Is the death penalty an easy way out?

Question

If someone brutally murders 15 people, you can only hang them once. Is it unjust to put a person through only a fraction of the suffering that they wrongly inflicted on others? Or is this the civilized way of doing things? I don't know because I'm not particularly fair and I would make a horrible judge.

Furthermore, IS there a punishment that we are capable of imposing, that would inflict the morally just amount of suffering?

Answer 1

i think it is right but it should be carried out much faster than it is. Why do they spend years on death row?? Just Zap them!!!!!!

Answer 2

The death penalty is an easy way out for the criminal and society.

If you want to inflict the same punishment on the criminal that he inflicted on his 15 victims then you can kill him 15 times. Once a week take him to the infirmary and medically induce a heart attack. Then use a defibrillator to bring him back to life. However, this is Cruel and Unusual Treatment and illegal. It is also morally wrong; you don't torture a criminal that is up to his maker (if he even exists).

The worst legal and moral way to treat him would be to sentence him to 15 life terms and keep him in jail for the rest of his life. However, that would not be a good solution either. John Wayne Gacy was a famous serial killer that took a lot of lives. He was executed and is no longer a threat to society. Charles Mansion is still as crazy as ever and very dangerous. He has been sentenced to enough life terms that he will never leave prison, and if the prison takes good care of its prisoners then he will probably live a long time. If he ever got out, though, then he will start all over again raising another “killing family” and inspiring another murder spree. Contact with him has to be limited because he is still trying to incite hatred. To help this he had a tattoo or brand of the Nazi symbol on his forehead. Meanwhile taxpayers are forced to pay for his upkeep and the guards and prison required to keep him contained. He has to be kept in maximum security, because if he escapes he will pose a further danger to society. Another problem with multiple life terms is how do you punish an inmate who kills again? Sentence him to another life term? He won’t care, and will go on doing what he wants to. The ultimate penalty will exist to put a reign on his behavior.

The Death Penalty is murder, plain and simple. It is a horrible solution to a more horrible crime. Criminals convicted of murder should not all be eligible for the death penalty. The key test is if their crime was horrible enough to consider the death penalty and if the criminal is a continuing threat to society. The jury should be instructed to only levy the death penalty if the accused is guilty beyond ALL and EVERY reasonable doubt. Then he deserves an appeal, to make sure that his trial was fair; this is automatic in some states. He (well over 90% of murders are male) deserves as many appeals as the situation warrants. This will also give investigators time to uncover new facts in the case. A total re-investigation isn’t required just a review of the evidence and how it was collected, by an independent investigator. We have to be sure that the criminal we are murdering deserves this ultimate penalty.

After the case has been appealed and reviewed, and the appeals judge is sure that the death sentence is warranted. Then the death penalty should be applied. Currently an appeal case only makes sure the trial was fair. New evidence cannot be introduced. I think this is wrong and that the judge(s) should be given the power to lay a verdict aside and return the case to a lower court, for retrial, if new evidence proves, beyond a reasonable doubt (like DNA) that the criminal is not guilty, or if there are sufficient errors or irregularities in the case that warrant a retrial.

I would prefer it if Charles Manson were sentenced to death. He has had a fair trial and gone through the appeals process. He has been convicted beyond all reasonable doubt. Exercising the death penalty on Charles Manson would remove a continuing threat to society and would be a just and fair penalty. But, there is a catch if he only inspired the murders; if he didn’t actually do the killing, then he would be immune to the death penalty for the killing spree of his “family.”

Answer 3

The answer is yes. Society has not advanced enough to realize that it is responsible for the capital crimes within the Society. Society creats a lot of the activity by the way it opperates. So if you want to solve the problem of murders in your society, then you have to change the way of life your society lives.
We seem to be getting closer to the middle ages all the time. The next question well be if we should resurrection the Inquisition. That wonderful institution did not allow appeals, they just convicted and killed.
My answer to the general idea of Capital Punishment is; It is a failed institution. Humans have murdered each other and called it Capital Punishment since man started eating fresh meat. Before that, we ate left overs, scraps and old slow animals. Before that we ate grubs and vegetables. But if things got scarce, we ate each other.
But Capital punishment came along when we needed a quick and efficient way of murdering people. Hanging was a good way to go after they invented the dropping platform which allowed you to hang five at a time.
Hanging was superseded by the gas chamber. San Quentin had three seats in its Gas Chamber. That was great killing machine.
But then the legal system got slower and slower and appeals got longer and longer, and final the State gave up on multi-execution because the rising population just got to big and murder rate got to high.
But, now with the rise of religious wars there hope that whole cities can be wiped out without much more than the push of a single button. You can not but wonder at the killing we can do in the future. Humans have got it down like a science.
Glory!!

Answer 4

A very interesting question.

Of course, any punishment that would be capable of imposing the amount of suffering that some of these animals put innocent people through would immediately be fought tooth and nail by the ACLU and their bleeding heart pacifist friends.

Take a child molester, for instance. It is often argued that the death penalty isn't a deterrent, and with some pretty solid statistics to back it up. However, it cannot be argued that the death penalty makes it an absolute fact that the dirt bag won't ruin another child's life.

Answer 5

The death penalty is surely the easy way out. Why can't we just fill their heads with the ideas of Christianity in the hopes that when they die they might go to heaven and then force them to commit suicide? I'm way more into the psychological parts of punishment. We could spend years teaching them the Bible and giving them a sense of hope and then one day start with the choices. They could be set up in an electric chair where they could control the volts so that if they only slightly charged themselves not only would they be in the chair many hours but also they would have to do it again the next day. The second day would suck, but I imagine no one could stand it for more than a month. If nothing else they would be pretty worn down after a month. They should be encouraged to pray and to read scriptures to keep their hope for life and not suicide alive untill that one day when they simply can't take it anymore and go full force into suicide and then of course they would also know that their weakness was also condemming them to a hell that they likely didn't believe in when they murdered the 15 people. I don't know if that idea is as good now as it sounded in my head, but still I'm sticking to it. Best wishes

Answer 6

Yes, I think the death penalty is the easy way out. And it's also fraught with error. How can something be legitimately used when it's shown to wrongly kill so many innocent people? I'd vote for lifetime jail sentences instead.

Answer 7

I don't know that we would want to inflict suffering on murders and the like. Unfortunately, we need to take the moral high ground and not become monsters ourselves. Oughtn't we?

Answer 8

What you're talking about isn't punishment, it's revenge. Someone who gets the death penalty is paying the ultimate price....death. It may be nicer than what their victims endured, but they are still losing their life. We are a civilized society or are supposed to be and we don't torture our prisoners or the condemned.

Answer 9

I think the death penalty is too good for them. They should be handed over to a research center and used for human experimentation for the betterment of mankind.....)(

Answer 10

What do you suggest? that the person be killed 15 times since he murdered 15 people?!

Answer 11

because it makes the tax payer provide jobs the average inmate cost per year is 40 to 50,000 multiply it by 20 or so yrs best like the old west convicted sentence carried out same day.