Death Penalty for Under 18?Follow

Likewise, if you're going to argue that it's okay to kill innocents for the greater good of society, you no doubt agree that abortion is a swell idea.

Or you could just admit the two issues aren't really related and argue the matter at hand instead of trying to shift the topic to more comfortable moral ground.

Shades of "If you support gay marriage you MUST support polygamist bestiality incest!!!" here. Can't you Pubbies argue anything without trying to shift the topic?

Edited, Wed Oct 13 16:01:02 2004 by Jophiel

Since I got a tubal, I guess this means I've deprived hundreds of eggs from becoming a life.

Ok, maybe not hundreds...

Unless it's pre-emptive murder, in which case it's fine.

Abortion is a pre-emptive strike against poverty and bad parenting

Tricky, I am using mental judo to show that death in one case due to diminished capacity and experience should apply to the other. The distinguishing difference is that an unborn child is inherently innocent since it has yet to commit a wrong, whereas a convicted felon is being given more consideration for being presumptively innocent despite mountains of evidence against him.

I would not argue they are even close to being the same, except Jophiel and Smash are perfectly fine with sending an innocent man to prison for his entire life, but apparently are unwilling to kill him.

But anyhow. I'd concede that for other than rhetorical reasons this only muddies the water. Still, the question remains why these two would willingly send a possibly innocent man to jail for his entire life? Since there are innocents being killed-- at least according to them and their sources-- then why are we sending anyone at all to prison? Is prison an acceptably semi-humane place to send innocent men?

Their problem lies in swallowing the, "You can't kill a man because he may be innocent" line, but yet are fine with caging him all his life. That doesn't wash with me.

Totem

I hate to do it, but this thread was getting far to serious and on-topic. Besides I didn't change anything, just a little selective cutting.

Yes.

We all have limits somewhere. Practically all the laws we have are just about were we decide the limits should go. Sometimes we decide arbitrarilly, sometimes we use statistics (even if only theoretical statistics). But even in that case, it's just a matter of deciding where to set the limit on how much statistical error we are willing to live with.

Furthermore, the legal system in this country is designed to minimize Type 1 errors (convicting an innocent) and to worry less about Type 2 errors (failing to convict the guilty). That's just the way the constitution is written.

So while we can accept a few Type 1 errors in conviction proceedings, we can accept even less in death penalty sentencing cases.

Why is it different? The death penalty is final. It can't be reversed. And yes, I do believe it's better to live in prison than to be executed.

Should you ever be sent to a life setnece, you always have the option of falling on your shiv. It's win-win!

If I ever get sent to prison, I would opt for solitary isolation, which isn't too far from my current state anyways.

Oh, I think it was a kneeslapper in 2000 as well. Along with hanging chads ; )

We can sentence people to non-lethal forms of punishment because chances are they will still be alive when and if they are found to be innocent. In the case of the death penalty there is always a strong chance the now innocent person could possible be dead.

I am not against the death penalty. I belive when we can apply it fairly, and with 100% accuracy for those horrendious cases where the convicted person is 100% unredemable, then the death penalty is justified.

Death penalty should be efficiently case-restrictive (not left to the judge to decide), and only applied when the evidence shows 100% clear that the offender is guilty.

As for the penalty on -16, that's just ******* sick. The maturity of a 16 person is not the same as a 21 year old. Most people are on the peak of puberty, they are still children. Setting the penalty for that age is just plain stupid.