An old debate, that I believe must be held until all realize why death penalty is barbary.
Why have death penalty?
- prisons cost money (i.e. logistical/practical reasons)
- to get the satisfaction of seeing criminals such as murderers suffer and be punished for what they did
- if crime is genetical, the death penalty will remove "crime genes"
Why not have death penalty?
- crime isn't genetical, so it doesn't solve the problem
- statistics show that death penalty countries have no less criminality
- innocents are struck by it. There's no excuse whatsoever for mudering an innocent. That murder is made so much worse if you, before the murder, in a harsh voice speak to the one you are about to murder and say: "you're a low dog, and deserve this suffering and death. Your very existence on earth is a threat to normal people! You are like the weed that must be cleaned from a lawn!"
- the instincts to punish made sense in nature, where flocks had full overview of all individuals in it. One could know for sure whether someone was a criminal or not. In civilization there are walls, ceilings and floors, no surveillance in the world can tell the complete truth. DNA? It can be planted on the spot. Witness reports? With 6 billion humans there are many looking alike, and the witness himself might be a maniac who wants to see a random person suffer. He can't be charged for perjury if the innocent who was killed by death penalty is killed, and the one voice for justice is silenced.
- the instincts to punish made sense in nature, where it was impossible to build prisons. Prisons can safe keep dangerous people. An innocent man won't suffer too much (although quite a lot still, but it's acceptable) from sitting in prison as from being murdered.
- the objective of law is to protect ordinary people from horrible crime. If the price for it is to kill hundred innocents, then the objective hasn't been met. The end justifies the means, one can say, but the end is the sum of the end you see, and the means. What you have achieved by death penalty is the safety of all ordinary people except one hundred men and women. As those crimes that are officially seen as crimes don't decrease because of death penalty, you have in reality increased the number of murders by a hundred. Do you count them in the statistics?
- if you are ruled by your instincts to punish you are ill suited to living in civilization. What would you do if a man blew up themselves to kill your children? Go find his mother and want her killed? Go find his friends and get them killed? Go find the man reading a newspaper on the other side for not interfering, despite the knowledge that that man obviously had no means of predicting what was about to happen?
- truly innocent people are rare. Very few have so little sin that they may throw the first stone. Jesus was one of them. With a death penalty system, you would be prepared to murder Jesus himself. Murdering the few who exist makes the world a horrible place. The truly innocent people are an inspiration for everyone, and their very existence is what prevents world from falling into darkness.
- would you like to see innocent people be ass-raped, live for some months in threat of dying, then as last thing in their life hear people calling them murderers, dying knowing that their name will be remembered and associated with horrid crime, rather than innocence. Making them know that they may not be present for their children, or their relatives. Hearing someone read that the entire state wishes to see them murdered?
- both Judaism and Christianity clearly explains that killing innocents in order to get to the guilty is wrong. See Genesis 18:24
- Lenin once said: "it's better to let 100 innocent die than letting one guilty escape". Do you want to rank yourself as being on the same level as Lenin and Stalin?
- the costs for keeping prisons for the people that are now killed is ridiculously small.
- death penalty is legalized murder. It's not for the safety of the people and prevention of crime, but a bad replacement for a shrink or prison for the worst of all murderers. An executioner is not only a vicious lust-murderer, but a shrewd lust-murderer, who uses law to satisfy his lusts.
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