mistakes. As long as they can make mistakes, we must not use any punishments that are not even partially reversible.
Maybe we should give up the idea of imprisonment as well as the death penalty altogether.
I'm not quite happy with imprisonment, but I don't have a better idea. The fundamental difference is as follows: if you wrongly sentence someone to jail, you can leave them out when the mistake becomes apparent and give them money for a restart in life. If you wrongly sentence someone to death, all is too late and infinitely too little.
But look at India. Gandhi did nothing but turning the other cheek. Look at India. Gandhi won -- India is independent.
Why do the "we must be evil because the evil guys are evil too" folks always overlook the obvious examples?!?
I think they are afraid... more afraid than they need to be.
Ignorance produces fear, and fear produces conservativism...
Robin Levett wrote:
I hope your discussions with John, when he visited, enabled you to shore up your position...
I don't know where you got that impression. The scenario I described was simply an illustration of the type of murder for which the death penalty is, in my opinion, the only adequate response. As I'm sure you're aware there are many real-life examples of such crime. John probably remembers a particularly nasty case in Australia where a nurse was abducted by a group of men who brutally raped and murdered her.
I agree that what I described is an extreme example but that doesn't mean they don't happen or that we, as a society, don't have to find some way of punishing the sort of person who commits such terrible acts.
I have no quarrel with the statistics, but you seem to be implying that such crimes are somehow less serious, little more than the unfortunate outcome of domestic squabbles.
But not all murders of women by current or ex-partners are as innocuous as that:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/beds/bucks/herts/4121145.stm
And, as if that were not bad enough:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/beds/bucks/herts/4721145.stm
In face of a crime like that, I find such a comment breathtaking.
Setting aside for the moment the fact that a lawful execution is not murder by definition, how can you possibly defend the sentence handed down in this case?
From what I have read, guidelines require that sentences take into account effects such as deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and retribution.
So what do we have here?
If, as is claimed, the death penalty has no significant deterrent effect then how can a sentence of just 12 years possibly have any deterrent effect at all?
The killer here was clearly obsessed with the victim. Do we have any reason to think that such a personality trait will be limited to just one woman? If not, then why is he only being 'incapacitated' for 12 years? What reason is there to believe that after 12 years it will be safe to return him to society?
As for rehabilitation, why should such a person be rehabilitated at all, even assuming it is possible. The victim cannot be 'rehabilitated'. Why should he?
And, as far as I am concerned, anyone who thinks that 12 years imprisonment is adequate or proportionate retribution for the offence committed, plainly needs their head examined and is certainly not competent to sit on the bench.
In my view, such an outrageously lenient sentence is utterly indefensible and is, as I have written many times before, a deeply offensive betrayal of the duty of justice society bears to the victim.
I haven't forgotten that at all, but, for such an approach to work, society must have confidence that a system of state justice will be an effective means of redress on their behalf, that it will not confuse leniency with fairness, that it will not flinch from what, to the more faint-hearted among us, might be seen as harsh measures where they are the only proportionate response.
If it ever loses that confidence then there is the danger that, rightly or wrongly, people will take matters into their own hands.
bernarda wrote:
If the universe is truly deterministic then all our actions have already been determined. We have no free will and, hence, no responsibility for those actions. If offenders are not responsible for their actions then they cannot be held guilty. A justice system is therefore simply irrelevant.
Yes, a crime is a violation of a law. But laws exist to regulate human behaviour. They assume that people are able to make choices about what course of action they might follow and prescribe which one they should follow.
If our lives are pre-destined, we have no choice about what we do and human laws - and our justice system - are irrelevant.
We punish offenders because we assume they knew the difference between right and wrong and could have chosen to do otherwise.
For me, the death penalty is the most extreme punishment available and, based on the principle of proportionate retribution, should be reserved for the worst offence, namely, that of murder.
David MarjanoviÄ wrote:
'Proportionate' does not mean the same as 'identical'.
Sociopaths know the difference between right and wrong. They know that what they do is illegal but are simply not inhibited by that knowledge. That means they can be held responsible for their actions before the law.
The UK has trial-by-jury but judges are appointed rather than elected. I have to agree that I find the idea of elected judges a little odd.
I think it is possible to distinguish between cases where the evidence of guilt is overwhelming and those where the evidence is less certain. Where there is even the slightest doubt then by all means be cautious.
You are saying that there are no cases where the evidence of guilt is overwhelming?
Gandhi himself admitted that his strategy only worked because the British administration of the time was - relatively - benign. If he had tried it against a regime like the Nazis it's unlikely he would have lived long.
Why do opponents of the death penalty seem to forget - or care little about - the fact that there is a victim who suffered a violent death somewhere to whom we owe justice?
I wrote
Ian and I have gone around this particular buoy on a number of occasions in another forum (and I agree with John's position in pretty much all significant respects), but...
Ian Spedding wrote
I hope your discussions with John, when he visited, enabled you to shore up your position...
Oddly enough, we didn't discuss it - I'm not obsessed by killing people, and I presume John isn't either.
I wrote
Ian, you have a romantic notion about people; they are either irredeemably evil monsters, or innocents.
Ian wrote
I don't know where you got that impression. The scenario I described was simply an illustration of the type of murder for which the death penalty is, in my opinion, the only adequate response. As I'm sure you're aware there are many real-life examples of such crime. John probably remembers a particularly nasty case in Australia where a nurse was abducted by a group of men who brutally raped and murdered her.
Very simply, the fact that the only examples you seem to choose are such cases.
I wrote
You are wrong; the reality of murder (in the UK, with no capital punishment and a low murder rate) is very much not the scenario pictured above.
Ian wrote>
I agree that what I described is an extreme example but that doesn't mean they don't happen or that we, as a society, don't have to find some way of punishing the sort of person who commits such terrible acts.
The only examples you choose are extreme examples.
And we don't punish the person - we punish the crime.
I wrote
The typical UK murder (35%) is domestic; killing within the family, or by a current or ex-partner. Nearly half of all female murder victims are killed by a current or ex-partner.
Ian wrote
I have no quarrel with the statistics, but you seem to be implying that such crimes are somehow less serious, little more than the unfortunate outcome of domestic squabbles.
No, Ian - I am pointing out that there are many different situations in which murder is committed, and to focus on the romantic image, as you do, seriously distorts the argument. If you argue that all murders are equivalent, why not select, say, Tony Martin's case?
Ian wrote
But not all murders of women by current or ex-partners are as innocuous as that:
Killer stalker's longer sentence
Snipped BBC report of Griffiths' case.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/beds/bucks/herts/4121145.stm
And, as if that were not bad enough:
Killer stalker's prison term cut
(Snipped inadequate report of the Court of Appeal decision)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/beds/bucks/herts/4721145.stm
I wrote
Your dream of murder for murder would, to put it mildly, not help.
Ian wrote
In face of a crime like that, I find such a comment breathtaking.
Tell me why you say "a crime like that". What features are you referring to?
Ian wrote
Setting aside for the moment the fact that a lawful execution is not murder by definition, how can you possibly defend the sentence handed down in this case?
From what I have read, guidelines require that sentences take into account effects such as deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and retribution.
So what do we have here?
If, as is claimed, the death penalty has no significant deterrent effect then how can a sentence of just 12 years possibly have any deterrent effect at all?
But who has been sentenced to just 12 years? Not Stephen Griffiths.
Ian wrote
The killer here was clearly obsessed with the victim. Do we have any reason to think that such a personality trait will be limited to just one woman? If not, then why is he only being 'incapacitated' for 12 years? What reason is there to believe that after 12 years it will be safe to return him to society?
None - but explain to me what will happen if he is not safe to return to society after he has served the minimum tariff. I'm interested in quite how much you know whereof you speak.
Ian wrote
As for rehabilitation, why should such a person be rehabilitated at all, even assuming it is possible. The victim cannot be 'rehabilitated'. Why should he?
Breathtaking.
Ian wrote
And, as far as I am concerned, anyone who thinks that 12 years imprisonment is adequate or proportionate retribution for the offence committed, plainly needs their head examined and is certainly not competent to sit on the bench.
It's a good job nobody did think that, isn't it?
Ian wrote
In my view, such an outrageously lenient sentence is utterly indefensible and is, as I have written many times before, a deeply offensive betrayal of the duty of justice society bears to the victim.
And you've been wrong every time you've written that particular piece of emotive claptrap. Society never owes anyone the life of another human being. Ever. Justice != vengeance, and capital punishment can only be justified on the basis of vengeance.
I wrote
You forget that the King's Courts' jurisdiction over criminal law arose for one reason and one reason alone - because the obsession with vengeance that your own arguments exhibit was and is profoundly societally destabilising.
Ian wrote
I haven't forgotten that at all, but, for such an approach to work, society must have confidence that a system of state justice will be an effective means of redress on their behalf, that it will not confuse leniency with fairness, that it will not flinch from what, to the more faint-hearted among us, might be seen as harsh measures where they are the only proportionate response.
If it ever loses that confidence then there is the danger that, rightly or wrongly, people will take matters into their own hands.
Then perhaps it would be as well if people didn't post uninformed comment distorting the facts of cases so as to weaken that confidence?
More generally; capital punishment is vengence. Blood feuds are destabilising, whether they result from individuals or societies doing the killing; the victims of the vengeance make little distinction.
My apologies for the delay in replying but I'm away from my home computer for a couple of weeks so my Internet access wil be limited.
Robin Levett wrote:
A legalistic quibble. The sentence may be given for the offence but it is the offender who suffers the punishment.
If you think a couple of years either way before he becomes eligible to be considered for release on license by the Parole Board makes the slightest difference to my argument, you haven't been paying attention.
If Grifiths behaves himself in prison and makes the appropriate expressions of remorse, he could be out when he's in his mid-fifties. Considerations of growing prison overcrowding won't harm his case either. He will be free, provided he abides by the terms of his parole, to rebuild some sort of life, which is a lot more than his victim - stabbed 16 times according to one report - will be able to do.
Hardly a quibble; your comment to which I replied referred to punishing the kind of people who commit the crime - by which logic all bets are off as to the setnence that, say, Pol Pot should receive for a parking offence.
I do think that the fact that you were ignorant of the facts of this case, yet thought it appropriate to rely upon it, is pretty significant. It's not as if the judgment is hidden away.
I also asked why you don't rely upon the facts of cases such as Tony Martin's when arguing for the judicial killing of murderers. Are you even aware of the link between that case and this one?
No. Learn more about the system than appears in the Express or Mail.
You actively object to Griffith putting something back into society? I thought you claimed to be an advocate of restorative justice (although I appreciate that you have in the past confused that concept with simple vendetta).