If you could guarantee the verdict, would you pull the rope?
Discussion
grumbledoak said:
I would be happy with execution for some murders - intentional/not first violent crime/defenceless victim/etc. No torture though.
Kiddly fiddlers should be thrown off Beachy Head.
Sharia Law doesn't sound like anything to worry about. Some days it sounds like it would be an improvement.
We don't want the fine waters of Eastbourne polluted thank you very much.Kiddly fiddlers should be thrown off Beachy Head.
Sharia Law doesn't sound like anything to worry about. Some days it sounds like it would be an improvement.
A certain character, recently sentenced to many years inside for videoing himself raping a three month old baby....I'd have NO problems pulling on said rope to hoist him off the ground....except I'm not too strong, so it may take a couple of days.
Unfortunately someone beat me to it, he hung himself in jail.... It took wardens 8 minutes from the alarm being sounded to them actually entering the cell, as they had to make sure it was not a trap or a trick to harm themselves.
Priorities, personal safety first etc. I see no problem there, none at all.
Unfortunately someone beat me to it, he hung himself in jail.... It took wardens 8 minutes from the alarm being sounded to them actually entering the cell, as they had to make sure it was not a trap or a trick to harm themselves.
Priorities, personal safety first etc. I see no problem there, none at all.
b
hstewie said:
hstewie said:The Mad Monk said:
No system is perfect.
Win a few, lose a few.
Which is fine (it isn't but each to their own) until it's your mate, your brother, your mother, or you.Win a few, lose a few.
But take the recent Jo Cox case. No argument there, surely?
Take him outside, and as the Americans used to do at Shepton mallet during the war, up against the coke heap, a few volunteers from a nearby military unit, £10 each bonus, BANG! job done.
What's wrong with that?
ruggedscotty said:
Its not like that at all...
its the type of person that has done such a crime, do you really want them to be included in the general population ?
As for deterrent ? really. If its a deterrent then thats a good thing, but reality is id rather we got rid. Doing something like that is indicative of the type of person you are and that you dont operate within the same set of
values as the average person.
The killer that killed Jo ? And he is still alive as we dont understand him he needs help, no he doesnt he is beyond help, he is beyond the state giving consideration to his needs.
move on accept that there are times when the state has to say nope, that line has been crossed and he needs to be put down.
You don't know that he is beyond help, nor do I. Neither of us are psychologists (I assume, fairly safely), neither of us has met the killer (an even safer assumption) and carried out a psychological assessment. I suspect he is mentally ill and that the negative campaigning re Brexit stirred him into a rage at which point he decided to make "England for the English" and assassinated someone who was very much of the opposite view. Something like 40% of the prison population are suffering from some form of mental illness. We don't kill people for being ill.its the type of person that has done such a crime, do you really want them to be included in the general population ?
As for deterrent ? really. If its a deterrent then thats a good thing, but reality is id rather we got rid. Doing something like that is indicative of the type of person you are and that you dont operate within the same set of
values as the average person.
The killer that killed Jo ? And he is still alive as we dont understand him he needs help, no he doesnt he is beyond help, he is beyond the state giving consideration to his needs.
move on accept that there are times when the state has to say nope, that line has been crossed and he needs to be put down.
I shouldn't be surprised, but the standard of debate here is poor. The usual suspects would cheerfully see a killer hacked to death with an axe, no surprise. Comments like "no system is perfect" don't add anything to that side of the argument.
We no longer have the death penalty or lengthy prison sentences as a means of social engineering. We used to, we called the events WW1 and WW2. In both cases we emptied the prisons into the trenches, the criminals didn't come back.
Kermit power said:
Sorry, I had assumed you would be able to deduce my answer without my having to state the bleeding obvious, but if you really need me to answer it then no, I would not pull the rope, and your completely flawed logic isn't going to do anything to induce me to change that view.
I never asked for your opinion, i'm not trying to change it either. I have better things to do than argue a very old debate on the internet which I why I didn't contest your points.The Mad Monk said:
bhstewie said:
hstewie said:The Mad Monk said:
No system is perfect.
Win a few, lose a few.
Which is fine (it isn't but each to their own) until it's your mate, your brother, your mother, or you.Win a few, lose a few.
But take the recent Jo Cox case. No argument there, surely?
Take him outside, and as the Americans used to do at Shepton mallet during the war, up against the coke heap, a few volunteers from a nearby military unit, £10 each bonus, BANG! job done.
What's wrong with that?
That's the difficulty with the vision the OP painted where you "know" someone did it, you should probably take into account why they did it.
If you were to ask me if we should re-introduce the death penalty my gut reaction is no, though I think that there are individuals who are so far beyond redemption that I also don't see the point of paying to keep them locked up when either they'll never be let out, or they will be let out but will rob steal and beat up a pensioner and be back inside and rinse and repeat.
If you can't rehabilitate them and you're not entirely comfortable offing them I don't know what the answer is.
The Mad Monk said:
Take him outside, and as the Americans used to do at Shepton mallet during the war, up against the coke heap, a few volunteers from a nearby military unit, £10 each bonus, BANG! job done.
What's wrong with that?
Not much other than its not very imaginative and a missed opportunity for pay to view $$$.What's wrong with that?
No. For the reasons others have given including the risks of wrongful conviction that are side-stepped by the OP's question, but above all because our primary purpose must always be to understand and address causes. The death penalty is a poor deterrent - in that evidence shows it often exacerbates crime on the might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb principle - and is obviously not any kind of attempt at rehabilitation.
If our society is producing people who cannot be rehabilitated, we need to understand why in order to try to change the original causes of their descent into criminality so that others do not follow them down that path. The best way to do this is to work with offenders to understand why they did what they did; at the same time we want to make the experience of deprivation of liberty sufficiently unpleasant that it does act as a deterrent insofar as it can, and we want to protect society from those we have not yet (and may never) rehabilitate. So we continue to lock people up, but we don't kill them.
If our society is producing people who cannot be rehabilitated, we need to understand why in order to try to change the original causes of their descent into criminality so that others do not follow them down that path. The best way to do this is to work with offenders to understand why they did what they did; at the same time we want to make the experience of deprivation of liberty sufficiently unpleasant that it does act as a deterrent insofar as it can, and we want to protect society from those we have not yet (and may never) rehabilitate. So we continue to lock people up, but we don't kill them.
Where I live, in the Philippines, the new president has orchestrated over 4000 'cullings' of drug suspects. Not convicted felons, not people under charge, just random suspects. Nobody here seems to see anything wrong with that. It seems acceptable to simply go shoot someone who you either think sells drugs, or more likely someone you don't like, or have some beef with.
We're not hearing anything about any murders being investigated either.
Just ironic to be reading a thread about whether to bring back the death penalty, in my home country, when all around me here people are dying like flies.
Anyway, we're leaving, heading back to blighty on 29th of this month, enough is enough here, this is how a dozen or more despots and tyrants started out......
We're not hearing anything about any murders being investigated either.
Just ironic to be reading a thread about whether to bring back the death penalty, in my home country, when all around me here people are dying like flies.
Anyway, we're leaving, heading back to blighty on 29th of this month, enough is enough here, this is how a dozen or more despots and tyrants started out......
Edited by King Herald on Saturday 3rd December 16:08
Don said:
I want them to suffer. Every day. Knowing that every day from now on is going to be exactly the same, dull, soul-destroying routine. Over and over again. Until they die.
You mean like the hourly-paids in the factories where I work? Because that's what they get. I look at their jobs and shudder. Yesterday I was watching a man rinsing out trays of sliced liver. Someone else was weighing it out and making it into ready meals. This pays £7-odd an hour, and they live is SE London. I earn nearly 10x that, and I can't afford to live down there and have what I regard as a decent life, the place is utterly hateful and I would turn to crime before I would settle for what they get. How do they live? What would YOU do?A friend of mine is a judge. Nothing special, just your standard issue Yorkshire circuit Crown Court judge. He says the vast majority of his "customers" are either mentally ill, or have substance addiction issues, or just can't cope with life. One of his recent cases involved a guy, a local alky called One Eyed Jack who had spent the day drinking with a local prostitute. After a few hours he made sexual advances on her and was turned down. He blundered around the flat and ran into her 15 yr old daughter, so he tried it on with her. She declined, he tried groping her, she gave him a slap and reasonably enough called the police. Upon sobering up he has no recollection of what went on. The offence is cut and dried, it's a sexual assault, plain as you like, but my pal's dilemma is to come up with a suitable sentence. What are you going to do? I know, let's castrate him. Kill the kiddy-fiddling b
d. Erm, right...for someone who tried it on with a 15 yr old when he was so pissed he can't remember. Now he wants a slap, that much we all know, but it's by no means simple to get it in proportion with the harm done to the unfortunate girl. You may well imagine that this girl is nobody's fool, she's seen what her mother has to tolerate from men and it's a safe bet that if you f* with her she will make you 7 kinds of sorry very soon indeed. If any 15 yr old can tolerate being groped by some p*ssed up ahole then it's her. I reckon she will be all right, once he has been dealt with. So, sentencing, please gentlemen. Have a think.While we're here, and this is a very non-PH observation for which I make no apology whatsoever, we should bear in mind that the Netherlands have recently lowered sentencing guidelines and concentrated on rehabilitation. They now have the situation, unusual in the modern western world, that they have too many prisons and don't know how to fill them. Some of them have been sold off as hotels. So much for prisons needing to be grim in order to correct behaviour.
Most posters appear to be missing what is in my view a fundamental aspect of this whilst focusing purely on the money.
Revenge.
It is perhaps "unpalatable" but we are animals. I also know that, had someone raped my baby at three months old, I would have no hesitation in pulling the trigger myself. We are animals and we are designed to protect our offspring. If that meant killing someone to stop it happening again or to others, I have no issue with that frankly. Indeed, I would want to kill it anyway simply because I don't think such a creature deserves to live nor is fit to live in society.
As far as I am concerned there are circumstances where killing them is fine. A confession perhaps being required. I do not trust lie detectors, I do not trust DNA. There are too many things which can go wrong to allow them to be determinative in the execution of a human being who could be innocent.
Revenge.
It is perhaps "unpalatable" but we are animals. I also know that, had someone raped my baby at three months old, I would have no hesitation in pulling the trigger myself. We are animals and we are designed to protect our offspring. If that meant killing someone to stop it happening again or to others, I have no issue with that frankly. Indeed, I would want to kill it anyway simply because I don't think such a creature deserves to live nor is fit to live in society.
As far as I am concerned there are circumstances where killing them is fine. A confession perhaps being required. I do not trust lie detectors, I do not trust DNA. There are too many things which can go wrong to allow them to be determinative in the execution of a human being who could be innocent.
The death penalty should be reinstated for the very worst crimes. Now there have been miscarriages of justice some for political reasons, the Birmingham Six for example, was driven by public revulsion so how could they get a fair trial in the time and back drop others due to poor police work and defence.
But take the Ripper, Nielsen, Rose West, Huntley etc, there are many where there was not one shred of doubt and more so now with everything that we have to prove guilt why keep these?
Albert Pierrepoint did go off hanging as he saw many people who he did not truly believe were guilty being dispatched by him but he did not regret many of those he did as they were cold callous evil people.
What is really wrong now is what a life sentence means, when it was abolished the public had been fed pictures of Ruth Ellis who shot her lover David Blakely. At the time she was portrayed as snapping but the reality was she had planned the murder, but the sight of an attractive young woman with a child was too much for some. There were others that did not sit well, the "let him have it" case when a mentally challenged lad was hung as the 16 year old who shot the policeman was too young to hang, the public wanted it so they got it, but when the full facts came out it raised questions.
So it was abolished with the promise that murderers would serve life and die in jail. Life now means as low as 7 years, is that justice for the victims? We should not hang as a matter of course but for some there is no way we should not in my opinion as where there is no doubt, of which there are many in British jails, should die. With these killers they will never feel remorse for anything other than being caught. Life should mean life for the vast majority who are inside for premeditated murders.
On the wider point of poverty, mental health contributing to murders, I can see that but if we want to tackle that we need to pump more money in to do it or save it elsewhere.
But take the Ripper, Nielsen, Rose West, Huntley etc, there are many where there was not one shred of doubt and more so now with everything that we have to prove guilt why keep these?
Albert Pierrepoint did go off hanging as he saw many people who he did not truly believe were guilty being dispatched by him but he did not regret many of those he did as they were cold callous evil people.
What is really wrong now is what a life sentence means, when it was abolished the public had been fed pictures of Ruth Ellis who shot her lover David Blakely. At the time she was portrayed as snapping but the reality was she had planned the murder, but the sight of an attractive young woman with a child was too much for some. There were others that did not sit well, the "let him have it" case when a mentally challenged lad was hung as the 16 year old who shot the policeman was too young to hang, the public wanted it so they got it, but when the full facts came out it raised questions.
So it was abolished with the promise that murderers would serve life and die in jail. Life now means as low as 7 years, is that justice for the victims? We should not hang as a matter of course but for some there is no way we should not in my opinion as where there is no doubt, of which there are many in British jails, should die. With these killers they will never feel remorse for anything other than being caught. Life should mean life for the vast majority who are inside for premeditated murders.
On the wider point of poverty, mental health contributing to murders, I can see that but if we want to tackle that we need to pump more money in to do it or save it elsewhere.
There seem to be two issues here that are intertwined. Firstly, as an individual, would YOU be prepared to press the button, kick the chair away etc. would you be able to live with that from a psychological viewpoint. Most I would imagine would answer yes, as they usually put themselves in a 'revenge scenario' when considering their answer. Take yourself out of that and put yourself in the position of it being your job to do it. Most again would probably again, answer 'yes'. I think the affect it would have would run very deep. Just consider the number of military personnel who have been affected by PSD from the things they have had to do. And we are talking about highly trained men and women who are 'doing their job'.
Secondly, should we as a society have the death penalty? The question is, where does going down that path lead? I believe the answer is a very dark place indeed. Mistakes will undoubtedly be made, regardless of the robustness of the evidence presented. 'You win some you lose some' ? I want no part of that. The death penalty would NOT be a deterrent, there will always be those, whether through revenge, mental issues etc will commit murder. For those, life should undoubtedly mean life. As was mentioned earlier, an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.
That's said, if someone harmed my family, I would absolutely take my revenge and take my chances with living with what I'd done.
The human race are quarrelsome bunch, thousands and thousands and thousands of years of evolution have not removed the trait. Organised society is continually trying to keep it in check. And ultimately , that is your choice - organised society or back to the caves.
Secondly, should we as a society have the death penalty? The question is, where does going down that path lead? I believe the answer is a very dark place indeed. Mistakes will undoubtedly be made, regardless of the robustness of the evidence presented. 'You win some you lose some' ? I want no part of that. The death penalty would NOT be a deterrent, there will always be those, whether through revenge, mental issues etc will commit murder. For those, life should undoubtedly mean life. As was mentioned earlier, an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.
That's said, if someone harmed my family, I would absolutely take my revenge and take my chances with living with what I'd done.
The human race are quarrelsome bunch, thousands and thousands and thousands of years of evolution have not removed the trait. Organised society is continually trying to keep it in check. And ultimately , that is your choice - organised society or back to the caves.
Edited by bunglesprout on Saturday 3rd December 18:37
Jasandjules said:
Most posters appear to be missing what is in my view a fundamental aspect of this whilst focusing purely on the money.
Revenge.
It is perhaps "unpalatable" but we are animals.
Poor reasoning. If I were left to sentence someone who had harmed my family, I would hack him to pieces with an axe. Slowly, and with my own hands. Absolutely without remorse. Does this mean that sentencing should be decided by the victims? Absolutely not. It is not reasonable to allow me to hack a rapist to death even if I want to. This is the job of society to decide, and revenge is a poor motivator. Revenge is what starts blood feuds and wars, and it's what motivates things like Sharia law.Revenge.
It is perhaps "unpalatable" but we are animals.
Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff