General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAnd sometimes the death penalty removes people who need to be removed.
Because I think we would all be safer. This is one case where I would support it wholeheartedly, for the one that's left.
Violent California police chase ends with 3 dead
A wild bank robbery chase that saw two hostages thrown from the getaway car and suspects spraying bullets ended in a gunfight and three people dead in Stockton, California, police said Wednesday.
Two suspects were killed by officers but not before the robbers fatally shot one hostage, police said.
...
"I noticed that the front (door) of the Bank of the West opened slowly," Jose Maldonado told CNN affiliate KOVR. "Three guys had three guns and had the guns to the hostages' heads. They were petrified. Their faces were white. They were so scared," Maldonado told the station.
..
When police saw no one moving in the SUV they moved in. They found three dead -- two suspects and one hostage. The third wounded suspect was hospitalized.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/16/us/california-bank-robbery/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
I would wonder if the police helped kill that third one, but the now deceased shot the first two, so perhaps not.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)might escape from prison, avoid recapture, and do me harm. If it means that the United States joins most of the rest of the civilized world in abolishing the death penalty.
Iggo
(47,487 posts)delrem
(9,688 posts)Not vengeance against a personal wrong, but vengeance inspired by a news story coupled with a sense of identification with the victims of the crime. The identification, the sympathetic reaction, is an entirely natural part of being human. Those who don't feel that kind of compassion are sociopaths, psychopaths, unnatural people who are rightly feared. It's the fodder of the nightly news.
The death penalty, on the other hand, is a political/legislative policy. A choice whether death penalty legislation is enacted (complete with the awesomely sadistic "last minute phone call" excitement, a quintessential part of it) is a choice made by reason alone. That it's all written down and encoded proves it to be the most premeditated of all acts.
I think civilized countries have made a distinction between action based on *vengeance*, and action based on reason, so have outlawed the death penalty. I hope the USA comes to this realization soon.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)You don't get to cherry pick which people will be "removed" for your safety.
ugh
Bonobo
(29,257 posts)Do you think that state accidentally killing even one innocent person is too much or an acceptable risk?
nomorenomore08
(13,324 posts)This is also my #1 reason for opposing capital punishment - in an imperfect legal system, which is every legal system, some number of innocent people will always be convicted. Now, if they're imprisoned, they can at least be let out and financially compensated, but there's no undoing an execution.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)the planet because the maintenance is too high.
Do you think that state accidentally killing even one innocent person is too much or an acceptable risk? < You are kidding right? We as a country are blowing up innocent children with drones for doing nothing but playing in the mud, and shoot people in the back who are running away from us. We let corporations make more profits by ignoring safety rules, and watch people killed at work every day, yet we leave those companies alone, and even give them tax breaks. There are lots of examples of state-sanctioned killed, and "acceptable risk".
So your state, and mine, kills innocent people all the time. It's not a matter of whether I think we should or not.
But the motherfuckers that robbed the bank aren't innocent.
kcr
(15,300 posts)Because people against the death penalty are for those other state sanctioned killings you mention
Sorry, but I think it's better to address those problems rather than using them as excuse to justify one more.
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)This would not have gone down the same way if they would have been robbing the bank with knives and baseball bats.
YarnAddict
(1,850 posts)but I've never read the details of a DP crime without feeling that I could make an exception in that particular case.
conservaphobe
(1,284 posts)Murdering them is just a state-sanctioned revenge killing.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)It's not revenge, it's public safety. Revenge is keeping them in a box for the rest of their life - even thought it might be nicer, and safer, and have better food than anything they have ever experienced.
I would have the spine to kill the person before I ask a guard to risk their life day after day keeping the clown in a box.
Everyone's emotional response is interesting - but I don't believe ANY of them, or you. Because if this had been their wife or child shot and thrown out on a highway like a piece of trash, they would be bringing a rope.
It's easy to pretend to be Mother Teresa on the Internet, isn't it?
bye
Iggo
(47,487 posts)CBGLuthier
(12,723 posts)What you want is revenge, not justice. Admit it.
BTW, no DEATH penalty in California as of yesterday. So Boo Hoo Hoo to you.
Response to CBGLuthier (Reply #10)
Post removed
MineralMan
(146,192 posts)to capital punishment, under any circumstances. While an individual has the right to lethal force in self-defense, the state should not be killing people based on the decision of any jury. Period.
steve2470
(37,457 posts)NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)jtuck004
(15,882 posts)What a selfish way to look at the world.
NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)Who in society will ever be harmed by a guy in a concrete box for the rest of his life?
Wanting death as a punishment for death seems to be a rather uncivilized way to deal with it. It makes the state no better than the killer being punished.
How is that selfish?