You will notice this will be the second time I am hitting the direct reply button to you. This is because I am trying to be a bit more mature in all of my responses, and you seem to have calmed down a bit.
However this does not guarantee I will keep doing so. I asked you before to read my posts in their entirety before responding as what tends to happen is that you have a response to one sentence which is meaningless given my next sentence, though you have left an impression you believe my position hinges on the first sentence. That is more work for me than I need, and adds to the confusion in responding. Essentially it leaves me with a bunch of strawmen to deal with.
Unfortunately this has happened again. I will respond to your reply, but from now on please read my entire message first, and then respond to each actual point, rather than practically every sentence.
Irrelevant. Even if it were possible to make it perfectly humane, killing innocent people is never justifiable.
This is a non sequitor. I can think of justifications. But in any case this is a straw man. I am not arguing for the execution of innocent people at all.
Irrelevant. Since it cannot deter 100% of crime (since that would mean there is no crime), no matter how much crime it does prevent cannot justify killing innocent people.
I am admitting it deters essentially nil crimes. The reason for having executions, and indeed any retributive or eliminative sentences, is not to deter crime. In any case, I am not for the execution of innocent people at all so again, this is a straw man.
Bingo. And notice how you seem to ignore this.
It is this kind of stuff which does not help our debates. How am I supposed to answer an ad hominem, or insinuating non sequitor like this? The fact is I was addressing individual arguments in turn and in isolation and simply had not reached that argument yet. So you manage to turn my non-ignoring of the issue, into some sort of evidence I had been ignoring it all along. My answer to this issue, ends up negating its relevance to any of the previous arguments.
Because when you're dead, you can't appeal. When you're dead, you can't introduce new evidence. When you're dead, it's over and if we find out we made a mistake, we can't go back and correct it.
That is correct, but does not address my point. What this indicates is how to adjust a system that contains a death penalty, not that one should view a death penalty as incorrect or unjustifiable.
Yes, it does. There is a process involved in arrest and conviction. When you kill the person at the end, the process ends. If the person is still alive, the process can continue.
This still does not make the errors of the system reflect on any particular sentence. I'm sorry but this is a logical point. One really does have nothing to do with the other, unless there is absolutely no way to ensure that only the guilty end up getting executed.
But why are you so quick to jump to the end when there won't be any chance of backtracking if we found we made a mistake?
I am not quick to jump to the end. Neither do you have evidence to make this statement. The preventive measures I think should be in place regarding executions would generally eliminate the finding of "mistakes".
I am first and foremost for the reform of the entire justice system. It is currently extremely flawed, and that is with or without a death penalty. Part of that reform would be adjusting rules regarding the death sentence.
I have only said that I am for the death penalty, I did not say under the current rules of when it can be applied.
If we're going to execute people, we need to make certain that it never kills an innocent person ever. And since that is impossible, we can never institute a death penalty.
Not only is this entirely a non sequitor (as you have built it) it is patently false. It is
impossible to make certain it never kills an innocent person? You can't think of rules which could be in place to prevent that possibility? You cannot think of any case where guilt has been established 100%?
Of course not. But it's better than killing them.
So you dispute the common anti-death penalty position that life in prison is worse than killing them?
Huh? Are you saying that these innocent people are going to commit a crime later on so we might as well lock them up now? I do not understand the meaning of your sentence.
Sorry, that was bad sentence construction on my part. The sentence in question was part of an overall argument regarding the idea that a sentence can be blamed for the poor quality of the system it is used in. This was trying to to get at the notion that at least with life imprisonment we "keep their case in play". The question was of all the innocent people actually sentenced, how many of those cases are revealed to be mistakes. If not all, then we are accepting that innocent people get locked away.
Obviously you have already addressed this point in another sentence. You feel that it is do away with the entire justice system, or accept that innocent people should be punished, but always keep their cases open just in case. That is a valid position of course, but not one I hold, and in any case not one that rebuts my position.
Because that would mean society as we know it would go away. Anarchy isn't pretty.
To be pedantic, anarchy is not a problem, and could be quite pretty. When you go out into the country with a few friends (lets say the boundary waters of Minnesota) you enter into a state of true anarchy. It is chaos that would be a problem, and likely not very pretty.
The question of whether anarchy naturally dissolves into chaos is an open question.
I am also not sure why I should be concerned whether society as we know it must be preserved. Societies change over time. Unless you can show it would be worse, I am not seeing why this is necessarily bad.
But this is all getting off topic. I am only a utopian anarchist, feeling there are compelling reasons for instituting gov'ts and so don't want to get into a huge debate on anarchy.
I'm more interested in debating that if we form gov'ts and need to create protections for citizens within it, why executions are not appropriate under
any condition. And it seems to me an argument could be made that a society which imprisoned many innocent people could be much worse than a society that convicte few innocents, yet executed some accidentally now and then. Of course even that is not necessary with proper rules to avoid accidents.
Tell that to the 13 people in Illinois who are alive because they didn't get killed.
Again, what is the point of this insult? I fully supported
my governor's actions on halting executions in
my state, until its system could be revamped and cases rereviewed. It was something I was very glad about, especially knowing full well how shitty the Illinois justice system is. Indeed I am still not convinced the system is "good" enough to allow the resumption of executions.
Just because I am pro death penalty does not make me a blood thirsty idiot. Perhaps you should stop jumping to the end.
And one of those things that needs to be revamped is not jumping to the end. It isn't because there aren't people who are worthy of death. It's because there are people who aren't.
I am in full agreement. Now tell me why a revamp cannot construct a system where the death penalty is only allowed for 100% guilty people, or that we can never have a case of proving guilt 100%.
Yes, that's precisely it. That is the exact reason why the death penalty is always inappropriate. Since we cannot guarantee that everyone who is sentenced to death is actually deserving of death and since death stops the process, it is always inappropriate.
This time the mistake in what I was saying is on your end. Or maybe because it was in the form of a question it was harder to understand? Here it is again (in statement form)...
Just because we cannot know 100% guilt in 100% of the cases, does not in any way suggest that we cannot know 100% guilt in any of the cases. You are slamming a particular sentence as if it bears the burden for being misapplied. The fact is we can apply it appropriately and exclude cases where it might not.
I am defending executions, not the present systems (which differe state to state anyway) on how and when they can be applied.
Because there will always be somebody who didn't do it who got killed.
That is simply not true. You cannot think of a set of rules whereby an innocent person cannot be executed? All I have to say is just because you can't doesn't mean others cannot.
Even if it were perfectly clear that the death penalty was not an endorsement of killing others but simply the justifiable punishment for heinous crimes, killing innocent people is never justifiable.
Agreed, which is why this is a strawman. If you had nothing else to say about that point, I wish you had not used it as an excuse to repeat an argument for something else that you have already repeated several times before... made worse since it was a strawman in every other argument as well. There is a fallacy called ad nauseum, it is something you routinely use and I wish you would stop using it with me.
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
™ Version 4.2