I am cautiously supportive primarily due to the chance of a parole board releasing (as they have done) people who will then repeat their terrible crimes on other innocent victims.  “Life in prison” should have no alternate meaning.

Locally a man who tortured and killed a young paper boy is periodically up for review of his life sentence and the family has to relive the whole, decades old nightmare.

The same is true of a friend whose wife was sexually attacked by a man who was on parole for a similar crime. She can never have children and I know my friend will kill him if he is ever released — he then would be serving a senound “life sentence” — one for the loss caused by the man and one for killing the son of a bitch.

Some people have NO redeming social value and are a threat to society as long as they live.

You make it quite clear that one good reason for a strong civil criminal justice system is to protect the accused from the rough hands of vigilante justice, WTH.

I don’t want to give you the idea that I’m soft on criminals, but I believe killing a killer is just a shitting useless empty and totally unsatisfactory compensation for the always horrific losses caused by the mindless self-interested and arrogant indifference for human life of any one of a whole lot of sons of bitches. 

Not a few of whom have been men of great wealth and power acting fully within the laws of the state. 

I rather do agree with you that there are those amongst our fellow human creatures, many who do exhibit some regular and repeated bottoming out on the social redemption scale.

But just because they have no redeeming value, doesn’t mean that while they are still alive they can never be persuaded to make the effort to acquire it. 

Even to the very last man.

Other-wise we are all, though it be in our individual persons the minutest proportion of culpability, qualitively no better than they.

Hi LB,

I was not talking about those simply “accused.” These two guys were convicted far beyond reasonable doubt.

Keeping them alive with ANY hope of release only maintains them as a danger to others. Wealth and power be damned — anyone like these should be eliminated (in a humane fashion) as we would do with any other animal.

I used to argue for life in prison, but am no longer so naive as to think there is such a thing.  I would settle for execution of those who were instrumental in the release of any prisoner who repeats such heinous behavior.

OK?  :-)

“I used to argue for life in prison, but am no longer so naive as to think there is such a thing.”

There is such a thing, WTH.

There are many of those convicted beyond a reasonable doubt who later turn out to be falsely accused.

I have to ask, does being so reflexively cynical really give your own life more meaning, or less?

I think if you were to actually get to know some of these ‘animals’ you are so anxious to ‘eliminate’, you’d find cynicism is something you have in common.

If you have read the above comments of LB and WTH, and have followed this debate at all in the last 20 years (at least) you realize quite quickly that this is a difficult argument. 

Arguments of this caliber don’t seem to offer much grey area since the examples often used in support of it or against tend to be so extreme.  This results in often times being forced into an extreme position, either you’re in favor of it or you are not. 

I am not in favor of death under any circumstances.  If a human being is deemed unfit for life within a society because of a terrible act against humanity, we cannot find justice by committing the same act ourselves.

LB and Rabo12,

My two cases were specific rather than generalizations. While some may remain inside for life my view of justice is to protect their vicitms and prevent further victimization by them.

Too many, like the ones I mentioned, are released due to people sympathizing with the perpetaror. I see a similar tendency on your part with your immediate response about those falsely accused.

These 2 guys were guilty without any doubt. There should be NO way for them to re-enter society. Death is final — better theirs than another innocent person.

I am not in favor of death under any circumstances.  If a human being is deemed unfit for life within a society because of a terrible act against humanity, we cannot find justice by committing the same act ourselves.

Rabo, sehr gut. Ich stimme zu.

I am ‘firmly opposed’ to a death penalty too. If a human being is deemed fit for life within a society because of a good act for humanity we can find justice by committing the same act ourselves.

David nice play on the sentence.  And good German too, I think.  I’m American just living in Europe.  Actually living in France so I’m not really sure why the German flag appeared.

Hi Rabo. I liked what you said so much it was only natural to echo it back to you. Thank you.

Don’t worry about the German flag. There is another guy named Frog who comments here at ITT and he is from France and sometimes he waves a French flag and sometimes a German flag. It’s globalization.

I believe (hope) my German was good too. It’s too late at night here to check with my Oma (grandmother), or my Dad, but that’s a good thing because when I try to speak German to either of them I get silence and I have to translate word for word and receive a word by word correction of my pronunciations and then the inevitable lectures on the differences between high and low German.

Bonsoir.

Dave I enjoyed your response as well.  It reminded me of a time when someone waiting in line at the movies uttered to his friend “I’ll wait for the tickets and you grab the drinks that way we can kill two birds with one stone.”  Suddenly a kind man turned and said “or you can feed those two birds with the same seed.”  I’ve been using that phrase ever since.  peace

Life in prison is hardly a kindness, WTH.

My view of justice is to ask, how did such a specific human being come to be a murderer?  With a view to minimizing such behavior in the future.

I tend to doubt the cause is a surfeit of sympathy in their lives.

There is little to be learned from killing them.

“Actually living in France so I’m not really sure why the German flag appeared.”

Oh, no, not again!
France is always among the first to go…Today ITT, tomorrow the world!

Nice one WTH hadn’t thought about what I said like that but at the moment, laughing out loud!  cheers!

David-agree with and have often mentioned the flaw in logic you mention and of course now new DNA techniques have proven we have executed/convicted quite a few innoscent men. But…

Our prisons are overcrowded, our medical system overwhelmed, our debt cycle continues. No one even has a theory about deal with the growing number of obstacles confronting us. Like explaining to India, China, and the rest of the ‘developing world’ our mutual environment won’t accommodate others to cross over the same tech bridge to the good life that we did.

We debate using the death penalty as if it were the ‘ultimate punishment.’ I would argue a life condemned to the confines of a high security prison with no hope of parole would be a far worse then a quick death. Timothy McVeigh clearly saw that, and he was let off far too easily. He would have had many years to think about what he had done in his unending solitude. Even if he never repented, would you truly prefer such a life to oblivion?

For starters I think we should deny any possibility of the death penalty for more heinous crimes, while making it available upon request for all others. We would probably end up executing far more people, while saving a fortune in the cost of incarceration and to society at large when prisoners are released. Please keep in mind we are not talking about an endangered species here, but one who’s increasing numbers/demands endangers most others including itself. Money spent keeping a terminally ill seventy five year old convict alive another year comes out of the same debt laden budget that saves children outside the prison walls.

Fact is, most of our inflated health care dollars go to extending that last year of life on an already overcrowded planet. Yet Oregon has to fend off endless court challenges to keep its doctor assisted suicide program, and Jack is still in jail. IMHO we need to rethink our whole concept of death versus the quality of the life on offer in this debate, and beyond. There was a time back in the good old days, some 4 billion or so years ago, when there was no death here. Single living cells just morphed into others. The introduction of the Sun’s ultraviolet rays penetrating the clearing atmospheric mist brought death to some cells, and the process of evolution began. Will devolution now replace it? Will the cities become our ‘concrete Galapagos’s?

LB — I know there is such a thing as life in prison and I don’t expect it to be pleasant. I am not “anxious to eliminate people”, but since there are no real guarantees of no parole and with the track record of some who have been I do not trust the life in prison idea anymore.

Frankly, LB, I don’t give a damn how these two got to that point — the chances of preventing another such monster are too slight to chance their release.

Rabo — I’ll admit there is NO gray area in an execution, that is my only reason for advocating it in cases like the ones I was writing about. Not as punishment, not as justice, not as a deterrent and not as community retribution — just assurance they will not ever be allowed a chance to do it again. And to eliminate the victims from the need to repeatedly testify in order to keep them locked away.

In the first case (my friend’s wife) the guy out on parole “raped” her with a screwdriver, she nearly bled to death and could have no children. The other guy held a paperboy captive and hanging from a beam while he tortured him to death.

They’ll get no sympathy or understanding from me.

Recursive Prophet, I don’t think the answers to crimes and illness is more prisons or more doctors. Instead of building more prisons our focus should be creating fewer criminals. Rather than more doctors we need less sickness. And no executions and executioners.

But your suggestion to deny any possibility of the death penalty for more heinous crimes, while making it available upon request for all others is interesting. A ‘voluntary death penalty’. But it should be offered to all criminals. To deny the most heinous the right to die wouldn’t be right.

David,

I’ll say this much for your point of view — if I should ever, for any reason, be on trial I like 12 people and a judge just like you. I will be able to confess to cleanse my soul and still be home in time for dinner.

On the other hand, if anyone is trying to break into my house, attack my wife or kick my cat — I’ll take care of it myself.  :-)

Thanks Heck, you honor me.

Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.

Which brings me to a favorite story of mine. I shared this story not too long ago on the Godless Fundamentalist thread but it is very appropriate for this discusssion so I happily share it again.

(There is a more familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine has told me of other rabbis that faced the same situation. This is their story.)

A great rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife’s adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death.

The rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears, and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. “Is there anyone here” he says to them “who has not desired another man’s wife, another woman’s husband?”

They murmur and say “We all know the desire. But, Rabbi, none of us has acted upon it.”

The rabbi says, “Then kneel down and give thanks that God made you strong.” He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, “Tell the lord magistrate who saved his mistress. Then he’ll know I am his loyal servant.”

So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.

Another rabbi, another city. He goes to her and stops the mob, as in the other story, and says, “Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.”

The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. Someday they think, I may be like this woman, and I wil hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated.

As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the ground , the rabbi pcks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman’s head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It crushes her skull and dashes her brains on the cobblestones.

“Nor am I without sin,“he says to the peope. “but if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead, and our city with it.”

So the woman dies because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.

The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die.

Only one rabbi dared expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation.

So, of course, we killed him.

—San Angelo, Letters to an Incipient Heretic

Adapted and excerpted from Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

For the more familiar version of this story see John 8: 1 - 11.

Angulimala

David,

How about this one — same story, different ending.

...and he turned to the crowd, saying, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Just then a someone stepped foward and threw a perfect strike to the woman’s temple and she slumped to the ground.

“Ooooh, how many times do I have to tell you? Not everything I say should be taken literally, Mom.”

Funny, WTH.

Bloody-minded, but funny.

Of course, it still leaves you less than morally entitled to kill the killers.  Unless you are making claims of moral perfection in both thought and deed?

Above, you seem to think that your willingness to confess to your hypothetical crimes would leave you immune to legal sanction in the event of a jury trial (‘home in time for dinner’).  Without considering the incomprehensible assumption that a guilty plea and throwing oneself on the mercy of the court has ever been a protection against legal sanction, how do you square that optimistic faith with the objective reality of the Innocence Project?  Or were you merely being presumptively and unjustly sarcastic about David’s religious faith?   

“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

——Mohandas K. Gandhi

What weight should one attach to your opinions, WTH, given that they are predicated on moral blindness and the willful perseverance of unmitigated and indifferent ignorance for the mere sake of vengeful reaction?

LB,

Wow! I certainly don’t want you on my jury :-)
———————————& ————

In case you’ve forgotten my initial comment: “I am cautiously supportive primarily due to the chance of a parole board releasing (as they have done) people who will then repeat their terrible crimes on other innocent victims.  “Life in prison” should have no alternate meaning.”

Also:  “...my only reason for advocating it ...just assurance they (the perps) will not ever be allowed a chance to do it again. And to eliminate the victims from the need to repeatedly testify in order to keep them locked away.”

I’m speaking about real-life, specific cases and about any other cases where release may allow a repeat performance.
———————————<

“... you seem to think that your willingness to confess to your hypothetical crimes would leave you immune to legal sanction…”

That was a facetious reference to what might happen if all jurors were as lenient as David — nothing more.
———————————<

“What weight should one attach to your opinions, WTH, given that they are predicated on moral blindness and the willful perseverance of unmitigated and indifferent ignorance for the mere sake of vengeful reaction?”

Once again you are reading into my comments generalizations I am not advocating and ignoring my specific statements to the reverse
. “... there is NO gray area in an execution, that is my only reason for advocating it in cases like the ones I was writing about. Not as punishment, not as justice, not as a deterrent and not as community retribution…”
———————————- -

“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”
——Mohandas K. Gandhi
Obviously I am not Gandhi, but the original Old Testament Bible reference to “an eye for an eye” was meant to limit an award for a perceived offense to no more than the actual damage committed.  As opposed, for example, to what the Nazi’s often did — one Nazi killed = ten partisans or other random civilians.

I believe, what Gandhi is saying is similar to the Old testament Bible. As a lawyer he must have had some idea that law was needed to avoid anarchy, though I’m sure he was a pacifist at his core.
——————————-

IMO the main purpose of any society is to benefit its members and protection should be one of the primary benefits. To give equal protection to even those proven to be the most evil members at the expense of the innocent will eventually destroy the whole society by it resorting to self defense — the most basic instinct.

Notice these limiting adjectives: main, equal, evil, innocent

Good final post WTH, but doubt it will give a ‘reprieve’ to this topic. Care to define a few of those limiting adjectives? ‘Lewd did I live, evil I did dwel?’ Language is so ambiguous. Ask Ludwig. Where are the digital Babel fish when we need them? We are all on the death row, but bet many would rather bail. While we discuss it, the lifeboat is sinking. Easy to maintain denial of problems that defy solution with flights of fancy. Life is a zero sum game, and even the winners won’t get out alive. -arpie

Pardon me, WTH,

I don’t understand.  Is killing those who commit murder going to restore the lives of those who were murdered? 

My understanding of equal protection means the accused receive a fair trial. You know, fair legal representation, habeas corpus, the right to confront one’s accusers, protection of the fairly adjudicated from cruel and unusual punishment and such.  Are you saying something different? 

I ask because you seem quite willing to interpret the meaning of Gandhi and the Old Testament to fit your arguments rather than trying to understand their intended meanings, so far as to suggest they are both saying the same thing.  Very curious bit of sophistry, that.

What I understand of Gandhi’s entire life’s work and his embrace of the idea of ‘ahimsa’, or restraint from harmfulness in thought, word and deed, is that returning cruelty with cruelty only ensures the persistence of cruelty. 

To think that justice means returning cruelty for cruelty in proportionate measure, as the Old Testament requires as the covenant of law, does not in my mind constitute an understanding of either justice or self-defence, but as the scripture itself says, revenge, as in “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord”.

I believe that the death penalty is irreducibly cruel, no matter how dispassionately it may be enacted.  Such dispassionate cruelty cannot be easily associated with innocence.  To believe we, as a people or as individuals, can give up our innocence and simultaneously preserve or protect innocence is absurd.

Is inflicting the irreversable finality of death on another merely to hypothetically relieve some perceived emotional discomfort at the thought of the other’s continued existence, or to avoid some transitory emotional unpleasantness and inconvenience in giving testimony in order to maintain said evil-doer’s continued imprisonment on the hypothetical supposition that said evil-doer might do some further evil, really serve justice?  I understand your practical concern that recidivism rates are high, and with that as a given I am willing to countenance, provisionally, the idea of life imprisonment, but does that relieve us of the need to improve our criminal justice system?

I’m of the opinion that the main cause of recidivism among ex-convicts has more to do with the unmitigated horrors of our prison system than any intrinsic evil in their characters.  We are, each and every one of us, molded by experience.  If you want to reduce the evil in the hearts of men it would be more effective to not reinforce it with cruel treatment, don’t you think?

You are quite naive if you believe that pacifism means abrogating self-defence, but you are right to think I might not be your most empathising juror, if say, you were pleading self-defence after emptying your weapon into the brain of your already dis-abled attacker.

LB,

“I don’t understand.  Is killing those who commit murder going to restore the lives of those who were murdered?”

LB, are you just trying to be obtuse? I think you’re brighter than that.

If not, then it’s not that you don’t understand — you just insist on putting your frustration with the fact we have a death penalty on my head.

You asked, “Is killing those who commit murder going to restore the lives of those who were murdered?” Have I ever said so? NO! I have repeatedly and clearly stated what my concerns are.

I guess if you are serious in your defense of the perpetrators, then apparently you think it is better to let them do what they did to the people in my examples — (As I said the one was on parole.) You prefer to let the poor misunderstood, mistreated bastards out one more time so they can maim and kill some more.

Frankly the “why” of his recidivism by the guy who attacked my friend’s wife doesn’t matter much to me and it sure as hell doesn’t cut any ice with her.
These two got a fair trial, “...fair legal representation, habeas corpus, the right to confront one’s accusers, protection of the fairly adjudicated from cruel and unusual punishment and such.” the whole bit — but they still come up for parole hearings — I guess you can be very happy with that.

You go ahead and worry about the effects of our criminal justice system on these two bastards — I just want them eliminated as a threat, for sure, once and for all time.

So, WTH,

You are just venting your feelings of impotence and rage about a particular situation of which you personally have experience, at least by association.  It’s all about your own desire for private revenge.  No principled reason for it at all.

Thanks.  I now understand.

LB,

“It’s all about your own desire for private revenge.”

I apologize — since your comments have been posted in English, I assumed you could read English and comprehend English.

“… there is NO gray area in an execution, that is my only reason for advocating it in cases like the ones I was writing about. Not as punishment, not as justice, not as a deterrent and not as community retribution…”
“IMO the main purpose of any society is to benefit its members and protection should be one of the primary benefits. To give equal protection to even those proven to be the most evil members at the expense of the innocent will eventually destroy the whole society by it resorting to self defense — the most basic instinct.
Notice these limiting adjectives: main, equal, evil, innocent”

If that makes it “private revenge” in your opinion — OK.

If you can make no distinction between attacker and attacked — that’s too bad.

If you just want a scapegoat — baaa!

No further comment is warranted.

Could you be more unintelligible, WTH?

I know you’re writing in English.  Making sense out of it is another thing.

Do you not know what a rhetorical question is?  The fact you repeat it (twice!) and feel compelled to answer it, and thereby ignoring the substantive body of my comment, is compelling evidence you have a slippery intellectual grasp on the subject.

Do you have any reason to believe from what I’ve written that I am unable to make the distinction between attacker and attacked?  I am not defending criminals or their crimes.  I’m not advocating parole for murderers.  I am defending humane treatment of prisoners for all of our sakes.  For the sake of moral clarity.  To bring an end to the ancient cycle of hatred and violence.  I’m not surprized you either don’t understand or purposely fail to recognize that, because to do so would put your bloody-mindedness in the amoral light which it deserves.  So you resort to ad hominem strawman arguments.  Weak. 

Why should I be looking for a scapegoat?  A scapegoat for what?  It would seem to me that insisting on the death of these two criminals toward whom you direct so much venom and undisguised hatred, is closer to the meaning of scapegoat.  Another Old Testament first approximation and inadequate notion of justice.  A symbolic exorcism of your own murderous feelings.  It doesn’t work, though.  Those murderous feelings are not exhausted, not extinguished.  They are just momentarily repressed until the next outrage, when they spring forth again as unsatisfied and insatiable as ever.   

“… there is NO gray area in an execution, that is my only reason for advocating it in cases like the ones I was writing about. Not as punishment, not as justice, not as a deterrent and not as community retribution…”

“Frankly the “why” of his recidivism by the guy who attacked my friend’s wife doesn’t matter much to me and it sure as hell doesn’t cut any ice with her.”

“You go ahead and worry about the effects of our criminal justice system on these two bastards — I just want them eliminated as a threat, for sure, once and for all time.”

What am I supposed to understand from these barely coherent curses, if not a personal desire for revenge and an utter indifference toward the clarifying and healing agencies of wisdom and understanding?  You are absolutely intent on denying the humanity of ‘these… bastards’ without the slightest curiosity as to what caused them to become murderers or (this is the crucial point) to recognize or reconcile the murderous feeling that their actions generates in your own consciousness.  This makes you little different from ‘these… bastards’.

Human.  All too human, WTH.

LB,

“Human.  All too human, WTH.”

Should I be flattered if you think I’m human?

“You are absolutely intent on denying the humanity of ‘these… bastards’ without the slightest curiosity as to what caused them to become murderers or (this is the crucial point) to recognize or reconcile the murderous feeling that their actions generates in your own consciousness.”

No, that is YOUR crucial point.

Mine is: “… there is NO gray area in an execution, that is my only reason for advocating it in cases like the ones I was writing about. Not as punishment, not as justice, not as a deterrent and not as community retribution…”
“...desire for revenge” would advocate:

• To have the one guy hang by his wrists and tortured until dead. (the paper boy)

• To have the other impaled on a screwdriver and left to bleed to death. (my friend’s wife)

That’s an eye for an eye retribution.
. My way is what I had done for my 18-year-old cat with cancer and no chance of a return to normalcy.

You are not killing a criminal because he is old and dying but as a punishment for his actions, no matter what sophistry you use to disguise it.  No matter how dispassionate you may pretend in the act, it is an act of revenge. Whether an individual is ever capable of genuine remorse and a ‘return to normalcy’ (whatever that is) will never be known by killing them.

It is difficult for me to understand how either passionate or dispassionate revenge upon the perpetrator of a crime is in any way an act of compassion toward the victim.

Nor can I see how compassion for the perpetrators of crime in any way excludes compassion for the victim.

Isn’t it more important to comfort the victims and help them to heal from their loss than to cater to their feelings of vengefulness?  Is it not more compassionate for all concerned, not to mention more useful, to require the perpetrators to provide some real compensation for their crimes rather than to merely suffer like animals in a cage or to be killed?

Perhaps you can explain, WTH?

LB,

“Perhaps you can explain, WTH?”

Apparently not so you can understand.

If it were my wife or my son who was a victim like those two cases I have outlined, I may want revenge, I don’t know and believe I can’t know without the actual situation.

“You are not killing a criminal because he is old and dying but as a punishment for his actions, no matter what sophistry you use to disguise it.”

This is twisted and just plain false. His age is of no consequence — his possibility of freedom is.

I changed my view on capital punishment due to people like you view who have let “rehabilitated” people loose in society to commit these types of offenses again. As I said the one did just that, so I can assume the parole board was made up of people with your ideas.

“Nor can I see how compassion for the perpetrators of crime in any way excludes compassion for the victim.”
You have at no time in this discussion expressed any understanding or compassion for the victims or their families — only for the ones who are convicted. Perhaps that is because you don’t know anyone who must continually relive the horror ever time the guy comes up for parole.
Well, I do.

“ Is it not more compassionate for all concerned, not to mention more useful, to require the perpetrators to provide some real compensation for their crimes rather than to merely suffer like animals in a cage or to be killed?”

There is NO possible way to “compensate.”

My guess is you have no children or at least are unable to imagine what this does to a parent.

You are correct about the horror that people feel when they are informed of the impending parole of a criminal who has done them harm.  That horror is created or re-created in the present moment by their own minds, not the past or present or imagined future actions of the criminal.  You may think this shows no compassion, but it is only by honestly facing and taking responsibility for the content of one’s own mind that one may overcome fear and pain and anguish. Assuring people they are justified in identifying the cause of their suffering in the person of someone over whom they have no control is just a recipe for the perpetuation of suffering and cruelty.  That is definitely not compassionate.

This is not an hypothetical.  I’ve learned this from grieving through it in all its unpleasant and painful stages.  More than once.  Murder, theft, assault, betrayal, rape, suicide, torture, accident, old age, war and disease.  You can believe what you want about the depth and breadth of my experience, but it matters not to me.  I am not at all inclined to lay out the details of my own suffering and loss or of those close to me as an appeal for pity or understanding.  I don’t want it.  You don’t need it.  It’s personal and of no importance in this discussion.

Compassion does not mean pity nor soft-heartedness nor taking the side of the victim.  It means helping another to overcome their suffering, their anger, their confusion.  Not with euphemistic and self-satisfying platitudes, but genuine and honest and non-judgmental concern.

Overcoming.  Not justifying, not rationalizing, not symbolically investing it in a scapegoat to be driven into the desert.  Got it?  Overcoming suffering.  Putting it behind you.  Getting over it.  Letting it go.  Not clinging to blame.

Reconciliation with those who have caused us harm is the only way to free ourselves from the continuation of the harmful effects generated by harmful actions.

Causing more harm, just won’t do it.

Got it, yet? 

Give it some time to sink in.

LB,

Gee, thanks.  I’ll just tell my friend, “Not to worry. The threats he made are all in your mind. Get a grip. Forget about trying to keep him off the streets. His attitude and behavior are his problem and, should he happen to show up with a screwdriver again — teach him how to use it constructively. 

You’ll feel better, be a better person and he’ll be of no more threat to anyone.”

Reminds me of a story…

A Catholic, a Jew and a Christian Scientist died and went to hell. When they got there the devils asked each if they understood why.

The Catholic said, “Yes, I really ignore the teachings of the church all my life and did as I pleased.”

The Jew: “I have violated the teachings of the scriptures and broken nearly every religious law.
” The Christian Scientist, “I’m not here.”

I didn’t think you’d understand, WTH.  I was right, but that doesn’t help anyone.  So I’ll let it go.

Oh, I understand.

I just totallly disagree and you can’t accept that.

“Gee, thanks.  I’ll just tell my friend, ‘Not to worry.’ “

Compare your ‘understanding’ with what I wrote.

“Compassion does not mean pity nor soft-heartedness nor taking the side of the victim.  It means helping another to overcome their suffering, their anger, their confusion.  Not with euphemistic and self-satisfying platitudes, but genuine and honest and non-judgmental concern.”

You aren’t disagreeing.  Your response is utterly non-responsive.  A little bitter sarcasm combined with superficial dismissiveness.

But I can accept it.  I don’t expect much depth from you anyway.

Then why have you continued this dialogue for so long, LB? I’m curious about that. A strange dance indeed.

LB,

“Your response is utterly non-responsive.”

In other words if someone does not agree with you — there was no response.

Or… like the Christian Scientist — simply “not there.”

Your, “...genuine and honest non-judgmental concern” can’t/won’t judge between the aggressor and the victim of aggression to the point of doing anything to actually prevent all possibility of a rerun.

Reruns keep happening in spite of millenia of executions.  Resolving the one particular situation of your experience with an execution is only another act of violence and it will inevitably lead to another.  This one particular execution may stop this one particular killer from killing again, but out of that execution and thousands of others, the belief is reinforced that killing is sometimes justified.  Some over-excited fool with mistaken priorities, will consequently believe that justification in addressing his own personal grievances and kill.  Somebody else’s family will suffer just like your friend’s.

And so on.

Eric asks “why?”

I wouldn’t presume to answer for Luminous Beauty but perhaps the answer is ...

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be, blest.

— Alexander Pope (click for link)

An excellent poem that may also answer the ‘death penalty’ question posed in this thread.

LB, David,

You both insist on dealing in broad generalizations — “one size fits all” — while if you go back to my original entry makes clear I am referring to two very specific cases. As I indicated my vote is cautiously in favor.

LB —“Resolving the one particular situation of your experience with an execution is only another act of violence and it will inevitably lead to another.”
Not against the prior victims nor to anyone else by these two perpetrators.

This is not a case of a group or nation and probably not even family members retaliating. If “life in prison” was reliable I would not likely have changed my original view on the issue. It is the recurring parole hearings which are cause for alarm to those intimately concerned.

David — “Hope springs eternal in the human breast:”

OK by me as long as their hoping is done behind bars — forever.
A hypothetical question:

If the guy with the screwdriver were released and you saw him move to attack his former victim, would you —

a. Let him proceed and send flowers to both victim’s and perp’s families?

b. Step between them and let him stab you instead? (Leaving him free to continue after you were eliminated.)

c. Recite poetry, hoping to distract him from his goal?

d. Something else?

Whattheheck, in answer to your hypothetical question ... something else;
Recite poetry while I step in between them and get stabbed.
Do I get flowers then too?
(In lieu of flowers please send donations to a charity of your choice.)

Look at the other countries that still practice capital punishment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment

Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are the only other fully developed and democratic countries that still have the death penalty.

Capital punishment is barbaric. Texas produced Junior as president and produces the most executions annually. Makes sense in a sickening sort of way.

WTH,

The sad and simple fact is that the death penalty is not reducible to the particular and personal situations of your friends.  It is a policy of the State.  A coercive and onerous one that invests in the State the power of life and death over its citizens.  There could be no greater obstacle to nor fundamental denial of personal or social liberty.  I fail to see how your fear and insecurity over the merely theoretical and factually uncertain consequences of the conditions of parole are of sufficient moral force to allow for the actual and certain killing of another human being.  It is irrational and monstrous in its implications.

In answer to your hypothetical, d. something else.  Like, intervene if I am able.  My greatest lesson from learning martial arts is, it is far easier to break up a fight than to be in one.

Here is a question for you. 

If your screw-driver man is paroled, will you council your friend to:

1.  Seek him out with murderous intent?

2.  Arm himself to the teeth and hide out in his home surrounded by all the high-tech security he can afford?

3.  Get on with his life?

4.  Seek through third parties to reach reconciliation and understanding sufficient that the screw-driver man has no intention of attacking him and his family?

5.  Something else?

David,

So you honestly would have done nothing to prevent the guy from attacking my friend’s wife.

Well, OK — I guess when you’re dead you’ll feel no regret for not stopping him.

What can I say to a genuine pacifist except if my wife is ever it such a situation I’d rather have one of the Hell’s Angels nearby.

WTH,

David said he would be willing to take the blow himself.  That is not doing nothing.  What are you thinking?

Having run with the Hell’s Angels on occasion, I would suggest there are very few among them I would trust as a personal bodyguard.  I would much prefer a pacifist trained in the martial arts.  Don’t believe for a minute such do not exist.  You have a very naive and prejudicial view of what pacifism is.  It is not passivism.

Heck, I was being a little cheeky in my answer which was (d) something else
... expressed as a combination of answers (c) poetry and (b) intervention and (a) flowers.
Sorry for any confusion.

My answer to your question was and is (d) something else
... like, avoiding the use of violence to solve a problem to such an extent as suffering violence myself.
Pacifism and altruism, hand in hand, holding flowers.

Luminous Beauty, you have asked a good question. And provided good answers.

Given the situation my answers to your question would be 3 + 5 or maybe 4 + 5.

BM,

“David said he would be willing to take the blow himself.  That is not doing nothing.  What are you thinking?”

I’m thinking the bad guy then steps over David’s dead body and continues his attack on the woman. An increased waste of the innocent in order to experiment with the causes/cures for a worthless (no, worse than worthless a vicious person).

What is worse the the Good Intentions Paving Co.?

Your slogan, “If it feels good, don’t do it”

You feel santimonious, she feels just the screwdriver.

LB,

“It is a policy of the State.  A coercive and onerous one that invests in the State the power of life and death over its citizens.”

You are bypassing one very important step — the right to trial by jury.  A jury has the ability to override the judge’s instructions — which in effect puts the power where it belongs — with the people, not the state. (Sadly, most people do not know this.)

“I fail to see how your fear and insecurity over the merely theoretical and factually uncertain consequences of the conditions of parole are of sufficient moral force to allow for the actual and certain killing of another human being.”
Merely theoretical!?! — You’re missing (or choosing to ignore) much of what I have written.

The guy with the screwdriver was on PAROLE for a prior sex crime WHEN he attacked her. He repeatedly (for over 30 years) has come up for parole. Jack and Char must protest his release each time.
THINK ABOUT THAT!  Isn’t that irrational and monstrous in its implications?

I realize your only “correct” answer is, of course… 4.  Seek through third parties to reach reconciliation and understanding sufficient that the screw-driver man has no intention of attacking him and his family?
Also irrational.

So…
5. I would advise my friend that (if the guy were released.)both he and his wife should…

• arm themselves.
• Take self-defense courses which clarify their legal rights for use of lethal force.
• Practice shooting regularly and if attacked, make sure he’s dead before calling the police.

• I’d also advise at least a .40 cal. handgun.

(At their age hand to hand is not an option — he’s 15 or 20 years younger than they are.)

Let me get this straight.  Screw-driver man has been in prison for over thirty years!  And Jack and Char are still frightened of him?  What a waste of one’s golden years.

Have they tried negotiating with screw-driver through his legal reps? His parole officer?  His family?  Unless there has been effort made to arrive at rapprochement and it has repeatedly failed, I don’t see how it is irrational on its face.  It seems you and they are assuming the only possible understanding of screw-driver man is the one generated by their fear of his vengefulness toward them because of their fear of him interpreting their fear as vengefulness toward him.  Something of an impasse.  Fear and revenge, fear and revenge, fear and revenge… 

”...make sure he’s dead before calling the police.”

So you are advocating murder.  And the cycle of re-runs repeats ad infinitum.  You are proving my case, WTH.

Giving the decision to the jury for the death penalty is pretty meaningless when opposition to the death penalty is presumptive grounds for dismissal from the jury.  Still the jury doesn’t actually carry out the deed.  They just give it the imprimatur of democratic respectability.  The hollow, empty and meaningless thunder of hypocrisy is deafening.

Honoring democracy in its breach.  Gotta love that.

WTH,

One significant difference in the fashion in which both you and I are structuring our view-points.  You are focusing your attention on the past and doing a bang-up job of representing the near-intractability of the gone and vanished if not forgotten past’s persistent and continuing impact on individual lives to re-engender fear and violence.  I am seeking rather to focus on the present and looking as to what dis-continuity we can create, if not to stop completely and forever, permanently and immediately, without caveat or exception, (which seems is the only answer that could reasonably please you) but to at least slow down the cycle of violence that produces millions of equally sad and horrific stories of all the people like your friends who have suffered from violence.  The idea being, that through the agency of our reason we can produce a less violent future.

It seems that by insisting on re-living the past you are demonstrating exactly what is not helpful.

That you so stubbornly refuse to move your focus from the particularity of your own one-sided personal anecdotal tale of suffering and woe, leaves me with the ineluctable impression that you have no interest whatsoever in trying to reduce or overcome the on-going world-wide horrors of violence.

Please, if you can, disabuse me of this notion, and we can carry out this conversation in a constructive vein.

LB,

Once again you jump to a broad general issue — “world-wide horrors of violence.” As I ‘ve said repeatedly my vote was for “cautiously support”. I’m not advocating mass killings or even manditory death sentencing — make life in prison meaningful and I could well go back to my position of 50 years ago.

I do think we should make suicide a capital offense :-)

I have nothing further to add.

WTH,

I’m gladdened to know you aren’t advocating mass killings.

Really.  I am.

I’m really sorry for brow-beating you about broad general moral issues, too.  I realize you are basically a decent person.  You don’t have to address them.  It is your right and prerogative.

Please forgive me for asking.

When you give the government the right to commit murder and later find dna that proves innocence, how do you correct the mistake??

LB,

Good, I’m glad.

Heck, I still have a couple questions about your hypothetical. If you wouldn’t mind answering that would be great because I do want to try to understand the ‘why’ of your position.

Do you really think that intervening using words and wits is a waste?
Of what? Time ... effort ... a life, if it came to it ... or something else. And why?

You said “Your slogan, “If it feels good, don’t do it”
Nope. My slogan is “If it feels good, be sure it’s good, then do it.”

Sincerely,

David in Canuckistan
Chief Executive Officer
Good Intentions Paving Company

It is said the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
But always remember that it is a two way street.
(another slogan of mine)

Dave,

I’ve often wondered about that saying, as if the road to heaven is paved with evil intentions?

Hmmm, maybe it’s a two way at heaven’s discretions.
But maybe on third thought ... it is.

If the road to heaven is paved with evil intentions,
And too the road to hell ... it is.

Then best be good our good intentions,
And the best way ... it is.

David,

“Do you really think that intervening using words and wits is a waste?”
I assume you’re referring to my comments…

“I’m thinking the bad guy then steps over David’s dead body and continues his attack on the woman. An increased waste of the innocent in order to experiment with the causes/cures for a worthless (no, worse than worthless a vicious person).”
———————-
My belief is that you would be throwing your life away since after he attacked you there would be nothing changed. He would then continue his attack on the woman. Possibly others as well.

One of the reasons societies are formed is for the protection of the many from the few.

In your efforts to salvage a guy who has at least twice proven to be a threat to society (and a specific indivual) you would allow two far better people to be destroyed.

Life requires judgment — every day.
————————

“If it feels good, don’t do it”

Perhaps I should have said if it ONLY feels good, don’t do it.  Better to do something which feels less good short term, for a long term improvement.
“Feel good” solutions often prove futile and allow a problem to increase. They are often politically popular.

• Financial support for bad decisions such as unwed mothers who repeat having children they cannot support.

• Rebuilding New Orleans and California houses on cliffs which tend to slide when it rains.

Emergency care — YES!

Shared cost to repeat — NO!

I see it as similar to over protecting your kids rather than teaching them to make better choices.
———————————& —

transtar,

“When you give the government the right to commit murder and later find dna that proves innocence, how do you correct the mistake??”

What you refer to as murder fits with my comments above —

One of the reasons societies are formed is for the protection of the many from the few.
———

If you think the right to confront accusers, a defense lawyer, a trial by jury, and years of appeals still constitute “murder” how would you go about the protection issue?

Conviction calls for “beyond reasonable doubt.”

My belief is that you would be throwing your life away since after he attacked you there would be nothing changed. He would then continue his attack on the woman. Possibly others as well.

Maybe not, Heck. Maybe my poetry would soothe the savage beast in him ... or not. Maybe after he has killed me with his trusty screwdriver his bloodlust would be filled ... or not. That’s the great thing about hypothetical questions ... the answers are hypothetical too.

But regardless, I don’t think it would be a waste, no matter what the outcome, so long as I tried to intervene to the best of my ability and lived my life, and gave it too, according to my beliefs.

The only justification for killing anyone but your self is political.  I would have no problem killing right wingers based on the logic that these people are people who incite murder and therefore they are murderers.  But they are worse than murderers.  They claim the right to kill whole ethnic groups and to deprive you of your rights. I would have no problem killing Bush, the Nazis, the Christan Right and anyone else who threatens large numbers of people politically or physically..

The death penalty is legalized murder because you are taking a confined, controlled person and cold bloodedly killing them. WTH’s premise that they might commit more murders if we don’t murder them proves too much as the philosophers say, by that logic we should kill or incarcerate everyone because of what they might do. And if they are going to have legal murder I don’t see why lethal injections are the way to go, why not have hanging or gas chambers or electric chairs or firing squads ? We shouldn’t sanitize or euphemize killing. And we have been crime victims too. Vigilante justice will be coming back as the government cops are worthless and their hands are tied by leftist Judges at all levels. I really think a public hanging every day in downtown Oakland would be very therapeutic for society as a whole.

why not have hanging or gas chambers or electric chairs or firing squads ?

Indeed, Mike, why not get really old school and draw and quarter the criminals?

draw and quarter;
To execute (a prisoner) by tying each limb to a horse and driving the horses in different directions.

Now that’s therapeutic.

No, David, that’s an old Chinese method of execution, please do emulate a barbaric culture. Only their food is worthwhile.

Mike, once again, it seems that I find it necessary to apologize for the lack of clarity in my irony.
Please forgive me.

Mikey,

I believe the Chinese execution method you’re thinking of is lingchi, or, the Death Of A Thousand Cuts.

Hanging, drawing and quartering is just good old-fashioned English fun.

LB, there is one like David described, I have seen pictures of it where people are slowly strangled to death on a pulley type of contrivance. I was reading a bio of Mao and they showed pictures of this barbaric practice with the comment that it was the standard way of execution in China till the 1920s !

Drawing and quartering might very well be too light a penality for right wingers. I can’t think of a too painful a method for the execution of Cheney for example.

Tie him to a tree, pour syrup over him and let the ants loose.

I have quite frequently enjoyed discussions based onpolls and articles from, “ITT”. I moved in the begining of 01/07 which meant that my beloved computer has been in the box for what I thought would be 2-3 weeks at the most.. It has been unboxed for 3 weeks and this is my 4th attempt at this letter

On O1/07/08 my 50 yr. old sister was bludgoened to death. The details will turn it into a sordid story instead of answering the lifelong question of a pacifist, “How would I feel if it was someone close to me who was killed? What would I want done?”

I want the perpenrator put in jail for the remainder of his life without the opportunity for parole or probation.

I have always believed and still do believe that when we commit murder, to pay for a murder, we are no better than the person who committed the original murder. In fact, we are worse because we have taken the time to process the situation and incorporate our decision as a part of our belief system. Not only that but we are payong a person to become a government sanctioned murderer ina situation where we have better alternatives.

It cost many times more money in legal fees, court costs, special travel expences, etc before a person is finally executed.than it does to keep them alive to serve several life sentences. But the most heinous part is that it turns an ordinary person into a killer. It is not the same as being a soldier where men fight side by side, comrades in arms, to protect each other. By enforcing the death penalty, one person is selected to kill another and to carry that stigma, if only in his mind, for the rest of his life.

Now I know for sure as someone I love has been murdered.  I care enough for another human being that I do not want him/her nor any familly, nor our society to share one iota of the pain my family is going through.  I know because it has happened to me and in my heart, I am more certain than ever that the death penalty is wrong. First, by the initial loss of someone we love but ultimately by the loss of our humanity. An eye for an eye does not give us back our sight..

I know this letter has been written in fragments and has perhaps been hard to follow but it has been difficult to write and even more difficult to live.

It almost seems too convenient that this would be the topic of disscussion when I finally have some time to join in the discussions, almost as if what I’m writing is made up. I can only tell you that after attending Quaker meeting for many years that when my heaart is burdened, someone will speak about what is bothering them and it will turn out that different sides of an issue will uaually be on the mind of several people and through this sharing we help each other.

Good post, gglodoe.

Many thoughtful people hesitantly support capital punishment primarily due to the fact that many dangerous criminals are released into the general population again, even though they may have received “life sentences.” This is most often due to prison overcrowding.

However, were our prisons not full of drug offenders, this would not be an issue and we could lock murderers up for the rest of their natural lives.

And it would would take a hell of lot less prisons to do it.