the death penalty
 

their are many sides to this issuse.

personally i think the death penalty should expanded to a much larger base of crimes.

anything that endangers a persons life or succeeds in ending a life.

expanded list would include
drunk driving
spose abuse
drug dealing
sales of illegal weaponary
etc etc

thoughts?

I'm glad you're not on the Supreme Court, then.

Capital Punishment should be, if anything, a last resort. Drug dealing? Are you serious? Of all cases, that one sticks out to me as the biggest sore thumb--that is, instead of addressing any root problem, you think we should just kill the people that are a byproduct of said problem?

Save for those on violent rampages, execution really only serves as petty revenge for a crime or tragedy that can not be undone.

The major difficulty here is determining who's a dangerous offender, and who's a normal person in an extraordinary situation. One of my favorite actors, Charles Dutton, spent eight years in prison for stabbing another teenager to death when he was young. That's not a situation where, I think, the death penalty would be applied properly, given that he was a young person, involved in a heated argument involving his girlfriend, where thinking straight might not be really possible.
However, there's some career criminals who, really, need to be killed. I mean, at nearly $50,000 per year PER PRISONER maintenance costs, they are an UNBELIEVABLE drain on government funds (so it serves another purpose than petty revenge) Some of my good friends have, at various times, sold weed and robbed gas stations when no other opportunity presented itself, and neither they nor I have moral qualms about it, especially at the time, since a) to sell weed, people have to VOLUNTARILY buy it, and b) gas station employees are under orders not to resist. And before I get jumped on, I am not advocating either selling minor drugs, or robbing gas stations, and I am obviously NOT including people who rob gas stations, and then shoot the clerk. Just no.

However, to quote another example from my area... if a man has more than seven firearms offenses, has been arrested five times for violence, once for assaulting a police officer, and about a dozen Drunk in Publics... yeah, maybe he needs a bit of help, but if the help doesn't work, maybe he needs a little bit of high-voltage behavior modification, followed by a custom-fit wooden suit and placed in a low-light environment from now, until the end of time.

Well, my view on the death penalty is not a popular one, and probbly won't be met well here either.

I understand reincarnation to be a fact. I understand karma to be a fact. Thus, if a person kills someone else, it is a natural law as much as any other physics law that said person must be murdered in return. If it does not happen in this life, they will be punished for it in another. Thus it is actually the duty of the ruler to make sure one who kills is killed in return - this abates the karmic "debt," and if the ruler is lax on this, they also must suffer in some way due to not making sure justice is held in their area of rule.

Thus, the death penalty I feel should be mandatory for one who intentionally kills another. It is actually a graceful action, as it removes one from the suffering of having to be murdered in the next life.

The tricky part to this comes in when we speak of manslaughter, or people who do not understand what they have done. As for accidents, I would have to study some more and come to a better conclusion, so I have no comment on that right now. For one not understanding, however, I would maintain that the death penalty should be upheld. It may seem cruel, but even without the understanding - they performed the action, and so the reaction will come to them. Just like a child may not understand that fire will burn, but the fire does not hold it's heat away when the child touches it - it will burn whether the knowledge is there or not. Better to have the reaction returned now instead of in the future.

The "eye for an eye" laws should be reinforced because well its the only fair way to do things unless done by accedent allthough hard to just most times impossible and since almost nobody has any honour then we can't jsut ask them for the truth. If everybody had honour and accepted responsiblity for there actions the world would be a better place and we wouldent need complex law systems.

i also beleive no one should sit on death row for longer than 90 days.

if your lawyer can't get you off in 90 days you need a new lawyer.

I refuse to sift through the logic of that post in its current form. I'd be happy to comment on your argument if you'd take a few minutes to express them in easy-to-follow points. Really, I want to comment on this, but I can't find a way to.

Dasanudas: The purpose of government should not be to enforce moral law, since society cannot agree on what really is moral, or even if anything is moral. I personally 'know,' at least as much as you do about your beliefs, that reincarnation makes no sense to me. Society cannot function if we force our own personal beliefs on everyone else.

If you believe that the person will be murdered in their next life, let nature run its course. Is it evil for the person to be murdered in their next life? If not, why should it be stopped?

Also, another problem I have with your argument is that it seems like you're saying "Shit! He's gonna get killed for doing this! We better kill him first, before anyone else does!"

Marblehead Johnson: I agree that it is completely unfair to house prisoners on taxpayer dollars, but I don't believe that this means we have to widen the death penalty. Rather, allow them to earn that $50,000 by working in the prison. Noone has to support them if they support themselves.

In my opinon, justice should never be the precipitator to government punishment. Rather, the common good of the people and of that person is far more important than punishing that drug-dealer or wife-beater. Try to rehabilitate them, and if it's impossible, if it's their fault for their problems, remove them from society (kill them to keep the rest of the people safe). Punishing a murderer should only stem from two causes: dissuading future possible murderers from carrying it out, and, if it is possible and cost-efficient to remove the murderous part of that person's psyche, try to bring them back into society so they can be beneficial again.

I have a big problem here. The government's job is to serve as the guardien for the people. The government is the people grouping together to defend themselves. If this is possible, the people have to agree on a set moral law, otherwise somebody can say that their murder is justified. The society has to agree on a set moral law to function, and the government is there to enforce the law, and to protect the people. People in this case being it's citizens. I see where you are coming from, but if there is no moral law that the government makes it's decisions off of, then how do they make decisions? And if they government does not inforce moral law, than who does? I may be wrong, but it sounds like you're boosting anarchy here. Please correct me if I am false.
The next life functions as a new begginning (I think, help me out here Dasanudas). In this new begginning, they may be good. However, because they were not killed before, karma has them killed now, in their new life. Their new begginning, where they are good, is stopped. This is not fair, as they should have their full new good life. It is a precaution to kill them now.
If you accept reincarnation and karma as a fact, that makes sense. It's pretty much saying that one should kill them now, because their going to get killed sooner or later, so might as well get it over with. See above as well.

Great, almost forgot to add my own piece. The first attempt should be at rehabilitiation. If the person can;t be fixed to function in society, then they should get a choice of death penalty or jail life. If they want to die, why stop them from doing it? At that point, there is a low chance of them becoming functioning members of society. If they hate their life enough to want to die, why stop them? Other than, of course, giving them a little while to think it over. Other than that, let them sit in jail and see if they become better citizens. If they don't, at least have the jailers be beneficial to society in some way, as in do community service or the like. It gives them a function other than doing nothing and wasting tax dollars.

Excuse me if I call the argument a cop-out.

A Minarchist might disagree. The government should serve the purpose of, if anything, regulating on a large scale. It is not their job to make us pray nor is it really their right, in my opinion, to use that itchy trigger finger (in regards to execution and such).

Bit of a tangent, but if you believe that murderers will eventually be murdered themselves (in one life or another), then are you also not forced to believe that the amount of murder among humans is forced to continuously increase over time, or at best, remain constant?