USA follows common law principles, doesn't it?
I just said that to cover that I'm specifically talking about America when I talk about the death penalty, because sometimes I forget to bring that up when I talk about data/trends.
You were questing state's authority. Now you accept it has authority in a situation it sees a threat to it's existence as it is. State also has a responsibility to secure the society of its citizens from the enemy within.
I'm saying that it can do this just fine with incarceration, whereas in the case of something like war, usually you do actually need to kill people in order to protect citizens. I don't think the state's authority should circumscribe all matters of life or death unless it can be shown that it is in fact necessary to do so.
In what sort of cases the death penalty is issued in USA? Exactly how many cases have you studied and actually looked at the data to reach that conclusion? Also how effective is incarceration? And what are challenges when keeping serious violent criminals inside?
Clarifying that my point is that if you're charging someone on a capital crime case, that means they're not coming out either way. So it doesn't really matter all that much if you kill them or if you let them live - there's not all that much at stake, as far as I can tell.
For death penalty cases: aggravated murder, so killing someone + something else to make it worse (killing children, murder-robberies, murder-rapes). There was a controversial ruling back in 2008 where the Supreme Court said you can't impose the death penalty for a non-homicide case, but I don't know how much the states have adapted to this, or if that ruling will stick.
As far as the effectiveness of incarceration goes, I mean you can't really study that for lifetime imprisonment or death row, can you? They never get out, unless they're exonerated after the fact. xD But for regular homicide, or rape, recidivism rates are pretty low. I don't know what you'd consider tolerable, but it's in like, the low single digits (1-3%). I don't really know what you mean by "how effective is incarceration," since the alternative to the death penalty is usually framed as life imprisonment, in the U.S. anyway.
Do you have any idea exactly what your argument is here? For I don't. This is what OP said:
My argument is what I said in my response to your previous quote, in the first paragraph.
We are talking about psychopaths and sociopaths- and usually they are put on trial only after they have committed a violent crime- that already caused severe harm to victims. Yes the state of their mind, at the time of the crime, is always a consideration - Mens rea must be established.
It is often one of the excuse they make while prosecution tries to prove that they knew what they were doing and were indeed a danger if they are let back in the society.
Sure, but like I said, I don't see how killing them makes a difference from just locking them up for life. Doesn't matter how psychopathic or violent they are (although, if they were super violent, they'd probably be incarcerated separately from everyone else, obviously). I'm looking at this in terms of "death penalty vs. life sentence," since that's the choice OP gave, not "death penalty vs. walk." They both accomplish the same thing. Society is protected (it's not like these dudes are escaping), and statistics on incidents of violence with lifers versus statistics of violence with death row inmates, afaik, don't exist (probably because it's not like death row inmates can really do all that much, given the circumstances of their incarceration separately from everybody else, from what I've read).
They can but when the reason is personal belief in a particular religion, you cannot treat is as a universally accepted and absolute one.
My original point was that there should be legal principles held above all else under which a country operates, and even though these legal principles are obviously constructed, we should try to emulate the ideal of the rule of law as closely as possible. I agree that all legal principles are constructed. My argument is that the absence of such a legal principle in the United States constitution doesn't mean that it shouldn't exist.
When I said this, I was responding to someone who I believed took it for granted that the state has the right to take the right to live away from those who take it away from someone else. My point was that it's not something that can be taken for granted.
Ideals too are subjective. Ideally people shouldn't be committing crimes in the first place. USA still has plenty of amendments and no one outright rewrites one. Even the ones who claim to impose a brand new. They just change something that changes nature of government and type of ruler and still may be keeping like 80% of old principles.
Not sure what you're trying to communicate to me here. I don't really disagree with anything that's being said in this quote, anyway. As far as ideals being too subjective goes - well, there has to be some kind of ideal. The debate is on what the ideal is, yeah? This is starting to feel very abstract, so I'm willing to drop this point unless I'm reminded of what the relevance was. xD
Death penalty isn't a crime against society. -_- A murder is a crime against society.
Explained to you in VMs that I typoed when I said that. xD My bad. I agree with this, basically.
Society is the one that feels impact. It directly affects law and order situation and feeling of safety within. And don' be surprised if people start feeling the impact as a whole. A rape case in Delhi got people up in arms - and instead of recognizing the public outrage over it Delhi and India was declared a rape capital by the countries with worse record. And yes as Indians even after 3 years people as a whole are tarnished- Germany opens it's gates for refugees where even criminals can just walk in without check, not just legit ones. One the other hand a German University refuses a admission to a normal Indian student with no criminal background at all, saying it cannot risk it's female students.
I'm well aware of this. I've said in other threads that in the States, Indian dudes can't really get into clubs (maybe this seems minor, but I'm saying that I'm extremely aware of how these stereotypes can pervade into other societies down to the most mundane levels xD) as easily as people of other ethnicities because of stereotypes arising from situations like this (even before that controversial case occurred). I also don't disagree with you about Germany and its handling of refugees, because
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. They should have checked themselves before coming at India so hard. Semi-feel like I'm going off topic though.
But India felt the impact from the international backlash, not as much from the crime itself (correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what you described, basically). I don't feel that this is comparable to your average death penalty case in the United States.
If criminals are treated lightly, other criminals also feel safer committing it and normal citizens who do not have to live in fear more and also deal with crap like that university professor. It can have long term effects.
Death penalty vs. life sentence =/= lightly, imo. Anyway, death penalty has no noted deterring effects as it is instituted in the U.S. Don't know if there's data on how much it deters crime elsewhere.
And one of the Delhi rape case convicts is already free-- since he was only 17 years and 8 months olds- technically a minor. The guy only inserted an iron rod in victim's anus and puled out her 95% of intestines that had to be cut off and even if she survived she wouldn't have been able to eat any food normally again. Her brother said most difficult was to answer her question in hospital when she was still in pain but hadn't realized how severe her injuries were and asking for food. He couldn't tell her the truth why they couldn't give her food. And the criminal is walking free just after 4 years.
Argument is about life sentence vs. death penalty. If you want to use the scenario of this case, I would say they should have locked him up for life. Cases with minors are a whole different debate, though.
I guess we can pray he is 'reformed' and be happy state didn't murder him.
I can concede that if rape was a death penalty case, rapes would (hopefully, honestly, I'm actually not all that convinced that they would...maybe murder-rapes would go up instead, and I'm not joking :|) plummet. xD Is it ever a death penalty case in India? In the United States, it would have to be cases involving minors, but I don't know if that's still legal.
The debate isn't really about whether or not rape should be a death penalty case. But, if you want my opinion, it should be held to the same standard as murder, and I think it's wrong that it isn't held to that standard. But I think this is off topic.
That said, despite the perception that rapists are gonna rape, recidivism for rape is in the single-digits. This might have something to do with the *** offender registry in the United States, and I don't know what systems exist elsewhere. The issue seems to be more about punishing rapists at all rather than whether the punishment works (since way too many rapists never even are apprehended). But again, verging on off-topic.
Nah theory of reform hasn't shown expected results either. Too often people get bail and repeat the same crime even while going though said reforms. It depends on individual cases so the option to deal with different types of criminals should be there too.
For minor cases, yes. Not as much for cases like rape and murder (like I said, recidivism in the single digits). We're not gonna start killing people or locking them up for decades over burglaries, I hope.
War time measures are different because of level and nature of threat. Keeping people and their property safe is responsibility of the state in both cases.
I agree, and like I said, I don't know that keeping people and their property safe requires the death penalty, because it hasn't really been convincingly shown to me that this is the case.
Life time sentence in India means 20 years max and usually it's 14 years and in practice most of them are out within 7 to 10 years. OP didn't say he was talking about just USA. But keeping people in Jail is costly.
Yeah, this is why I specified that I was talking about the U.S. I don't know how it really goes in other countries, or what the numbers are. In the U.S., at least, there are other factors besides actual time served; inmates on death row are significantly more expensive to care for than inmates in regular/lifetime incarceration, and litigating their cases is more expensive. I don't know what the time spent on death row is in other countries (where there are death rows, anyway).
I know that in the U.S. you're pretty much saving quite a bit of money if you abolish the death penalty entirely and replace all those cases with life imprisonment cases, and I posted on this earlier in the thread with the sources and such.
Some final points:
- I think you mentioned something about how since criminals are different due to intent, the punishments available should be different, and death penalty should be an option when it's clear that the criminal is a true psychopath and only exists to murder, rape, and plunder (not in these words, obviously)? I can't find the quote for some reason, but I'm pretty sure I read it. Just in case, as far as what I think about that goes: still not really convinced that life incarceration doesn't solve the problem. Like I've been saying, in the United States, at least, monetarily, it's not a question of it being more expensive.
- Recidivism is often prevented not only by the fact that we threw people in jail, but by the fact that once they're out of jail, they aren't ever going to be a full citizen again. Felons will always be felons in the US system. Their mobility in the country is limited, their status is going to be recorded and known by their employers most of the time, etc. So it's much harder to get into jail for something felonious (like murder, and especially like rape), come back out, and get away with or consider doing the same thing twice. It's not just about the punishment rendered by the court. And if you're on trial for a capital crime case, you're not getting out, death or life, either way. So this is kind of OT, but it addresses some of what you're talking about.
In summary, the sense of safety you're talking about - I don't see why just keeping that person locked up for life isn't enough to maintain it. Life imprisonment vs. death penalty isn't a question of reform. Reform them to do what? Be in prison more?
