I had to switch off after ten minutes...
...it was all a bit too leftwing for me. Poor little murderers, nasty murdering state. What about the victims?
sharePoor little murderers, nasty murdering state. What about the victims? -- SiggieHolmes
Well, what about the victims? The victims can't feel any pain or outrage or anger over their murder, so the victims really don't come into this.
There are indirect victims, such as the victim's husband or wife, their siblings and so on. However, I cannot see why these people would suffer more than the indirect victims of industrial accidents and car crashes. This is crucial, because the element that distinguishes murder from manslaughter is intent, yet intent has no real consequences for the victims, whether direct or indirect.
Of course, life isn't as clear-cut as this. The CEOs of Union Carbide in Connecticut, who were ultimately responsible for the chemical plant at Bhopal in 1984, were doubtless aware that the plant was a danger to everyone who worked there, or even lived nearby, yet they did nothing to fix the situation. As a consequence of this poor maintenance, more than thirty tons of deadly gas and fluid chemicals leaked from the plant, killing between 5000 and 16,000 people, depending on whose figures you believe.
As with many cases of organic chemical contamination, the chemicals seeped into the ground and down to the water table, so it's probable that people are still dying as a consequence of the initial disaster.
Five years later, Union Carbide (US) were fined $470m, which they promptly paid to Union Carbide (India). Note that this fine amounts to at most $100,000 per death, which is a risible amount for avoidable, industrial manslaughter, and that none of the CEOs faced the death penalty.
Then we have the OJ Simpson case. Again, in the 1990s I read about a wealthy oil man, who was found by the police standing over the corpse of his wife, with the murder weapon in his hand. After a year, the man was release for "time served" and a $10m fine.
The very wealthy really can get away with murder.
From a moral point of view, these facts alone seem enough to make the death penalty unacceptable, as the very wealthy will rarely, if ever, be hanged/gassed/shot or electrocuted by the state.
Then there's the problem of what the state can do to ameliorate the pain they've inflicted on the indirect victims of people who have been executed and then exonerated by new evidence.
Also, what point does it serve? Some people say that it prevents killers escaping and murdering more people, but the number of people whose lives has been 'saved' in this way is tiny, compared even with the number who have been wrongly executed.
Then we have the despicable question of whether it's monetarily cheaper to execute the convicted, than it is to keep them in prison for life (LWOP). You can easily find the facts on the web yourself that show LWOP is substantially cheaper than an execution.
Evidently, there isn't a single, sound argument in favour of the death penalty (not even a deterrence effect!), so why are people so enthusiastic about it?
I think it boils down to that most basic and stupid of human instincts, namely revenge, or the Old Testament idea of "an eye for an eye." or the "he broke my toy car so I broke his" justification or "two wrongs make everything better."
The whole subject sickens me and I have no time for people who endorse executions, unless they have a shiney new argument for it. Given that the morality of State Executions has been debated for at least 2,000 years, I doubt that a new argument will appear.
it was all a bit too leftwing for me.. - SiggieHolmes.
Why is it that supporters of the "baby-murdering, pro-choice" political left almost always have to fight the GoP to ensure that adult human rights are upheld in the US, whereas the "lynch-em, go-vigilantes sure and swift" right want to murder anyone who looks suspicious? I'm not from the US - thank goodness - but didn't the Republican Party begin as anti-slavery whigs?
When did the Republicans lose their respect for ex utero human life?
Finally, what is intrinsically left- or right-wing about any of the arguments that I've described?
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"If you ain't a marine then you ain't *beep* share