According to the latest news, the jury is recomending to the judge that Scott Peterson be executed for the murder of his wife.
Am I the only one that feels slightly uncomfortable with the death penalty being suggested here? I haven’t really been following the case like any of the millions of obsessed american housewives, and I certainly am willing to believe he did it, but isn’t the entire case pretty much built on circumstantial evidence? I can understand a life sentence, sure, but execution?
He’s guilty of First Degree Murder, and 12 people found the quality of the evidence to be sufficient enough to convince every one of them of his guilt. Based on that same evidence, the same 12 folks have apparrently agreed that he should die for the crime which, all things considered, was extremely brutal.
So yeah, in CA that’s good for the death penalty. The Judge still has to make a ruling, though. If you’re just saying you find capital punishment unsavory in a general way, then that’s ok too.
On the other hand, doesn’t the death penalty mean he’s pretty much assured several reviews of the evidence and such?
If I’ll ignore the death penalty is evil bit.
Death penalty in CA means a long term in prison and the possibility that the state might get around to killing you before natural causes do.
CA last executed someone in 1996.
Despite a huuuuge population, CA has only executed 4 people since 1978. Compare that to somewhere like Texas where they only dip down to 4 executions on a slow day :D
yeah, the death penalty here is death by old age, we dont bother executing anyone.
I think they should feed him to pigs, alive.
Bypassing the tired old death penalty argument…this the most interesting post-verdict jury interview I have ever seen. If all the jurors were were as objective and thoughtful as these 3 being interviewed, then I trust that the scumbag deserves to die.
You know, I’m unshakingly confident in my opinion that the death penalty is wrong, because anyone who defends it can’t seem to do so without coming up with either clever insults for those sentenced to it or inventive new methods of execution.
A perfect argument from ignorance combined with ad hominem. You get the double fallacy prize.
A perfect argument from ignorance combined with ad hominem. You get the double fallacy prize.[/quote]
And yet, there still remains a startling absence of a compelling argument for the death penalty. Clearly, if the government, state or otherwise, wishes to exercise the power to kill people as a result of judicial verdicts, the burden of establishing its usefulness/morality/etc is on that end of the table. So, to really make it a fallacy, why not disprove its point?
A perfect argument from ignorance combined with ad hominem. You get the double fallacy prize.[/quote]
W00t.
Argument from ignorance though? Huh?
It removes the offender from the rest of society. Deterrance and righteous retribution and all that can kiss my ass. To me, execution simply removes the person from the race sa a result of his/her own decisions.
I’ve heard it discussed as a way to make sure someone never sees a parole board no matter how release-happy the parole people get.
That’s a perfectly valid argument, but a) I consider it flat-out appalling from a moral standpoint and b) “executing people to remove the potential threat they themselves might do something bad again”, as far as I know, has absolutely no basis in western legal history.
It removes the offender from the rest of society. Deterrance and righteous retribution and all that can kiss my ass. To me, execution simply removes the person from the race sa a result of his/her own decisions.[/quote]
Or, in some cases, as a result of an imperfect judicial system that falsely convicted them and only managed to exonerate them after it was too late, but that’s what they get for living here, m i rite?
extarbags- Am I allowed to be unshakably confident in being pro-death penalty because every opponent is an insufferably righteous twit?
Pro- Only legitimate argument is revenge, and that’s stretching the defintion of legitimate and argument. The rest are silly. Specific deterrance? That’s why we have prisons. Fantasies about alternate universes where Dukakis got elected? Please.
Con- Best argument against is practical, not moral. Prohibitive cost, fallible justice system… There’s an awful lot of con there.
The moral argument is ridiculous, though. Governments kill people all the time. There’s nothing unsual about a government having the power of life and death, it’s more or less the defining feature of government.
Being in a maximum security prison for life without parole is really, really close to being dead in one’s ability to commit future crimes against society. If the law and order types were smart, they’d give up the death penalty in exchange for harsher maximum security prisons.
In totalitarian state, maybe !
If the person is a drain on the planet (with respect to other humans or otherwise) and expected to be likewise in the future, why not cut your losses and remove the drain?
Noone has a right to life just because they were born. Call it a post-natal abortion if you want to get in good with the pro-choicers. Call the position “pro-choice” for society instead of “pro-life”.
I continue to fail to see why we put people in prison for 10-50 years, setting them under a form of Welfare or low-income slave labor, and stop caring about them. The best case scenario is learning how to channel their identity into something useful, the next best case scenario is killing them. Don’t shut the door and throw away the key. Oops, where’d he go? Oh, in that place we don’t look at!
The “death penalty” using this paradigm is not a penalty, its just the best course of action under certain conditions. Its not about punishment at all.
Sorry, I was being elitist. An argument from ignorance is when you suggest that because someone has never been able to prove something to be true, then it is not true, or because someone has never proven something to be NOT true, then it is true. Example: Aliens must exist because no one has ever shown that they don’t. Better example: I didn’t see her at the party, so she wasn’t there.
The latter example is obviously less of a fallacy; like all fallacies, this one depends on the circumstances and what is trying to be proven. In your case, the fallacy wasn’t overly troubling, but it was still a fallacy. You are saying that no one has ever given a good argument FOR the death penalty, so the death penalty is wrong.
I wasn’t taking a stand on the issue. I was just poinint out that your reasons weren’t valid. Of course, they aren’t your REAL reasons, so it isn’t too big of a deal.
Paradigm.
[quote=“Robert_Sharp”]
Sorry, I was being elitist. An argument from ignorance is when you suggest that because someone has never been able to prove something to be true, then it is not true, or because someone has never proven something to be NOT true, then it is true. Example: Aliens must exist because no one has ever shown that they don’t. Better example: I didn’t see her at the party, so she wasn’t there.
The latter example is obviously less of a fallacy; like all fallacies, this one depends on the circumstances and what is trying to be proven. In your case, the fallacy wasn’t overly troubling, but it was still a fallacy. You are saying that no one has ever given a good argument FOR the death penalty, so the death penalty is wrong.
I wasn’t taking a stand on the issue. I was just poinint out that your reasons weren’t valid. Of course, they aren’t your REAL reasons, so it isn’t too big of a deal.[/quote]
You’re still being elitist; I know what an argument from ignorance is, I was asking why you thought what I said was one. Based on your summary of what I said, in fact, it appears that you completely missed the point.
I never said that the death penalty is wrong because nobody has ever given a good reason for it. You’re confusing me with some article you read somewhere else, I think. What I said (albeit after that post, so bleh) was that it is wrong because it will always, always wind up executing innocent people.