Death Penalty

[Winchester]

[quote name='Alycin' post='1561198' date='Jun 6 2008, 03:02 PM']That chances of that are next to nothing. See my last post in this thread.[/quote]
One half of once percent isn't nothing. When you consider the number of people in prison, that's significant. Not to mention the guards who have to protect themselves from murderers. But hey, floopy them, they don't have families or anything.

[Alycin]

[quote name='Winchester' post='1561197' date='Jun 6 2008, 03:01 PM']I'd probably be happy with life in prison without the possibility of parole.[/quote]

Then you and I are in agreement.

[quote name='Winchester' post='1561197' date='Jun 6 2008, 03:01 PM']But too many bleeding hearts want to let them go, or not put them in in the first place.[/quote]

Oh please. That is the biggest load of BS I have heard in a long time. The only way your statement holds any truth at all is by the fact that even 1 person wanting to let them go, or not put them in in the first place, is too many. What a ridiculous generalization.

[Alycin]

[quote name='Winchester' post='1561201' date='Jun 6 2008, 03:05 PM']One half of once percent isn't nothing.[/quote]

And I didn't say it was nothing, now did I?

And I'm sorry, but there are jobs that come with risks. Prison guard happens to be a pretty risky job, just like police officer, fireman, armed forces, FBI, etc. People choose their jobs. It's not a pretty job by any means but no one is forcing any of those people to take those jobs. Yes, obviously, someone "has" to do it. There are dangers all over the place. Excuse me if I don't believe in killing people off in order to make a job "safe." Lots of jobs aren't safe.

[Alycin]

[quote name='Alycin' post='1561186' date='Jun 6 2008, 02:51 PM']The [url="http://www.slate.com/id/1007001/"]most recent article[/url] I could find said that about one half of 1% of prisoners escape.[/quote]


Oh and by the way, the article is 7 years old and in it it said that the numbers continue to decline. It also said that most prison escapes were due to negligence and/or insufficient supervision.

[dominicansoul]

[quote name='Alycin' post='1561198' date='Jun 6 2008, 02:02 PM']That chances of that are next to nothing. See my last post in this thread.[/quote]


I meant, if the killer is paroled. (not escapes...) Paroled murderers seems impossible, right? But it happens more than you think. I saw enough of that when I used to work for law enforcement. It is very frustrating. It would be great if we could keep them locked up, but they have legal ways of getting out. Look at the case for the serial killer, Kenneth Allan McDuff. He killed I don't know how many people after being imprisoned several times and getting out several times. The Justice system in this country is not what it should be...

[Alycin]

[quote name='dominicansoul' post='1561212' date='Jun 6 2008, 03:13 PM']I meant, if the killer is paroled. (not escapes...) Paroled murderers seems impossible, right? But it happens more than you think. I saw enough of that when I used to work for law enforcement. It is very frustrating. It would be great if we could keep them locked up, but they have legal ways of getting out. Look at the case for the serial killer, Kenneth Allan McDuff. He killed I don't know how many people after being imprisoned several times and getting out several times. The Justice system in this country is not what it should be...[/quote]


Then it seems that the justice system should be improved; not that we should kill people.

[Winchester]

[quote name='Alycin' post='1561202' date='Jun 6 2008, 03:05 PM']Oh please. That is the biggest load of BS I have heard in a long time. The only way your statement holds any truth at all is by the fact that even 1 person wanting to let them go, or not put them in in the first place, is too many. What a ridiculous generalization.[/quote]"I don't want to ruin his life over one incident." quote from juror dealing with a case involving the rape of a five year old girl. You think this is the only one out there who thinks like this? You apparently have a problem with understanding the number of people on this planet. You think that one half of one percent when you're dealing with a population of millions is "almost unheard of." There are millions of prisoners. If one out of 1000 escapes, assuming a population of 1 million, that's how many? There's a calculator on your computer.

Your mercy don't affect my daughter, you go on with it. Seeing as she's on this planet, I don't much care for your mercy. No offense, but my daughter means more to me than that of any scumbag criminal. I hope everyone goes to Heaven, but that don't mean I care to have them on this planet.

[dominicansoul]

The Justice system is broken. It will take a miracle to fix it.

IN the meantime, I gues it's okay for murderers to go on killing innocent people, then?

Killing people off was never my point. I said only in cases where it is absolutely necessary (like to protect society.) If some body brutally murdered you and went to prison and got life without parole, than great. But that's the problem, the sentences are never the same. Each case is different. Your killer may get 10 years and parole. Or perhaps, life without parole (which in my opinion, should be the norm for every murderer.) But this doesn't happen. Killers are paroled all the time. And many times, they repeat their crime. This is where I think the death penalty should be utilized.

I am not for unnecessary executions. If they can get rehab, if they can get help, if they can convert, if they can become better persons...all of that but KEEP THEM OUT OF SOCIETY...than GREAT! But for those cases where murderers kill people in such brutal fashion, and then get paroled and are out walking amongst us, looking for their next kill...that's where I see execution is necessary to PROTECT society.

[dominicansoul]

I was thinking about what you said, how you don't want your family to go for the death penalty if you are murdered. But it isn't up to the families. It's up to the Judge who would be trying your murderer.

If I get murdered (God forbid.) I wouldn't want my family to do anything but what is the just and the right thing to do. If that means being the voice to fight the murderer's execution, then, so be it. But if that monster were to have the chance to brutally murder somebody else...I would hope my family wouldn't fight to keep him alive.

Like I said before, I think that the death penalty may be God's way of punishing these killer's. They have time to repent, they have the time to embrace God, which is more than they gave their victims. At the same time they are made to feel the way they made their victims feel. They get to experience the horror they put their victims through, too. It's all good for their soul, don't you think???

[Alycin]

[quote name='dominicansoul' post='1561228' date='Jun 6 2008, 03:34 PM']I was thinking about what you said, how you don't want your family to go for the death penalty if you are murdered. But it isn't up to the families. It's up to the Judge who would be trying your murderer.[/quote]

Yes I know, this is why I said I have made my parents aware of my wishes so that they could voice my wishes to the judge and jury.


[quote name='dominicansoul' post='1561228' date='Jun 6 2008, 03:34 PM']Like I said before, I think that the death penalty may be God's way of punishing these killer's. They have time to repent, they have the time to embrace God, which is more than they gave their victims. At the same time they are made to feel the way they made their victims feel. They get to experience the horror they put their victims through, too. It's all good for their soul, don't you think???[/quote]

I'm not gonna make that call. Better to err on the side of life, IMO.

[Alycin]

[quote name='Winchester' post='1561219' date='Jun 6 2008, 03:17 PM']"I don't want to ruin his life over one incident." quote from juror dealing with a case involving the rape of a five year old girl. You think this is the only one out there who thinks like this? You apparently have a problem with understanding the number of people on this planet. You think that one half of one percent when you're dealing with a population of millions is "almost unheard of." There are millions of prisoners. If one out of 1000 escapes, assuming a population of 1 million, that's how many? There's a calculator on your computer.

Your mercy don't affect my daughter, you go on with it. Seeing as she's on this planet, I don't much care for your mercy. No offense, but my daughter means more to me than that of any scumbag criminal. I hope everyone goes to Heaven, but that don't mean I care to have them on this planet.[/quote]

You should know the error of appealing to emotions when debating. Once again, I never stated that something was "almost unheard of" (and by the way, putting words in others' mouths doesn't get you very far in trying to make your case in a debate, either. ) I stated a fact, and you apparently don't like it and keep trying to say that I said something that I never said.

There are 2,299,116 prisoners in prison right now. Only half of those prisoners are in prison for violent crimes. That would mean that even less of a percentage would be in for homicide, though I couldn't find that percentage. HOWEVER, the overall escape rate is one half of one percent IF (and that's a big if) the rate has stayed the same, and not followed the trend of decline. I couldn't find a statistic that says whether the escapees were all murderers, but I find that unlikely. So you're looking at a total number of escapees to be about 11 and a half thousand. That is not a small number, but nor is it a large number in the scheme of things, especially considering that it's probably far fewer than the total number of 11.5 thousand which are actually murderers, much less serial killers.

And as I've already stated before, the majority of the escapes were due to negligence or insufficient supervision.

[Alycin]

For the record--I don't know if "escapees" is the right word or not, it sounds funny.

[Maggyie]

I also have given instructions to my relatives that if I die in a violent way, I wish the responsible party would be spared. But the real test case is not if YOU are murdered, but one of your loved ones. After all, if I was brutally killed, I would be dead and no longer in crippling pyschological agony. My mom and dad could be "in principle" against the death penalty, but if me or my sister or brothers were murdered, I don't know what their emotional state would be. I wouldn't blame them for wanting the death penalty, even if, from Purgatory, I disagreed. Just like the old saying that funerals are more for the consolation of the living than for the benefit of the dead, some people say that capital punishment is meant mostly to satisfy the victim's family. Of course I would say it is a false satisfaction...

There was a similar situation here in Cleveland years ago. There was a lady reporter who used to do the editorals at the end of the 10 o'clock evening news, I forget which channel, but anyway a frequent topic was capital punishment. Oh how barbaric it is, blah blah blah. Then one day the lady's best friend was visciously slaughtered. The next evening when the reporter came on the air for her editorial she was sobbing hysterically and confessed that she was the world's biggest hypocrite, that she wanted the creep who did it to suffer horribly before being executed by the state. You never know how you are going to feel about it until you are actually there.

Edited June 6, 2008 by Maggie

[Jaime]

[quote name='Socrates' post='1560558' date='Jun 5 2008, 10:40 PM']I don't believe God was wrong in the Bible, nor that nearly 2000 years of Catholic teaching were wrong. God does not command people to do what is intrinsically immoral. Even the modern catechism acknowledges that the state has the right to execute criminals.

Trying to claim that executing a murderer is morally no different from abortion or other murders is plain wrong. As our Pope has stated:


QUOTE
Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.[/quote]

First off, this is what Cardinal Ratzinger said at a conference in a Q and A session. It wasn't from the CDF. It most certainly isn't from the Holy Father as an official stance of the Church. I tire of you trying to make this out to be more than it is.

[mod]Please do not take the Lord's Name in vain. -Raph[/mod]Soc you trot that line out every single time there is a discussion on the death penalty. You want to know why? There is NOTHING ELSE THAT SUPPORTS YOUR POSITION.

The preceding Holy Father made it clear that there was no logical reason to support the death penalty.

[dominicansoul]

[quote name='Maggie' post='1561244' date='Jun 6 2008, 02:50 PM']You never know how you are going to feel about it until you are actually there.[/quote]


Amen. I had to see what happened to my friend's family. To her life was never the same after her 14 year old daughter was slaughtered the way she was. The murderer didn't just kill the 14 year old daughter...in many ways he killed my friend. She lost her faith, she lost her spirit...she lost so much of who she was...

And the guy is out...to perhaps destroy someone's elses life...I hope not....but I have to wonder....he's out there somewhere...