AFAIK, people support it but many local governments do not. If "We the people" want it done, I say get busy. If you don't like it, don't run for office in a death penalty state. California has somewhere around 750 waiting to die of old age. I get that no one likes killing people - but they did. And they did it for fun, glee, stupidity, callousness, financial gain, you name it. I accept that like in every assembly line there are defects that must be scrapped. Humanity is no different.
I find it difficult to reconcile the notion that we are endowed by our creator with the inalienable right to life, yet, we presume the authority to take someone's life. It's a conflict for me because I have been a strong proponent for 'an eye for an eye' style of punishments, to include capital punishment, and yet we have this verbiage in our founding documents that seems to preclude putting wrong-doers to death as being righteous. An 'inalienable' right is, by definition, a right that cannot be taken away.
Their are other rights such as the "pursuit of happiness" which is ended for many when one takes the innocent life of another. It seems reasonable that the perpetrator forfeits his/her own life to secure rights for others. Perhaps if every American was made to watch the unedited versions of the October 7th massacre and were made to see what the actions of pure "evil" can do, I believe we would support a swift and definite exacting of capitol executions. Maybe, but I hope not, the sleeper cells allowed in this country through Biden's open borders will someday bring about the realization! As a "collective" we have a responsibility to stop the devil knocking on our door!
You are, of course, correct. Rights that can be taken away, are not, however, inalienable rights. The "inalienable" right to liberty, similarly, is taken any time any person is detained, arrested, and/or jailed against his will... hence, the conflict. The only conclusion I can arrive at is that the Creator did NOT, in fact, endow us all with any unalienable rights, because they all can, have, and must be able to be taken away.
We have inalienable rights given to us by God not to be trifled with by mankind.....but undoubtedly, because of sin, they are, then God gives us the inalienable responsibility to protect the innocent. It's really pretty easy to understand.
What does 'prevention' mean in this context? Are you suggesting arresting folks for things like thought crimes?
I tend to agree. However, I feel like folks were still pretty chaotic and brutal when getting hung was a real quick option in this country. Perhaps it creates the do whatever until you die kind of mentality. Likely what drive terrorism in so many places in the world these days. Why not? It's not like life for some of those folks is worse than the promise of an eternity of virgins... (Which is kind of funny given how virgins are only virgins until, well, you know.) But hey. I have a more medieval versional of this, where folks who work against their society, including those who abuse their power in positions of power are the folks i put front of line here. Not punishing these kinds of folks makes them always try to push to abuse more and more folks. In the end, I think government certainly can be abusive here. Look back to places like Maoist China, Stalin's Soviet Union. The perversion of government power to eradicate. It's very similar to how modern day democrats speak these days.
Because we're not endowed by our creator with anything. See that term for what it is. People from a far more religious era including religious nonsense in official documents. This was from before people even knew what germs were or that washing your hands was kind of important. This was before even electricity. I don't concern myself too much with what people from that era thought about the metaphysical world and certainly wouldn't ever base government policy on it. Luckily the Declaration of Independence is not a governing document.
Meh, Australia aint any worse off than a lot of other nations that didn't start out as penal colonies. Its prolly better off than a lot of nations that didn't start as penal colonies. Which is sortof the problem because now there arent any penal colonies. But with modern technology, there isn't really anywhere on the planet that we could have another Australia anyway. Escape would be too easy and/or too costly to reliably prevent without having all the same security measures necessary in regular prisons, so theres no real benefit. Australia only worked as penal colony back when the world was a lot bigger and sending someone to the other side of it actually meant they couldn't realistically come back. That's not the case today.
Thou shall not murder, is the accurate translation. The Hebrew word used is rasah, which means “murder.” The real question is, does rasah have more of a moral meaning or more of a legal one?
I don't think you get the real gist of what they meant in the DOI. It was simply to communicate to the King that the founders believed certain inalienable rights to be inherent at birth, not granted by some governing body. It would be just as valid to consider "your creator" to be your mom and dad, not some religious figure. The meaning of the words in the DOI are not invalidated by their religious connotations, because even if you remove them, the meaning conveyed is the same; We are born with our rights, not granted them by men. The Constitution is primarily focused on defining our form of governance, where all governmental power is delegated FROM the People, and thereby preventing that governing body from interfering with our inherent rights. The Bill of Rights, for instance, is all about limiting the government with regards to the rights of The People. So, if we are to believe that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are all inalienable rights, as described in the DOI, then government would have no authority to deprive anyone of those things. But that, of course, would render government completely ineffective in it's mission to administer justice and keep the peace.
You're side-stepping the question, Melb. So, once the crime has been committed that deserves capital punishment, do you support that sentence, or not? Personally, I feel that the only thing wrong with capital punishment is that it isn't used as a tool of real justice OFTEN enough, or SOON enough. Consider that even in those few states that still have capital punishment, the convict gets the death-sentence, and then kicks back and relaxes for ten to twenty years (or more), and very often the delay is for reasons that are absolutely ridiculous!
I think there are still a few other issues for capital punishment. The fact the crime which we believe they did deserves it is certainly one requirement, yes, but I think there are a couple of other requirements as well. For example, first we want to make sure there is a high enough certainty that they actually did it. This is not exactly the same thing as guilt. Some people may have trouble understanding this but there are lots of cases where we might choose to put someone in prison for life, but still have enough doubt about whether they are guilty that we are not prepared to kill them. In my opinion, execution should involve an even more stringent threshold of certainty. You can't just simplify this into 'guilty' or 'not guilty'. Then there are some types of cases where we may be able to agree that the offender theoretically deserves it, but there is some special reason that we should show mercy on them. There are even cases where an individual committed a murder and may morally deserve to be executed, but we as a society are pretty sure that was a rare one-time thing and that person is not going to do it again. It might have been a highly unusual and improbable situation that led to that person murdering someone. In those cases, we could be willing to have some mercy since we know that person is not a dangerous murderer. This could include so-called cases of "temporary insanity", brought on by an unusual and extreme situation, a type of situation that would push a significant percentage of the general population to commit murder if they had been the ones in that situation.
Then there may be situations where it may not be so clear whether the criminal should get the death penalty. Like a robbery gone wrong. The criminal may have gone into a situation not expecting to kill anyone but, but they ended up finding themselves in a situation where they had to kill to not be killed themselves, or to kill to be able to escape. Yes, the criminal should have known that committing the crime and going into that situation carried a risk of that outcome, but some could argue that is still a little different from going into a situation expecting to murder someone. The criminal may have the responsibility for those killings, but the "malice" and planned desire to kill was not really there. Some could argue they should just get life in prison rather than the death penalty. Maybe even in some situations, the expected chance that they would have to kill seemed so low, and only resulted from a highly unusual situation that the criminal would have had trouble foreseeing, that we are willing to sentence the criminal to less than life in prison. At that point, the criminal committed a killing out of desperation, acting out of a sense of "self defense" or self-preservation. Where the criminal found themselves in a situation they were not expecting, and did not have clear reason to expect.
Well, you're right about a robbery "gone-wrong", but that would be 2nd degree murder or more likely, manslaughter. Neither of those would be capital crimes. And, yes, convictions drawing capital punishment should indeed draw a full-blown second trial. But if after that the accused is still guilty, then he should be executed forthwith.
The difference between necessary killing and unecessary killing? I doubt He would expect us to die rather than defend ourselves and families from murder... or in the more extreme interpretations, expect us to not kill anything at all, how would we eat? I think its clear killing is sometimes justified and necessary. I don't reckon He would consider the killing of incarcerated prisoners to be justified or necessary. But neither do I think He would find their perpetual imprisonment to be acceptable either. This would seem be one of those problems that we are designed to figure out ourselves.
If one must kill do not do it with hate in your heart because that would be a sin. I don’t know how many hunters kill animals with hate.
Wasn't capital punishment part of God's instruction to the Hebrews? Executions in a lawful society is not murder.
What do you say to the victims family, "Tough, he didn't mean to shoot your son when your son tried to stop the robbery"?
