Subject:
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Re: Excellent news!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 4 Mar 2005 15:08:54 GMT
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Viewed:
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1153 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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That’s an interesting argument. For me, the problem arises when we try to
grant one person the authority to kill another. A state-sanctioned
execution, once the prisoner has already been rendered harmless, seems to me
no different morally from a deliberate and willful murder.
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Surely you’d agree that the victims differ from the two cases of loss of
life-- one “victim” is a murderer, and the other is an innocent. Therein
lies all the difference in my view.
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Bruce has already mentioned the problem of certainty, which is a pretty strong
objection IMO. The current system has numerous examples of convicted people who
didn’t commit the murders of which they’re accused, so we’re actually executing
(or scheduled to execute) innocents.
Sure, there are examples in which MurdererX is caught on film murdering VictimX,
but those are rare instances. Some cases have even been overturned despite
eyewitnesses swearing in court that PersonX is MurdererX, such as when DNA
evidence exonerates PersonX years after the trial. As long as this uncertainty
is present, the entire system of capital punishment is, to me, untenable.
Better to incarcerate for life, thereby allowing the possibility of corrective
action in event of error.
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I don’t believe capital punishment is malicious; in fact, one could argue
that allowing a murderer to live is malicious to the surviving family of the
innocent victim.
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Hmm... That’s a little too gray for me. The murder shouldn’t give the victim’s
family any particular power over anyone else’s life and death, IMO. The family
may be found to be entitled to compensation, but it strikes me as objectionable
to list the convicted murder’s life as part of its compensation.
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Scalia’s second objection is baseless. The role of the Supreme Court is
not, despite Scalia, to act as a weathervane indicating the tides of
national sentiment. Instead, the Supreme Court is charged with interpreting
law, and that what has occurred here.
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Hmmm. I seem to remember last year (?) the Supremes taking a look at the
constitutionality of executing the mentally retarded and using a change in
social outlook as justification.
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Good point. Actually, I seem to recall Scalia dissenting in that case, too, but
I could be wrong. Either way, IMO the Supremes should have ruled that the
practice violated the 8th Amendment without discussing social outlook.
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I’m not asking this flippantly, and in this context I won’t rebut
I just don’t understand how the desire for capital punishment can be
consistent with Christian grace.
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Yeah, it’s a valid question, because Christians are on both sides of this
issue. The problem in my mind is applying personal ethics (turn the other
cheek, for example) to those on a societal level. Society simply cannot
simply “forgive” criminals for their behavior, or soon there would be no
order, and I don’t think it was ever Jesus’ intention to advocate that.
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That troubles me, though; under that stricture, couldn’t “society” mandate the
extermination of people with, say, double-jointed thumbs while still maintaining
individual adherence to personal ethics?
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Personally, I do not think that forcing criminals to pay the consequences for
their crimes is unchristian. So I don’t believe that the teachings of Jesus
(as in the Beatitudes) can be made to apply to a society, but only to
individuals. The society would subsequently be transformed by persons who
adopted Jesus’ teachings. Does that make sense or come off as a dodge?
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I don’t think it’s a dodge, though I’m not sure where it leaves us. Sure,
criminals should be accountable for their crimes, but I don’t believe that
capital punishment is the proper way to hold them accountable.
It’s kind of like the argument against torture. That is, we abominate torture
not just because of what it does to the torture victim but also because of what
it does to the torturer. The same, for me, applies to capital punishment; the
society that (in essence) votes to execute someone who has been rendered
harmless is a lessened society.
Dave!
(Hey, we’re all being so pleasant in this discussion. The real acrimony is
currently being dumped on the admins, so ot.debate has to content itself with
civil discourse.)
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Excellent news!
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| (...) Certainly not knowingly. Nothing in life is certain, death and taxes notwithstanding, so I fail to see why this issue should be held to an impossible standard. Yeah, it's irreversible, but work as hard as humanly possbile to make the system (...) (20 years ago, 4-Mar-05, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Excellent news!
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| In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote: <snip> (...) Surely you'd agree that the victims differ from the two cases of loss of life-- one "victim" is a murderer, and the other is an innocent. Therein lies all the difference in my view. (...) (...) (20 years ago, 4-Mar-05, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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