Well if the alternative is death or [some horrible punishment worse than death] the result would be the same either way I expect.
You make a good point though that a bad enough punishment for a crime that doesn't include killing would only encourage killing. Now that I think it about it I can see that this is the logic. the current justice system appears to work with
A possible way around this would be to bring back medieval style execution methods, where a relatively less monstrous crime leads to a quick death while a worse one would lead to a painful drawn-out death, but this also suffers from the problem that meting out such punishment causes the punisher to become less human. Or you could combine the methods and give the lesser ones death and the worse ones the fate worse than death that my friend envisioned. Again, not really feasible imo. Or you could only give out the death penalty in cases that included killing already, which brings us to the current US justice system I believe? Although I still believe the punishments for rape and the like are far too light, and it implies that murdering someone with intent, even if it is done relatively humanely, is somehow worse than abuse given that one results in a significant portion of one's life gone (somewhere between 20 years to a life sentence I believe?) and the other often leads to somewhere between 5-20, practically a slap on the wrist when you compare the two.
So what kind of crimes would warrant capital punishment in your opinion?
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Capital Punishment
Date: 2006-09-08 03:45 am (UTC)You make a good point though that a bad enough punishment for a crime that doesn't include killing would only encourage killing. Now that I think it about it I can see that this is the logic. the current justice system appears to work with
A possible way around this would be to bring back medieval style execution methods, where a relatively less monstrous crime leads to a quick death while a worse one would lead to a painful drawn-out death, but this also suffers from the problem that meting out such punishment causes the punisher to become less human.
Or you could combine the methods and give the lesser ones death and the worse ones the fate worse than death that my friend envisioned. Again, not really feasible imo.
Or you could only give out the death penalty in cases that included killing already, which brings us to the current US justice system I believe? Although I still believe the punishments for rape and the like are far too light, and it implies that murdering someone with intent, even if it is done relatively humanely, is somehow worse than abuse given that one results in a significant portion of one's life gone (somewhere between 20 years to a life sentence I believe?) and the other often leads to somewhere between 5-20, practically a slap on the wrist when you compare the two.
So what kind of crimes would warrant capital punishment in your opinion?