(no subject)

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

I'm going to attempt to argue a theory here; many may jump on me for the real-world practice that goes on, but this is not about that.

In theory, I support the death penalty. This is an eye-for-an-eye sort of justice.
If you take anothers life, delibrately, in cold blood, in a pre-meditated fashion, you have lost your right to live, IMO.

Now, since this penalty is to be administered by the govt, there ought be some strict guidelines. Here is what I propose:

Either:
A) You are caught in the act by the authorities (but the person dies before he/she can be rushed to the hospital)
B) There is overwhelming evidence against you--personally I feel that four criteria would be met for this:

fingerprint
DNA
eye-witness
video of event (audio is a plus, but I feel these four are sufficient to ensure that the guilty party is the one being punished)

These strict requirements, are, to my knowledge, not required anyplace where the death penalty is enacted. Thus my theoretical support of the death penalty does not support the real-world way in which the death penalty is applied in the US (or elsewhere)

I recognize that in the US (and prolly elsewhere too) the death penalty is applied in a biased manner and that in too many cases the wrong person is executed. I feel that the criteria I laid out are sufficient to ensure no wrongful executions -- though, of course, I am open to hear contrary views on that.

Let us put aside issues of economic cost (which vary) and issues of how to execute (which vary) and focus on the question of: "Is execution for murder an acceptable punishment?"

I feel that it is; I feel that one forfits their right to live when they steal that right from another. I believe in human rights that are inherent but not absolute--the human rights that we all have are what we start with, but we do not necessarily retain them forever. We can lose them.

Thoughts?

Comments

[zentiger.livejournal.com]

On further reflection, I think you've got a much bigger mess on your hands. What do you think about this line of thought:

The thing with eyewitness testimony is, it's really easy for Authority to convince people (with leading questions and whatnot in early interviews) that they saw things they didn't see. This is especially true if, say, a police detective tells Johnny Eye-Witless that they've got the other three things already, and if this murderer is going to be punished justly, they need him to remember exactly what he saw (and so on and so forth).

So you'll want to make "eyewitness testimony" into "real eyewitness testimony". But "real eyewitness testimony" just means "I saw that person do it", which means that the person is actually guilty. So it's justifiable to put someone to death just in case they're actually guilty of murder... but that renders the other qualifications irrelevant and brings everything back to eyewitness testimony, doesn't it?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Real eyewitness testimony is just as important as actual video of the crime in question; if we have crystal clear video of the perp in question robbing a store, shooting the clerk, and walking out (and the clerk manages to get a couple of bits of the defendents DNA under his fingernails) and you find the murder weapon with DNA but no eye-witness....we can conclude the perp is guilty right?

It seems like any one of the criteria could be missing and the others would suffice, but the idea of needing all four is to serve as a check and balance--it's unlikely all would be tampered/forged/misleading.

The question is about whether its ok, once certainty is determined; not how to go about determining certainty.

[zentiger.livejournal.com]

I think you're missing my point. We can conclude that the accused is guilty, by your measures, just in case the accused is actually guilty, since you want to rule out faked evidence. But that makes your evidentiary standard meaningless, since it's just a complicated way of saying "that guy is actually guilty".

Now, if you want to talk about whether the death penalty is permissible given an uncontroversially guilty agent, that's a different kettle of fish entirely. You might find Montague's Punishment as Societal Defense enlightening here, or any of the proportionality literature by Jeff MacMahon.