Senate Death Penalty - General Discussion

Given the Colorado process, I'm surprised that this is actually the end of the jury's service here, as opposed to a few more phases to needlessly draw out this trial.

 

So Holmes gets spared and Tsarnev doesn't. The anti-Muslim bias is strong among Americans.

 

Well, we don't know how many jurors actually wanted to execute Holmes yet. All it takes is really one person in that jury room to deadlock things by not voting for death.

 

Or, people in Colorado are stupid.

 

Or, people in Massachusetts are stupid.

 

If the Boston Bombing had been a state case and not a federal one, Tsarnev wouldn't have gotten the death penality either as Massachusetts abolished its death penalty years ago. That's why Aaron Hernandez is sitting in prison for the rest of his life, since his case was a state case.

 

Ah, so the idiocy is at the Federal level. How comforting.

 

Federal courts tend to be harsher generally.

 

Which is absolutely missing the point. To quote a certain handsome devil.

 

Wouldn't want to be aligned with uncivilized darkies! How shameful.

 

At least someone is going to avoid being killed. The guy is clearly mentally ill. He ought to have been sentenced accordingly, but nobody seems to care about that anymore.

 

...

 

Isn't that the point of such a list? "Come on america you're so mostly white and civilized get your act together or you'll be on this list with all these nonwhites. "

 

Since when has Russia or Belarus been nonwhite?

And you're thinking of lists that are opinion based, not fact based.

 

Do we need to go into the history of whether Slavs were considered white?

 

That's probably straying too off topic.

 

I think he was talking of countries where human rights are constantly violated with joy and abandon.

 

Yeah, I actually didn't even think about colour at all. Although now I do, that list is really pretty short. So the majority of nonwhite majority countries don't have the death penalty. So really, keeping the death penalty, so yeah, "Come on america you're so mostly white and civilized get your act together or you'll be on this list with all these nonwhites. "

 

How can you not be ethically opposed to the death penalty?

The state has no right over your life.

The state does grant liberty (dear inevitable natural rights/Jeffersonian respondents, I'm going to stop you right there and say there's no such thing as God, fairies, Santa or natural rights so please return to reality. It missed you) which is why the state is empowered to deprive liberty (incarceration) in the event of a breach of the social contract by a citizen. The tradeoff we make with the state in agreeing to be governed by a particular set of laws is the understanding that the laws benefit us all and those who break those laws will be appropriately punished and rehabilitated back into society.

Since the state does not grant life - that is, no permission is sought prior to conception or birth, no laws restricting the conditions for pregnancy etc - it cannot take life (and should tell religious idiots to **** right off with their stupid objections to euthanasia). It's fundamentally unjust to pretend they can.

There is no ethical or moral justification for the death penalty. If you support it, it's because you are a deeply terrible human being deep down.

Tunes, I know you're not a bad person so i assume you meant to say "the death penalty is terrible"?

EDIT: @Vivec, there are also a significant number of predominantly non-white nations who do not execute and are on the list. Pointing to countries where the US has parity with the developing world - such as income inequality and capital punishment - is not done for racial reasons. It's to highlight that the US, a supposedly developed nation, acts like these other largely developing nations (Taiwan and Singapore, for example, are actually quite advanced in most regards including per capita income, health care but of course, SG has issues with a free press. Or lack thereof) where human rights are less enshrined in the legal framework.

If you're trying to make it racial, it might be worth noting that most of these human rights constructs are born out of Western liberal ideals so of course there's a Western-centric bias to the thinking. Pointing it out makes the whole discussion moot, so if that's the intent...

 

Well,he's not opposed to it ethically, he probably is opposed in practicality.

 

Yeah but that's what confuses me. It's fundamentally unethical. Tunes is actually fairly ethical (note, I mean in terms of civic ethics, not work ethics ) so I'm surprised that his objection is phrased this way.

 

Far be it for me to speak for tunes, but I'm thinking in a perfect world, where murder can be proved 100%, send them to the gallows. Not even proved really,it's just a fact. He's good with that. I think?

 

Oh I think that's probably a fair summation; how he's ok with it is what I'm trying to make sense of.

 

I guess it's a question of whether you are opposed to the death penalty simply because of the risk of executing an innocent person or whether you are opposed to the death penalty because the state shouldn't execute anybody.

 

I'm the latter. Because I hate brown people. According to Vivs.