Re: The Death Penalty � the most controversial of subjects -- Alternative Quadrant Message Board

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, [3], 4 ]

Subject: Re: The Death Penalty � the most controversial of subjects

Author:
sarahc

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 09:28:48 06/11/01 Mon
In reply to: Wyldchilde 's message, "Re: The Death Penalty � the most controversial of subjects" on 06:53:05 06/11/01 Mon

Okay, here is your comment that I first responded to:

"I can not speak for the British legal system, but I understand that the US one works under the idea that it is better to let 99 guilty go free then convict one inncoent. While that is a noble idea would any here be willing to go to the people who get hurt/robbed/raped or killed by those 99 once they are set free? Yes, yes, life imprisonment, but life imprisonment is still life. Life that their victims will not have. I may be sounding like a broken record, but that is what I keep coming back too. By commiting such heinous acts they seem to say they can not or will not live in a civilized society. If we keep the person alive dont we condone them?"

And here is how I responded:

"That's quite a twist - life imprisonment for illegal activities is condoning those activities. If capital punishment is the only way to demonstrate that we take murder seriously, I suppose we should return to various corporal punishments for other offenses, such as cutting off hands and feet for stealing and running from the police. Putting those people in prison for a few years just trivializes the serious nature of their offenses."

In this particular paragraph you were not talking about Timothy McVeigh or the moral differences between single acts of murder vs. mass killings. You seemed to be saying life imprisonment for murderers generally is not fair because their victims are dead, implying that if the victim must suffer death, then so should the criminal. That sounds very much like "eye-for-an-eye" justice.

Your concluding sentence says life imprisonment for murderers is condoning them. To condone another's behavior is to overlook or trivialize it. More broadly, "condone" has even come to be used to imply tacit approval of bad behavior. Thus my response was to restate your position that life imprisonment is a trivial or minor punishment. I find this position to be untenable as I happen to think life imprisonment is not a trivial matter. I was further illustrating that with the comment regarding corporal punishment for offenses other than murder. For if life imprisonment for murderers simply condones their criminal acts, one might reasonably conclude any term in prison isn't punishment enough for any crime. That leaves us with corporal punishments as the only other means of responding seriously to criminal acts. If "eye-for-an-eye" justice is how we should approach murderers, then we should also approach other criminal activities from the same philosophy.

I had hoped that the ridiculous nature of that position would highlight the ridiculous nature of the position that life imprisonment somehow condones the criminal act for which it was meted out.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
Re: The Death Penalty � the most controversial of subjects	Wyldchilde	09:40:36 06/11/01 Mon