[Skybird]

"Death Penalty" is a contradiction in itself. The archaic concept of justice was to bring balance back to cosmos by taking an eye for an eye. By modern definition, a penalty is a measurement or an aversive stimulus that is imposed onto an offender to either take revenge by making him suffering (a form of personal satisfaction by seeing the other suffering, for which it is a precondition that he lives), or to make him altering his attitude and cognitions so that he will not show the behavior or deed again in the future ( for which he also must live). the latter is the modern understanding of what western legal systems should be about. If that is always a realistic intention, is something completely different.

Eventually, I accept the execution of certain kinds of offenders as a preemptive measurement. This is with regard to offenders whose imprisonment causes an ongoing major and severe threat to innocents and/or the general public, or who are not being stopped from continuing their criminal behavior when being in prison. Two of several possible examples are a drug baron who runs his cartel from prison due to corrupt police, or a terrorist fanatic whose imprisonment is taken as an excuse by his still free comrades to commit crimes in order to blackmail the state and enforce his release from prison.

Things like slaughter by passion, rape, fleeing the scence of an accident where one has caused the death of people, chuld abuse, are not qualifying for my intention when to execute somebody. Such people should serve their living penalty.

I am against "suspended penalties" in principle. I am also principally against alcohol being accepted as a "mitigating" circumstance.

the remarks that somebody made above above on executing a car driver when causing a lethal crash, have a personal dimension for me. Almost twnty years ago, my girlfriend, companion and fiancé got killed by a ghost driver who drove under influence of alcohol. He got away with an extremely mild penalty, because courts consider people not to be responsible for the ammont of alcohol they drink - this is the conclusion from the mitigating penalties in case of alcohol involved. I have never fogiven neither the court, nor the driver. But I do not wish him to be executed, and would object to it.

And in the early 70s, the sister of my mother, 18 years, just married and pregnant, got killed with her husband on the autobahn - again due to a drunk ghostdriver. And again he got away with a very mild penalty. Neither me nor my mother wished the man to be executed, and we would object to it.

Both men were allowed to drive again within months, and got away with low-medium money penalties. Eventual prison sentences were suspended completely. -

Wo will complain when me and my family do not trust such a system anymore?

We have laws. Far too man yof them, with too many exceptions for rules, and too much disconnection from reality in the name of some distorted form of pedagogic attitude, eduaction, resocialisation, and humanism. It would be enough if we filter the laws, delete many of them, use the one remaining in full, and understand that lawyers defending their client should not see it as their duty to get him out no matter what he has done, but that the facts of the deed should speak for itself, the defense should be done by the client himself - and the only duty of the lawyer is to monitor that basic rules for court proceedings are not getting violated. It is my conviction that a defender's duty is not to defend his client. He is more a referee than a defender who should try every trick and every cheating of the rules to get his man out no matter weather he is guilty or not. The defnder as well as the rest of the court should help to find the truth. and if the client is guilty, the defender'S job is not to minimise the penalty, but to cooperate with the court to find the correct penalty.

Many people today perceive court sentences today as too mild, or too injust. A legal system where the outcome is influenced by the ammount of money a client can invest into his defender(s), where anybody can sue everybody over the most ridiculous claims, where defenders are actively engaged in distorting the process of finding justice, where procedural questions are seen as important ifd not as more deceisive than the essence of content, and penalties time and again get minimised and suspended over intention od education and a perverted sense of humanism that wills to put parts of the public at risk far too easyminded over claims of resocialisation (no matter if that has a realistic perspective or not) - such a legal system has serious deficits and suffers from extremely self-damaging distortions. No wonder then that it falls into disrepute.

Three years ago a junkey tried to stab me on open street, unprovoked, en passant, totally surprising. I got a deep cut on the right waist. Only my former martial arts trainign and reflexes helped me wo react still fast enough to deflect his attack, for he aimed at my throat. I took him out in a short burst of hard, brutal chops and kicks, and put him out of action within seconds. He received several injuries and fractures. I later learned that he was no unknown to the police, and he was stoned at the time of the attack. Nevertheless he sued me for using "excessive force", while he tried to kill me. Okay, the real scandal is that such a case would not be filed by a private person, but is brought to public prosecutor'S office where it is then decided whether or not this office launches a case at court or not. The scandal is that they found a state attorney who was willing to accept it to be handed to the court. If later the defnder of that junkey would not obviously convionced his client to give up that counter battle and convince the state attorney to withdraw the legal proceedings against me, I would have been the accused offender at court for having dared to defend my life against a sudden and unprovoked attack by a junkey.

Who will complain when I do not trust such a system anymore?

My father is a sport rifleman, he shoots small cllibre pistol and precision air pistol. In his club their are also some policemen training. One of them who is with the criminal police, once gave him privately a tip. If he ever were to confront a burglar in his appartmenet and would be in need to shoot, he should not wound him, but should make sure he shoots him to death with one shot if possible. Else the chances would be extrmeely high that he would be sued at court and would face a penalty as severe (or even more!) as that for the burglar.

Again, who will complain when I do not trust such a system anymore?


However, to all these problems, a general acceptance for a self-contradicting death "penalty" is nom solution. Also statistical anaylsis has shown time and again that death "penalties" do not have a deterring effect, since many crimes commited are done in a state of aroused emotions, social context that cannot be escaped, and the always present assumption that one would not be caught anyway. Irrational factors like this cannot be just "countered" by rational arguments and rational appeals and rational proceedings and deterrance - thats why they are irrational. You need to directly influence and change the irrational factors themselves. Get people out of social contexts that get them into trouble. Get people educated and self-disciplined while they are still young. Reduce the time passing between crime and starting to serve a penlty drastically. No suspended penalties. Alcohol no longer a mitigating excuse. Psychology shows that the more time passes between crime and consequences, the less the chance the object will link the two. the more time passes, and the smaller the penalsiing stimulus is, the less edcuating effect and chnage in the offenders behaviour wou will see. This has been exemplary shown in behaviouristic experiments en masse, you cannot get around this conclusion, no matter your excuse for trying.

They way death "penalty" is handled in some countries today, it is nothing else but a legalised form of collective archaic revenge. And the passion you see on nthe faces of street demonstrators at times, tells something revealing: some people are angry if you give them just panem but not the circensis-part in the quote.