Juvenile Executions

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Because of the age of majority, Darkwolf. Look, when you hit 18 you are placed in a position of greater responsibility, but you also gain a greater amount of priveleges and freedoms that you didn't have before - like the right to vote for example. To me, executing someone under 18 is placing the responsibilities onto them without incurring the commensurate freedoms and priveleges as well.

edit: spelling

[ March 03, 2005, 17:05: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

Shaman,

You said:

I disagree, we actually don't. You undermine your own arguement with your statement of:

This is a judgement call, hence the need for judges and juries. You are just arbitrarily picking a number.

Again, explain to me why a person 17 years, 364 days old doesn't deserve the death penalty, but if they commit their crime one day later they do.

 

I am a liberal but I favor the death penalty and I truly favor putting children to death who commit heinous crimes.

For one thing, we put WAYYY to much value on human life. Don't get me wrong, innocent and law-abiding people we should do everything in our power to protect. But people act like putting the 14 year old who raped and stabbed someone 134 times before slaughtering his family and laughs about it in court, to death is going to cause the planet to fly out of orbit!? Putting such an individual to death may upset his parent(s) and for this I am sorry. Allowing him to live may upset or even harm countless people(especially if he manages to wriggle out of prison on a technicality or somesuch).

Right here in WA state there is a case of two kids, 14 and 15(I believe) who lured and stabbed to death an autistic boy some time ago. The state has decided to try them as adults.
The real disturbing thing is that in court whenever these boys have appeared they are laughing and behaving as if they are being honored for some achievement.
Even if they were remorseful about what they did, I would want them to be put to death for the same reason I would want any heinous murderer put to death.

Because we are not short on people here on this planet. We don't have room for even all of the relatively decent people who will comprise the world's population in the next hundred years. Spending so much time and resource trying to prefectly preserve every waste of skin we can is just nonsensical!?!

There were two brothers, I don't remember their names, who some time ago decided to break into a home in Denver(IIRC) or Wisconsisn, where two couples lived. Dateline did a special about the case.
After tieing them up at gunpoint they forced the two grils to have sex with one another, in front of their bound fiances/BFs. They then raped the girls.
Next they forced the men to rape the other man's fiancee/GF. Then they raped the girls some more themselves.
They further entertained themselves by beating their victims repeatedly.
At one point, they forced the naked victims into their own vehicle and forced them to accompany the kidnappers/rapists to the ATM, where they emptied their accounts.

Eventually they took the four people out to a snow-covered field where they had promised they were going to release them. Instead they shot each in the back of the head in the headlights of the stolen vehicle. One of the girls managed to still be alive and, possibly suspecting this, they drove the SUV over her to make sure she was dead.

Amazingly the girl survived and managed to make her way to an apartement after the men drove off and get help.

In court, the brothers repeatedly smiled and chuckled as the witnesses testified to their actions. Their defense was to point their fingers at the other brother and claim that the other brother had acted alone. Even while the jury was passing the sentence of death down they were laughing.

People like that should not only be put to death, they should be stripped naked and forced to endure the same things they put their victims through. If we are afraid of losing our humanity by carrying out such punishment then we should let those who have already lost their humanity(Serial Killers on death row for example) carry out the punishment.

If it were up to me personally, I would make it so that any law you break voids your right to being protected by that law. So if you burglarize someone's house, your own property is fair game for every scoundrel in the neighborhood. If you murder someone then those who want to kill someone but don't want to be punished for it can take out their carnal desires on you with impunity.
This would of course entail a sort of 'Scarlett Letter' type branding of some sort which would be nifty.

Humans are only the most important thing in the universe to humans. The sun will still shine after we are extinct and putting to death people whose wiring is so bad that they must rape and kill is not going to affect the space-time continuum.


I also don't buy this "age of majority" argument. If you are old enough to kill someone and sentient enough to try and hide/cover up the act, then you are old enough to pay for it.

I also don't buy the "Better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent be found guilty(or put to death for that matter)". I may feel differnetly when I am teh innocent about to be put to death but the world should not rationally operate according to how I, myself might feel if I were in a particular situation.

Some people are simply too far gone to be helped. There is a point where your stove or car is so beyond repair that you cannot fix it adn trying to do so will result in injury. You chalk it up as a loss and throw it out.

This is a sort of detached 'vulcan' way of looking at the value of life but I think we have to take such an approach sooner or later.

 

I agree with RuneQuester. Some of the "treatments" you've mentioned might be a bit extreme, but I could see myself accepting that. It comes with seeing more and more crime on the news, brutal murders for nothing more than spare change, 14 year olds beating up helpless grannies, pizza delivery men getting smacked on the head and left to die just for kicks. It has to stop here. Why should a "child" be immune to the death penalty? (S)he is still just another human being. A killer is still a killer regardless if (s)he's 14 or 41.

 

The reason we still have crimes like these is because we DON'T stoop to these bastards' level. And, no, DarkWolf, while you do make some valid points, you are wrong. We will still be better than these SOB's because we wouldn't do these things to innocent people. It would not be a police state if there were cameras in public places, because your in public, and people, if their around can see what you do. I do not think that would be violating the rights of anyone. Something else we should do is to have more and better paid and trained police. And have televised executions. These people are a waste of carbon and should be thrown into the compactor feet first. I know Saddam did this, and if he only did it to vicious criminals, I would have no problem with that. But he didn't. A responsible leader would know how far to go, and would not use these methods unneccessarily. Anyone who does, deserves to be punished in the manner they punished their victims. These kinds of people don't deserve to be part of our society. What RuneQuester said about taking away their rights in the manner they took away other's is a damn good idea.

 

I'm not gonna touch that with a 30-ft pole...

 

I'm against death penalty if separation of the criminal from the society can be achieved by other means. I am in favour of death penalty in such circumstances that this separation couldn't be achieved without physically eliminating the criminal in case of some horrible crimes. The rights of the peaceful citizens who just want to live undisturbed by criminals always go before the rights of the criminals. It's just criminals still have some rights, like the right to live. Doesn't mean a sofa and a DVD player with a shelf of movies for them, although being imprisoned for life is already an extremely harsh punishment even without making the conditions austere.

I think many people would prefer death penalty to life imprisonment connected with work with no view to getting out. I just don't think it's good for the society to kill by an order. Even in this way.

 

Actually, dmc, I was thinking more of the whole "slippery slope" argument, but you've pretty much nailed it: people cannot be trusted with power like that. What was it that Douglas Adams said? I can't remember the whole paragraph, but the ultimate logic was that those individuals who want to be in a position of power should under no circumstances be allowed to hold it. In short, people are a problem.

The law of diminishing returns applies - more police does not usually equal less crime. And while you're at it, try to get the police onside after you tell them how to do their jobs and you'll hit a wall of resistance so fast you'll swear the air just turned solid. Even saturation policing doesn't stop offending. At best, you might stop a few kids from spray-painting a wall or blowing up a letter box. How do you keep an eye on everyone, all the time? Secret police? Phone taps? Sub-dermal identifier implants?

As for televised executions... I'm sorry, but this is going too far. As I said earlier, you won't dissuade a lot of people, and more often than not, people kill in a state of agitation where they do not consider the consequences. What's the solution to people who can sidestep the letter of the law - change the process or limit the rights of the accused?

Like dmc said, it's 1984, and if you had to watch everything you did for fear of being brutalised by the justice system, I don't think you'd be happy with it. The person most likely to kill you is your lover or the person they're having an affair with, not some punk on the street. There are some truly evil people out there, and they must be brought to justice, but who are you - who is anybody - to determine who should live or die (especially if it's a stupid kid)? Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, how can you sit in judgement over another person and say that you are justified in executing them for having killed?

If we could shake everyone out of their collective paranoia, maybe we'd pay attention to some other problems and fix them instead of cowering in our homes, carrying weapons for protection or demanding that criminals be hung, drawn and quartered. But that's not going to happen, and the powers-that-be have no interest in making it happen. So long as you're afraid, they can do whatever they want if they can convince you it's for your protection.

You don't want to live in a world like that, Ravynn.

 

No it's not. The last reliable figures that I've seen place the cost of keeping a person in prison amounts to $50,000 per year. Assuming the person was twenty years old when recieving the life sentence, that comes to $3,000,000 without even taking the costs of the trial into account.

When you take the costs of all the legal hassle, then yes, the death penalty is more expensive. In all honesty though, it only costs a few cents to kill someone.

I've made it clear in the past that I think the justice system places far too much emphasis on the rights of the criminals. Like some of the others here, I'd like to see the death penalty in place for any sort of murder, rape, or other sexual crime.

RuneQuester, you sound like you're describing a system similar to Hammurabi's Code of Laws. I should point out that that system was very effective at keeping order (at least, much moreso than what we have today). I wouldn't be bothered at all if a system like that were put into place.

A police state isn't needed to ensure security for the citizens. What we need is to provide some incentive to not commit crimes. Currently, there's no real negative consequences to commit violent crimes so people are more inclined to do them.

To get on topic, I do not see a problem with executing juveniles for violent crimes. Any half-inteligent jury should be able to figure out whether the person fully understood what they were doing or not. I have known minors that have committed crimes because they know that there are no serious consequences to their actions.

I don't see a problem with people paying for that. It isn't as difficult to control your emotions as the justice system seems to think.

I also do not think we should go that far. Executing people is one thing, but televised executions are barbarous.

The Supreme Court should not be able to make this decision. Nowhere in the Constitution does the Federal Government have the authority to decide upon issues such as this, although the states do through the 10th Amendment.

 

RuneQuester wrote:

The sun will shine regardless, so I really don't see your point. Do you care for the victims in your tales? No, you don't, you are just living in fear that the same may happen to you. Your argument with the space-time continuum just means that the universe doesn't care at all. The same would hold for letting the Bad live and killing all the Good.

Although I think your attitude is healthy and normal for any human being, you have to realize that a state/government has to think on a completely different level. For one thing, a state has to be above emotions. After you strip the emotions off your post, what is left?

Your examples are all about fear, helplessness and anger. I don't see how your proposed system would have any impact on the amount of fear you carry with you throughout your life. You just swap one source of fear for another, a threat from society against a threat from the government. I for one would hate to live in your world - and that is not because I am criminal.

Your underlying idea is that the legal system is perfect in detecting crimes and serving justice. Well, the thing about humans is: we're not perfect. If we were, we wouldn't need your system.