Is the death penalty pre-meditated murder or is it something in the line of self defense?

Question

What would the purpose be of condemming someone to death? What would the affected people gain by it? Won't it be more suitable for that person to live in a form of punishment?

Answer 1

One of the concepts of justice is that the punishment fits the crime. So the death penalty is the ultimate punishment for crime. The earliest judicial writings were an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and a life for a life. As society has evolved other punishments like fines, community service and short-term imprisonment have become available.

A convicted murderer is someone that has given up his or her social rights. When they committed the criminal act, they declared themselves, as being outside society's laws. They have also declared themselves a danger to other law-abiding citizens. I would go as far as to say that they have also declared themselves not human. Their victim's family and friends have suffered a loss and they need closure, some may lust for revenge.

One of the tasks of the legal system is to protect law-abiding citizens from criminals. If a murderer escapes, and kills again, then the judicial/criminal system has failed. Statistically no executed criminal has committed another murder after his or her execution.

If a society is rich enough, then imprisonment of these dangerous renegades is an option that will not effect the well being of the society. If the society is poor, then resources will be wasted on containing these dangerous elements. Which would you rather have a hospital or a maximum security prison?

Some prisons are so bad that confinement in the prison, for life, is tantamount to torture.

The death penalty punishes the guilty and protects the innocent adequately. A life in prison is not constructive. The upkeep of the prison is a drain on the society. If someone has declared themselves outside the law, through their actions, then execute them. The death penalty is an effective reminder that crime is punishable and may be a deterrent to others.

Answer 2

The death penalty is used on those individuals who have committed an act so heinous they have chosen to live (as Thomas Hobbes would might have put it today) not by the laws of society, but by the law of the jungle - excluding themselves from the monster that is society and saying to you had better kill me first before I kill you. So condemning someone to death under that line of thinking is self-preservation which self-dense would fall under (also read your Leviticus for western moral reasons not to let that person live who is a murder - for example - it is not the simple "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" argument childish people opposed to the death penalty use).

The affected society (or people) gain many things by not having a person who can rationalize the immoral actions taken by this individual living amongst them.

Forcing a person to have to endure a life of continue punishment as many anti-death penalty advocates would argue is a greater crime because (1) it is calling upon the harmed (society) to have to pay all this person's expenses for the rest of there until they die (2) it is cruel and unusual punishment to force a person to spend his/her life until it ends forcing them as a time of mental torture to have to endure the knowledge of what they had done wrong (that is not a good thing for flawed human institutions to do), (3) it allows for the continue threat that this immoral person can re-enter society to cause more harm to it. I could continue listing more problems with "life-imprisonment" - but if you don't get my point by now - it would be useless.

Answer 3

I`m against death penality. I`m from India.Indian supreme court said death sentence is for rarest of rare cases. Like serial ,cruel,sadistic murders when the accused refuses counseling,murders on caste basis,murder of national leaders precipitating political crisis,and murder by life convicts.
This is a type of self defense.

Answer 4

When a person dies from the death penalty it is their own fault. No one else forced them to commit the crime which led to the death penalty. They chose to do it themselves.

If someone points a gun at their own head and pulls the trigger, you are not committing murder by failing to jump in the line of fire.

Answer 5

The Law of Moses has plenty to share on what crimes are punishable by death. These laws were set up to protect the Israelites from perverse sins and teach them the punishment for those sins.

Answer 6

Yea, cause the most just thing I can think of for a man who rapes and murders small children in terrible ways, is to lve in comfort. Television in jail, private cells now, time to write, work, play, exercise, never have to work for a meal ever again. Prisons are getting cushier and cushier. Yea, thats just. Oh yea, if it was my child he murdered, knowing he could replay what he did to my child in his mind, fantasize about it for the next 20 years, while my childs body turned to dust, sure that makes me feel like justice was served. What the **** kind of question is that!

Answer 7

Killing people for killing people to show that killing people is wrong.

Do you really want the same people that have brought us the IRS to have control over matters of life and death? I am for the death penalty--I just don't think the state is competent to administer it.

Answer 8

I think the death penalty is kinda pointless. They should live out their punishment....dying is like escaping. Its also morally questionable.

Answer 9

Those who pass death sentence are as guilty as those that comitted murder. Killing is Killing, whether by the order of a governor or an armed robber.

Answer 10

Yes it would be state sanctioned murder. Self defence would be applying enough pressure to take away the possibility of reoffending such as imprisonment