What margin of error is acceptable to you in applying the death penalty?

People in the old West wagon trains faced wild Indians, tornadoes, snakes, starvation, lack of water, deep snow, disease, infection with NO antibiotics, freezing nights, roasting days, river and canyon crossings and back breaking work, plus working with horses that could beak your skull with a single kick or beack your neck when they bucked you off!

But what was the NUMBER ONE cause of death among these travelers well-armed for "protection" and food hunting?

The graveyards in the old West along wagon trail routes were filled with victims killed by accidental or drunken/angry/mistaken gunfire.


Read more: The Parts of a Wagon Train | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/info_8237125_parts-wagon-train.html#ixzz22vp6i5rc

 

I am SOOO amazed that the people who don trust the government to handle basic services or regulation for the citizens are DESPERATE to give the state the power of DEATH over its citizens.

 

And not a single one claimed to be a victim.


and btw: The leading cause of death in the 1700's, 1800's and even 1900's is not and was not by gunfire. I'll let you look that one up.

even today, your odds of dieing from a gun are somewhere below slipping in the shower and drowning

 

Who are these people that you speak of?

 

Dead people usually don't CLAIM ANYTHING!

I DID look it up!

That is why I included a citation.

The specific sub-group here is people going West, which was a highly armed group of people who loaded up on guns to "protect themselves from danger". Sadly, that did NOT protect themselves from the guns!

Kind of pathetic, there, for someone who suggests that OTHER people "should look things up"!

You ignorance is unparalleled!

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm

Deaths from shootings are 10.2 per 100,000, a little MORE than 1/6th of ALL accidental deaths! 18% of accidental deaths from SHOOTING! 31,347 in 2009!

Shooting deaths are ONLY exceeded by Motor Vehicle deaths and Poisoning Deaths!

How far off from REALITY are YOUR figures?

Deaths in Bathtubs = 300!

Drowning - 3,800

What a FAIL! I suggest you Google "accidental shootings" and settle down to read even the last month or two of stories. Toddlers, mothers, fathers, sons neightbors, friends, bystanders, ALL people that are killed "accidentally" each and every DAY!

 

"People in the old West wagon trains faced wild Indians, tornadoes, snakes, starvation, lack of water, deep snow, disease, infection with NO antibiotics, freezing nights, roasting days, river and canyon crossings and back breaking work, plus working with horses that could beak your skull with a single kick or beack your neck when they bucked you off!"

And not a single one of your examples was due to a gun. So just what were people supposed to defend themselves with? Snowballs?




and btw: Your numbers are wrong. (from your link)

+ The 15 leading causes of death in 2009 were:
1. Diseases of heart (heart disease)
2. Malignant neoplasms (cancer)
3. Chronic lower respiratory diseases
4. Cerebrovascular diseases (stroke)
5. Accidents (unintentional injuries)
6. Alzheimer’s disease
7. Diabetes mellitus (diabetes)
8. Influenza and pneumonia
9. Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis (kidney disease)
10. Intentional self-harm (suicide)
11. Septicemia
12. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
13. Essential hypertension and hypertensive renal disease (hypertension)
14. Parkinson’s disease
15. Assault (homicide)

(I like your emoticons, they're cute)

 

Those who regard their country as "exceptional" are the real arrogant ones, xenophobic belief based on looking down on other nationalities.

The supreme arrogance that tells us to shut up because we are not Americans.

I am off topic? And yet it was you who started this diversion with this:

Could there be anything more arrogant?

Apparently...non Americans cannot have an opinion on the Death Penalty worth debating because we "do not understand the concept of freedom".

Arrogance?

No, most of what you wrote was drivel:

Now you introduce "republic". Struggling, so you have to change the argument? Did you not know that Britain was a republic in 1649?

Facts, history knowledge ... or "arrogance" if you prefer.... Britain has been ruled by commoners for centuries.

People who ran the USA in 1780 onwards were rich and elite just as those who were members of the House of Commons. It is true that the property voting qualification in the USA was less rigorous, but it was there and it elected people who would have been quite at home in a European legislature (Tom Paine was a member of the French Parliament). American leaders were hardly "peasants". They were very well educated as only the elite were. To pretend that the USA was run by a gang of farmboys and shopkeepers is utter nonsense. Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams were exactly the kind of people who were in the House of Commons in Britain.

So you concede that liberty is a relative, rather than an absolute concept?

Of course that concept was limited, as it was in England AND America in 1775. But Englishmen (and hence their American cousins) understood concepts of liberty going back centuries. That's why the USA has habeas corpus and looks to Magna Carta as one of its great constitutional documents, being the forerunner of American liberty.

Built on concepts of English liberty.

Non existent English liberty according to you.

Now we have lies and sophistry. Let's have some facts here in response to your distortions. I suppose you will call it arrogance. I call it truth:

1. There has never been any basis in English common law for slavery. There was never any such a disgraceful legal ruling as Dred Scott. Ever. A slave, setting foot on English soil - was immediately free. In 1702, Justice Holt stated "as soon as a negro comes to England he is free; one may be a villein in England, but not a slave". This was upheld in the Somersett case in the 1770's where the proposal that "the air of England is to pure for any slave to breathe" was confirmed.

2. The problem for Britain was the slave trade from which Britain benefited. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807.

3. Further to that, between 1808 and 1860, the Royal Navy conducted extensive campaigns against the slave trade including making slaving an act of piracy and punishable by Death in 1822.

4. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1838 after legislation in 1833.

By any comparison liberty - when applied to black people - was something that was miles further ahead in England than in the USA. Britain never defined black people as less than human, as the USA did. It never stopped black people from voting on account of their colour. The USA still was denying black people proper democratic representation until the 1960s. Some democracy!

On this basis liberty and democracy are RELATIVE matters. Of course the USA had some liberty and democracy in 1776. So did England in 1649. After 1776 the American Republic was MORE democratic than the UK, for a limited time. The independence of the USA helped weaken the British monarchy so that by the nineteenth century on matters of liberty Britain and the USA were broadly comparable.

Democracies are not invented by single events - that is history for the simplistic moron who can only manage to parrot a set of dates. Democracy develops as a process. In England, democracy and English liberty were developing since the Dark Ages, when a jury of a man's peers policed the farmlands of the local communities to ensure fair play and cooperation. Ancient communities developed parliaments around the countryside to determine matters of policy independent from the King. Right through Magna Carta, the struggles of de Montford against the King, in the Peasants Revolt of 1390 with Wat Tyler, with the Lollards, the Republic in the seventeenth century, the Diggers and the Levellers - who developed concepts on which the USA is built....England has a long and honorurable tradition of liberty that was continued in the USA.

And so...to get back to the matter in hand...we are perfectly well qualified to judge matters of universal relevance - that of the Death Penalty. We perfectly understand why we had the Death Penalty - it emerged in times where correctional facilities were non existant and practically everyone got hung for everything - or maimed. The administration of justice by the people, and not by the King, through due process of law and trial by jury - these are the foundations of English liberty which were borrowed wholesale by Americans.

To argue that Europeans do not understand liberty is just a disgusting, ignorant act, and was employed in this debate to abuse and disrespect the person you were debating with. It showed you had lost the argument.

I don't know whether you are ignorant or mischevious here, but no British monarch has had real power in Britain for nearly two hundred years. Even in 1776 the powers of the monarch were severely limited in England and power rested in parlaiment which was elected. The "commons" in England, through Parliament, had to consent to be taxed for hundreds of years before 1776.

Again: the disgusting arrogance of American exceptionalism?

Britain had representative democracy in 1776 based on property qualification, just as in the USA did in its early days. Elections were open to all who qualified, as in the early USA and there were political parties, with changes of government all the time, uncontrollable by the King and often a government that he didn't like. Like the US, England had TWO POLITICAL PARTIES that were antagonistioc to each other - Whigs and Tories. A suggestion this was some sort of Stalinist one party state is a disgraceful and deceitful lie.

The separation of powers was the result of a long struggle over centuries against the monarchy. No monarch could raise taxes without the consent of parliament and his executive was checked by Parliament. The elected body, the House of Commons, was a body which excluded the aristocracy, and it was made up of COMMONERS.

When the cry went up for "no taxation without representation" in the thirteen colonies, this was a cry for THE SAME RIGHTS that Englishmen enjoyed AT THE TIME. Because in England there had been "no taxation without representation" for centuries. As for representation, there were representative assemblies in America in colonial times, along the British model, but differing from Britain in that the King was not obliged to seek their consent for taxes. After independence, British political institutions were so central in the design of the new American ones. Americans saw themselves firmly in the tradition of those English who had for centuries fought for liberty. Americans improved those institutions. They did not invent them.

The British judiciary had enjoyed considerable independence from the executive and the judiciary in history. The rule of law itself is part of a long British struggle to limit the power of the King. To suggest that the separation of powers in seventeenth century Britain is some sort of Stalinist deception is only an act of intellectual hooliganism. Monarchs conceded these institutions as limitations to their power and it was in the British struggle with monarchy, and the British struggle for liberty, that American freedoms were created, long before the USA.

So it is completely wrong to assert that no non-American can have a valid opinion on the Death Penalty because they don't understand the concept of liberty. Such a statement is supreme in its arrogance: exceptionalist, ignorant, deceitful and ultimately...desperate.

 

Didn't say that.

You do know what the word assumption means , take away the umption and what do you have?

If a person confess to murder if the crime is confirmed by foreinsic and criminal evidence?

 

Maybe the gun laws are meant to defend the innocent and cowardly, maybe that's why gun laws are so lact of background checks , but in Auurora 12 people are proof somebody's a bit slow on the draw of defending the innocent and cowardly.
As far as the word cowardly more than one guy took a bullet to save their girlfriend in Aurora.

While the great NRA makes speeches and money, and ask for lesser gun control and less background checks.

 

How can a person who confess to cold blooded murder be considered innocent?

I don't think the boys on Wall street would like everybody being armed protestors can be ..shall we say unpredictable?

 

About 15 years ago I needed a hip replacement, my surgeon was reluctant to do it as I was fairly young. I asked what was my biggest risk. He said that 1 or 2 percent don't make it through the operation. I said well those odds aren't too bad.
"No",he said, "Unless you are one of them, then it wouldn't matter if it was 100%

 

So, did you have the opperation and get on with your life? Or did you just live a miserable existance because the odds weren`t perfect?

 

Well at that time I wasn't living a miserable existence and I found I could manage another 5 years before I NEEDED one and as I was widowed with young children I waited 5 years

 

Good to see you didn`t let the odds bluff you. Regarding the topic, I voted zero as the acceptable risk for the DP, but that`s a different story.

 

I take out the garbage at home on a weekly basis. There`s always a risk of throwing something good out, but I don`t want to live in a growing pile of garbage.

 

Put it this way, the DP isn`t about revenge, it`s just cleanup. OK.

 

No margin of error is acceptable for the conviction of an innocent person, whether it involves capital punishment or not. That said, the common acceptance that death is the worst fate that can befall a human being is absurd. There are worst case scenarios that - to be concise - I will not go into here. Suffice it say that the death penalty as "punishment" for capital murder is nothing more than a lenient reprieve - the main reason why it's not a deterrent. Life IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT without possibility of parole is less humane and serves as a better deterrent.

 

Over and over again it has been clearly established that the biggest deterrent to someone considering committing a crime is how much they assess the probability of being caught. The truth is that most criminals do not think through the consequences of their actions, whether there is a death penalty or not. In the case of more rational criminals who do consider the consequences of their actions, they are primarily concerned with the probability of being caught, as to most people a single day in prison is about the worst fate that they can imagine befalling them, and to even the most hardened criminals, twenty years plus is an unthinkable punishment.

 

Ridiculous! If murder became legal, there would be bodies stacking up everywhere. Most "people" live by an acceptable standard determined by society, and the fact that murder is a punishable offense, keeps a large percentage of the population on the straight and narrow. Saying it isn't a deterrent because there are limited few who still do the crime, may or may not mean it was a deterrent to them, but by majority standards, many people do not murder their enemies (or that nosey old lady across the alley who continues to call the cops and the home owners association on you every time you belch) because they know they will most likely be held accountable for their actions.

 

Do you ever read what you write. Where did I say that murder should be legal? Is this ignorance (you really do think that I argued that murder should be legal?) or deceit (another low misrepresentation)?

The point is that there is no deterrent from capital punishment. Now see if you can handle two variables in an argument (the real Joe Sixpack would have no chance and would celebrate such inability as a virtue). Deterrence is a product of how much someone thinks they will be caught and the punishment they think they will get.

As most criminals don't think, then deterrence is 0 x 0.

To those who do calculate, they focus on making the likelihood if getting caught small because broadly speaking they regard a sentence if both death and 20 years both as unacceptably high.

So it's 0.001 x 100 versus 0.001 x 50. In both cases, death penalty or prison, neither is a significant factor in the deterrent.

I expect this argument will prove too complex for many conservatives and they will have to create ludicrous straw men that opponents of capital punishment want to legalize murder. The question I want answering: is this ignorance or deceit?

 

I realize you are so busy trying to make a case for your 'flawed opinion' but there is no such thing as an absolute deterrent. Some people are simply not right in the head, and/or self destructive by nature. The fact is that most people will not commit the crime of murder because there are consequences to pay for such an act. Criminal incarceration/life sentence, and a potential death sentence, being two of the major concerns.


Nobody said you said it should be legal that is your straw man. The argument was if it was legal more people would be committing the act, but with the threat of having their own life destroyed in the process, with a long life prison sentence, or the threat of losing their own life, most find other ways of dealing with their hatred towards other individuals without killing them. So it is a deterrent for the overwhelming majority of the population, who in all likelihood would kill somebody in their life time if not for the repercussions associated with committing such an act.

 

I generally am not answering, because this has nothing to do with reality.

In the majority of murder cases, there is actually very little question of guilt. 90% of the time, the cops know they have the right person, and even the person they knab knows he or she is caught. And the trial is then nothing but a farce, with the prosecution trying to show guilt and sanity, while the defense is playing games with witnesses, questioning every bit of forensic evidence, pleading insanity, and other such games.

I mean, do very many people in 2012 really think that OJ is still innocent?

Does anybody seriously believe that Casey Anthony is innocent?

Does anybody really believe that Robert Blake had nothing to do with the death of his wife?

Trials are often little more then a game of liars poker, combined with a game show. The idea is to throw out as much BS as possible, so that things that were once black and white are now grey. Seen by videotape killing the guy. just claim you were insane. The murder victims DNA found in your car, jut claim the police planted it. Claimed that in your trial that you were not there and you were convicted, why in your appeal just admit you were there, but somebody else really pulled the trigger.

Sorry, but I seriously doubt that more then a handfull of "innocent people" have been wrongly convicted of murder. And the vast majority of appeals and grandstanding I see tends to make me very jaded at this area of legal defense.

 

I find your post interesting here. You think that the majority of the population would commit murder if it were legalized (I never suggested legalizing it; I suggested that long prison sentences were appropriate).

I think most opponents of the death penalty don't get this. I am utterly incapable of committing murder in the first degree and certainly capital murder. So I have no insight into the moral choice a murderer makes. So I look at such a murderer as a flawed individual whose choices I can't comprehend. I lack empathy for him and do cannot hate him enough to wish for vengeance.

But if I was like you and the rest of the population (if your argument holds) then I can understand why you hate so much. If actually murder is a choice for you, and you only resist murdering because you weigh up the consequences and judge them to be against your self interest, then I sort of get it. I also get that if you work hard to resist this temptation you can get very irritated by those too weak to do so. You empathize with their moral dilemma and understand it enough to resent it when they choose the easy way out. And so vengeance is appropriate. And death is a deterrent because it is a deterrent for you.

If this is your argument, then all I can say is: please get help. Most people are not potential murderers at all. Such a moral choice is beyond them. If it is not beyond you and you only desist because you weigh up the consequences, then counseling would be a good idea buddy.

This is no insult. This is a logical deduction from your post.

 

To me, there is little difference between a murderer and a dog that has gotten so mean that it will attack anybody. We regularly kill animals that do this, and I feel absolutley nothing about doing the same thing to a person. Once they have made the conscious choice to comit premeditated murder in the first degree, any feelings I may have for that individual have ended.

Remember, only a small fraction of murderers at all are even eligable for the death penalty in the first place.

 

Maybe if you listened to what I said and stopped playing arm chair psychiatrist, you would see that I'm not suggesting that it be legal nor did I suggest you said it should be, and never did I say that if it was legal and there were no consequences that I would go Mad max on the rest of the world. This is your straw man.

This is about people, and people are in general violent by nature. You can deny it if you wish but the rules of a given society dictate a lot. If we were in a society where there were no consequences, more people would and have in history acted accordingly. This hasn't disappeared in our psyche. The fact that you say you would never kill anybody is charming but there are a lot of people who are placed in situations that over ride their sense of right and wrong, or their moral convictions, the military for instance. The more some/many kill the easier it becomes. There are also psychological studies that prove that people will act differently in situations of authority or when consequences are lifted.


Are you familiar with the Stanford prison experiment?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

IOW people acted differently when the consequences were lifted and the authority or power was in their hands.