Are you for - or against the death penalty?

[Isaiah 63:1]

As a rule, I am against it. But if someone does something heinous, and deliberate, and the evidence is clear (confession, DNA), I'm not going to lose any sleep over the outcome.

This is basically my position too, which is interesting given how far apart on the political spectrum @Its On A Slab and I are. If anything, I may be a little more absolutist than Slab is.

I don't see sufficient evidence that the death penalty deters many people. For example, those who commit the highest proportion of murders relative to their population - young black male gang members - expect (rationally) to live longer on death row if convicted than they might on the streets. As for others, given the relative frequency of mass shootings - from which the perpetrator rarely could have expected to escape unnoticed - again, it does not appear the penalty deters them. If one lacks the intrinsic whatever-it-is that prevents most of us from killing someone in cold blood, I'm not sure there is much any extrinsic penalty can do to compensate.

So if capital punishment isn't a deterrent, what purpose can it serve? Slab's adjectives - "something heinous and deliberate" - seem like the right ones, but what are they modifying? To me (and this is in keeping with mainline Christian apologetics on the topic), it should be something that indicates the perpetrator's complete rejection of our society's framework, such that irrevocably severing him from society is appropriate. Non-exhaustive examples would be premeditated murder of:

• Police officer.
• Active duty military.
• Elected officials or high-level appointees (e.g., cabinet members; supreme court justices).
• Masses in a public setting. E.g., the surviving Bondi Beach shooter; Dylan Roof; Timothy McVeigh.
  • KSM? Not part of our society, so I'd keep him alive as an intelligence asset and day-laborer, letting God decide when to take him.
  • I'm not sure how many people constitute a "mass."
  • I say "in a public setting" because I would not apply it to a serial killer unless he met one of the other criteria.

That's my position. I realize other reasonable ones exist.

 

[Its On A Slab]

This is basically my position too, which is interesting given how far apart on the political spectrum @Its On A Slab and I are. If anything, I may be a little more absolutist than Slab is.

I don't see sufficient evidence that the death penalty deters many people. For example, those who commit the highest proportion of murders relative to their population - young black male gang members - expect (rationally) to live longer on death row if convicted than they might on the streets. As for others, given the relative frequency of mass shootings - from which the perpetrator rarely could have expected to escape unnoticed - again, it does not appear the penalty deters them. If one lacks the intrinsic whatever-it-is that prevents most of us from killing someone in cold blood, I'm not sure there is much any extrinsic penalty can do to compensate.

So if capital punishment isn't a deterrent, what purpose can it serve? Slab's adjectives - "something heinous and deliberate" - seem like the right ones, but what are they modifying? To me (and this is in keeping with mainline Christian apologetics on the topic), it should be something that indicates the perpetrator's complete rejection of our society's framework, such that irrevocably severing him from society is appropriate. Non-exhaustive examples would be premeditated murder of:

• Police officer.
• Active duty military.
• Elected officials or high-level appointees (e.g., cabinet members; supreme court justices).
• Masses in a public setting. E.g., the surviving Bondi Beach shooter; Dylan Roof; Timothy McVeigh.
  • KSM? Not part of our society, so I'd keep him alive as an intelligence asset and day-laborer, letting God decide when to take him.
  • I'm not sure how many people constitute a "mass."
  • I say "in a public setting" because I would not apply it to a serial killer unless he met one of the other criteria.

That's my position. I realize other reasonable ones exist.

This just goes to show you: We aren't that far apart. I remember years ago, we did a hypothetical party platform and we were all suprised at how much we agreed upon.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

This just goes to show you: We aren't that far apart. I remember years ago, we did a hypothetical party platform and we were all suprised at how much we agreed upon.

Yeah, I've said previously there's probably an overlap of about 65% with the Tidefans posters when we set aside the online posting and just sit down talking together drinking scotch (or your beverage of choice).

One thing I look back about now to my "knew everything youth" is when I realize that while a number of candidates - most notably Michael Dukakis, who was the Democrat in the first election I voted - struck fear in me as to what they would do, even looking at what those I feared actually did when they took office (from Clinton to Dubya to Biden) - were not really all that bad even when I disagreed (with the notable horrible exception of Operation Iraqi Freedom, which never should have been contemplated).

When I lived up by Boston, I used to have this fantasy of meeting Dukakis out on the street (he does go out still in his 90s) and telling him, "You know, I don't regret voting for Bush before or after, but I will admit that we could use some more people in public life like you, much better than a number of the scandal ridden 'leaders' we've seen.


I'll even say this, which will make @92tide faint:

Bill Clinton from about June 1995 (when he had the summit meeting with Gingrich and the voters) until January 1998 (when the Lewinsky story broke) was a pretty good decent centrist President. Dick Morris (before he went crazy) used to say that that was the "real Clinton." Bill lost me in his first six months when he managed to break all but two promises he made - and the two he (sorta) kept were regarding abortion and gays in the military while violating every other pledge he'd made.