There is no place for the death penalty in a civilized country!
Do you have any sources supporting the claim that does actually deter anybody?
With that said, I don't think it's true that the US has, per capita, significantly more violent crime than the median Western country. What we have is a LOT more guns, which increase the probability that our violent crime becomes lethal.
We DO have vastly more incarceration than most other countries, though.
Many people are also very confused about the justice system in America. It isn't about determining the truth. It's about trying to get you convicted, to advance the career of the prosecutor.
In that sense, the 'justice department' is anything but. The 'innocence project[0]' has shown time and time again that truth finding isn't the goal.
In the mean time, study after study shows that the death penalty doesn't deter people from crime and it's much more expensive than long prison sentences.
However, a strong reason not to execute people, is acknowledging that the 'justice system' is made of people who can make mistakes and that we can never be that certain.
Instating the death penalty shows a lack of humility and shows that it's absolutism is mostly for political gain. It scores with more authoritarian inclined voters who like 'simple solutions' and ignore all the complicated context.
Note the cost of incarceration is around ~$70k/year; enough to save lives, house people, heal people, feed people etc if put to other uses.
The first law I would introduce would be that the death sentance only applies to people who demanded it publically before.
1. Kill someone who’s about to kill someone?
2. Kill someone in a defensive war to defend your freedoms?
3. Kill someone by prioritizing things other than their medical care, eg in hospice?
4. Kill someone by letting them smoke/drink/overeat?
5. Kill someone by letting them starve?
If you want to say that no country is civilized yet then hey I’m with ya. Otherwise, it’s not quite so simple. The death penalty is a tragic injustice, I agree, but just saying “it’s murder” is not a serious engagement with the issue IMO.
If it's illegal to kill a human being, then it's illegal. The existence of a death penalty where the state is able to do it in certain cases, as in the main case where someone themselves has broken the rule and murdered, for me, still does not justify any kind of legalistic justification for sanctioning they be killed. While "the state" is this abstract entity formed by all of us, the state has to act through people, who then have to be involved in taking a life. The state's premeditation of the killing of the murderer is even more premeditated and drawn out form of murder. It's easy to be blinded by the language used around this towards what is happening. I believe even further that if the state is allowed to do it, it opens a loophole in thought that could actually cause more murders to happen, because if the state can do it, then maybe I'll do it too...
I can't even make a statement whether killing is always morally injustifiable or not.
I propose death by hanging for repeat littering and speeding near a school. I bet that’d be effective.
You seem to be suggesting that because murders still happen, we know the death penalty has no deterrence value? That's not how deterrence works.
If you want to consider cost, it costs literal millions to execute someone.
But he was guilty and it would probably have been better to execute him because what if he did something else wrong?
I'm so tired of the "next Einstein" pithy replies. These are adults who have done heinous crimes against innocent people. Justice requires severe consequences.
It wouldn't. There are cases where we do know someone's guilt with 100% confidence, but in my country we still don't execute them.
Think hard about why someone commits a crime. What is their background, their circustances, and what would have prevented it from happenign. Then think about what you think the purpose is of a sentencing? Is it for revenge, revalidation, setting an example, or removing undesireables from society (temporarily, indefinitely, or permanently)?
I think that the kind of crimes which lead to a death sentence happen because the perpetrator is a bad person who likes to hurt others. There's no "background" or "circumstances" that would make you break into a woman's house and stab her to death - to do such a thing, you have to either not know or not care that it's wrong.
That doesn't by itself prove that the death penalty is right, or even that people who commit these kind of murders can never be rehabilitated. But it's really disturbing to me how often people whitewash the specific crimes death row inmates are accused of, as though we're all a couple missed paychecks away from randomly murdering people.