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In the refusal to recognize another's right to life he has forfeited his own. I thought I made this clear.
You made this opinion clear, yes. It's simply not something I agree with, so I'm asking for the reasoning behind it. I mean... I think we can all acknowledge that it's not a statement like "the sky is blue" where we can all just look up and nod in agreement.
You say that the reason a burglar doesn't lose his right to property is because property is quantifiable, but by this reasoning, shouldn't that just mean that he loses the right to the amount of property he stole? I mean... if it's a quantifiable scenario, it should be easy to nail down an exact punishment. But life, which you define as unquantifiable, can't just be taken away and returned willy-nilly.
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haha funny, Although I believe there's an amendment to the constitution that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
True, but amendments can be changed. And if we really need for the punishment to fit the crime that badly...
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The issue is not so much the punishment fitting the crime in termes of eye for an eye, but rather to get proper justice not revenge.
In which case, why not simply punish the person as is needed to remove the threat from society? (i.e., life in prison.) Anything further certainly sounds to me like revenge at best. (And cruelty at worst.)
One more thought... just wanted to weigh in on the dicussion you're having with Crashfrog. You say that we can eliminate the risk of innocent death sentences with waiting periods and appeals. So I thought I'd just toss out a story about where I live.
A couple years back, the Governor of Illinois (at the time George Ryan) put a moritorium on the death penalty. The reason was that some law students (I believe at Northwestern, but might be mistaken) had done a school project involving DNA tests on death row inmates. Everyone tested had gone through all their appeals, a waiting period of at least a decade, and were due for execution that year.
They discovered that 13 innocent men were up on the chopping block.
The majority of the 13 men had been convicted, essentially, of being black in the wrong place at the wrong time.
No matter how efficient we get the system, we still can't get it perfect. Innocent people
will be convicted. If not due to the flaws in the system, then due to the prejudices of the jury.
Life in prison is reversable. If we send someone to jail, and later find out they're innocent, we can let them out. It's still a crappy situation, but at least we can do right by the person.
You can't reverse death. If you find out a person has been executed but is innocent, all you can do is shuffle your feet, look down, and say "yeah, our bad."
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