If the death penalty is immoral.. ?

If the death penalty is immoral.. ? Than isn't putting someone in prison for the rest of life also immoral ?

RXR.: Exoneration?

RXR.: Yes

RXR.: Absolutely. When somebody commits murder, we should just understand that they were just angry at that moment or they had a bad life and then let them be free. I mean, murder is no big deal, obviously. Killing somebody is not a serious crime for you to be punished by being killed. Not at all. I don't know why anybody would think that.

I made this thread because the people who don't support the death penalty say that the death penalty is immoral. Meanwhile, locking someone in a cage for the rest of their life like shamoo from seaworld is somehow more moral than recieving death. Someone please explain that logic to me.

RXR.: If you're talking about degrees of morality, killing someone removes ALL their rights, which must surely be more immoral than only removing some of their rights by locking them up.

RXR.: Yeah, I did just before. In one word no less.

The death penalty is actually upholding the value of life in a way. It's like the old saying, "Kill one, save a thousand". It acts as an excellent deterrent. In that respect, it would be more moral in some instances. But capital punishment should be reserved for the most hard-core of criminals. This quote from an article from www.gotquestions.org sums it up pretty nicely:

"Sometimes, the best way to uphold the value of life is to end the lives of those seeking to destroy life."

Krazy: It acts as an excellent deterrent.

Not sure the stats would be on your side with this one!

nzlockie: Lol. How?

Krazy: Well, if you follow it through, most studies have found that the death penalty makes little difference as a deterrent to crime. Even "minor" crimes which carry the death penalty have failed to significantly reduce those crimes being committed.

The Death penalty has some merit in my opinion, but being a deterrent is not one of the stronger points.

nzlockie: No I'll have to disagree with you on that one. There are a lot of studies that seem to show that the death penalty reduces crime. Either way though, it seems like there are so many contradicting studies that statistics don't even matter. There a lot of studies that say it doesn't reduce crime here. Some say it reduces it over there. So we would have to opt for the death penalty as a result because of simple conventional wisdom, "I don't want to die, so I won't murder".

Krazy: I agree with you in regards to the stats being less important. How about the simple wisdom - "I won't get caught so I'll do what I want"?

Or, "I will definitely die if I DON'T do this crime, and I'll only have a chance of dying if I DO do the crime, so therefore I will do the crime."

Or, "I'm really hopped up on drugs/anger/righteous indignation right now - whoops I just killed someone!"

and so on and so on...

nzlockie: "hopped up"? Is that what the cool kids call it nowadays? Never heard that one before.

nzlockie: 1) You bring up an interesting point that people may not get caught. But not getting caught accounts for a very small percentage. In the USA, about 6,000 people get away for murder each year under the title "unsolved" cases (the national murder per year is much, much higher).

2) No, you will definitely die if you do this crime (I'm assuming your talking about murder). So don't murder.

3) That's why illegal drugs should remain illegal.

admin: I thought it was "hyped up". Same thing though.

Actually it's not. Oh well. Doesn't matter.

Krazy: What's your answer to exoneration then, out of curiosity?

admin: For some reason, that's a lot more common now than it was several decades ago. But nevertheless, the criminal justice system needs to be improved in that regard - not change the punishment.

I wrote an article on the death penalty a while back... http://www.sensiblesoapbox.com/articles/2015/3/17/our-rights-part-4-life Though, to be fair I did not do much research into it.

@RXR I think it bizarre to compare the death penalty morally to life in prison. If those two sentences are the same is twenty years in prison the same as life in prison, then is five years similar to twenty? What about no punishment at all? This seems to be what I am getting from @Admin, though I could be wrong. If its an all or nothing, the question becomes is removing someone from society moral at all? To this question I am sure there is an over whelming consensuses.

If the choice in society were exoneration or death penalty.... I'm not sure I would want to live in society.