Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolferz
Considering the inhumane acts these animals have committed, do they really deserve a humane end to their miserable lives?
Firing squad would be too easy an out imho.  |
So both the constitution's/8th amendment's and the Supreme Court's rulings should be ignored? Just so that you get your private rocky horror torture show? It sounds suspiciously like lynching and revenge-before-law to me.
A penalty is a measurement by which you want to alter and/or sanction the behavior of a person. For that, the subject has to live on, both to show (or show not) a consequence in its behavior, and to endure the penalty. Killing somebody negates both.
Compensation is an additional task that is added to the penalty - where compensation/reparation is possible at least.
On a sidenote, a good principle imo is that the penalty given shall not be more serious than the crime. When somebody steals 100 dollar, the victim can demand at court to be given back those 100 dollars (
compensation), and the perpetrator be given an additional
penalty from 0 to 100 dollar maximum, again to be given to the victim, since the state has not been victim of the crime, but the person who got robbed. Costs for proceedings also have to be payed by the perpetrator, of course. the victim also has the right to pledge for a lower or no penalty, if it wants that.
Execution imo is an option in case of prevention against very serious, major extraordinary sorts of crime and terrorism. The drug baron in prison who rules his empire even from behiodn bars. The radical ideological terrorist who becomes the excuse for his followers to commit bombing stirkes to blackmail the state for his release. The weapon trader or slave trader who after release can be expected to just carry on where they were interrupted. Such crimes cannot be compensated, and the perspective of prevention and disposal win in dominance. The normal scale of crimes you see people in prison for most of the time are not covered by this. I do not wish executions to become standard procedures in the law's ordinary arsenal of legal responses to crime in society.
Long term prisoners who have life sentences shall be allowed to end their lives voluntarily, if they desire that. However, there should be high penalties for staff trying to make normal prison life so miserable for them so that they see no other way than suicide, however. Voluntarily: okay, I am for principle reasons for everybody's guaranteed freedom to end his life according to his choosing. It's a basic human right, and no society has the right to demand and to force somebody to live if for whatever his reason he seriously and really does not want to live.