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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by Velociryx
If we had infinite resources, by all means, let's take a kinder, gentler approach, but in a society where resources are scarce, and decisions have to be made about how to make most effective use of them, I'd much rather see the dollars that'd be spent keeping this nutball under lock and key, spent elsewhere. |
I don't know about you, but it looks like a lot of $ can and should be recovered from large scale economic crimes (Enron, etc.). Every year the GAO comes out and slams the government on all sorts of wastes. I don't think the resources in the US are that scarce, they are just squandered.
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Velociryx
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of Candle'Bre
Apr 1999
time: 05:34
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Agreed on most of those points, UR. There's a lot of resource squandering going on over here...too right.
Nonetheless, the USA is like every other nation in that respect, and we (despite what we'd love to think) cannot do absolutely everything we want to do, when we want to do it.
Why?
Cos the resources just aren't there. It'd be great if they were, but choices have to be made.
I'm all for gunning for the biggest fish first, sure....absolutely, but in the case of Enron, et. al., a lot of the resources you're talking about were paper losses (ie - the stock took an understandable nosedive, and lots of people lost money they never "really" had).
That's a horse of a very different color than, say, a prison with a budget of $2,000,000 this year having to decide if they should upgrade the security system or keep one more fruitcake under lock and key.
-=Vel=-
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shawnmmcc
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Numerous false assumptions here. First, the death penalty is cheaper than life imprisonment. It is in the People's Republic of China. In the US we have this funny thing called due process, and becuase of the extremely final nature of the Death Penalty, we typically err on the side of caution, though the current Supreme Court has been altering that. Thus, a Death Penalty case is expensive, and the economic argument is largely false.
Secondly, there ARE escape free prisons, the argument that you cannot keep them locked up is a red herring. They are not cheap to build, initially, but they actually are cheaper to run. They have individual cells that are spartan and small, are computer controlled and would be considered inhumane to keep a large dog in - not that I'm arguing against them, I actually agree with the concept for dangerous criminals, but to make the point that these prisoners are NOT coddled. The only way a prisoner could escape one would be with outside help. That would only occur with organized crime and terrorists, not the mentally ill.
Thirdly, to quote one of the pro-death penalty people here: quote:
...murderous nutballs ...
...security system or keep one more fruitcake under lock and key.
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If they are indeed a "nutball" or "fruitcake", do you feel comfortable executing them? What kind of nation executes the mentally ill, the mentally retarded, or juveniles? It used to be the US (expecially Texas), Iran, Iraq, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Pakistan who executed juveniles, though Pakistan and Yemen have stopped, and I recall reading somewhere that Iran and maybe Nigeria are stopping also. Great company to keep. Even the PRC cites the execution of the mentally retarded by the US as a justification for its practices
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=28&did=538
Again, great company.  You pro-death penalty types who argue for this man's execution, by your own statements, can keep company with these regimes. I've noticed NONE of the pro-death penalty types have said anything about the issues of prosecutorial misconduct, and the conviction of innocents. I'll stick with opposing the current death penalty as practiced in the United States, thank you.
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shawnmmcc
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Giancarlo, that's the problem. Why I reference the PRC, and Texas, the two worse death penalty spots in the world. It's not this individual case, it's the process. The man is evidently guilty. But the process must be reliable, with as close to zero error as humanly possible, to prevent the execution of an innocent, or incompetent, person. The death penalty system in the US does not even come close to those criteria. Fix the system, and vote for people like the ex-Republican governor of Illinois whose name I forget, who tried to examine why so many people were being exonerated by genetic evidence. Make it so they would not be wrongly convicted if there had been NO genetic evidence, and then the system has been fixed. We are arguing two different things here - is the man a monster, the answer is yes. Is the Death Penalty, as applied in the United States, such that innocent people are NOT put on death row? The answer is no. Thus I am opposed.
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Velociryx
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of Candle'Bre
Apr 1999
time: 05:34
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You're lying in a hospital. It's the middle of the night. A nurse comes in, and without your permission, gives you an injection of meds prescribed by some doctor you don't know, can't remember, and who has probably not done more than take a passing glance at your chart.
This phenomenon has caused LOTS of innocent folks to die. By Shawnmc's logic then, I must conclude that he would be against the practice of medicine....and multi-passenger vehicular transit too, for that matter.
Nope, it's not a perfect world, and as fallable humans, we make mistakes.
Now, before you start harping on about how my other two examples (above) are "different" because people enter hospitals of their own accord (for the most part), please keep in mind that this clown had a choice too.....he didn't have to kill his family.
-=Vel=-
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Aeson
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orangesoda
Nov 2001
time: 22:34
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quote:
Once we solve all our other societal ills, sure, let's spend some coin keeping our nation's murderous nutballs comfortably tucked away someplace, but as long as there are other, better uses for the money, let's get this guy out of our collective hair once and for all. |
My opinion is that the desire for retribution and incapability to understand the actual cause of these horrific actions are the greatest of our societal ills.
In most cases the perceived lack of resources and (conscious) violence are due to these two things. People who hoard value because they feel they are more valuable than anyone else, and thus more deserving of value. People who feel violence is their right, because violence has been committed against themselves.
Sure there are limited resources on this planet. We haven't come close to pushing those limits yet as would apply to just being able to live a happy, healthy life. Maybe not everyone in the world can have 3 cars and a TV in every room all sucking down energy (our biggest resource concern), but there is enough that you can live comfortably even if this guy has a lightbulb in his cell.
We burn crops and pay farmers not to farm while people starve. Why do they starve? Because someone somewhere thinks they don't deserve the food enough to allow them to have it. It's not because #238-634298 is eating breakfast.
On the retribution side, look at the Middle East. "You killed us, so we can kill you". An eye for an eye. How many millenia has that retribution gone back and forth? Here in the US we aren't much better in this account. In some ways we are worse, striking out at targets which haven't even hurt us yet, because we feel they are likely to later.
So why do I think it's important that we not kill people when it can be avoided?
Is this guy going to be better off dead than in prison? Probably. I know that I would much rather be dead than spending my life in prison, but it's not my right to choose for him. All I know is that by killing him to save money, all we are doing is implying money is more important than life.
Will killing this guy keep him from hurting anyone else? Directly, yes. There may be someone somewhere who finds it an action worthy of retribution though. Very unlikely, but it's in line with him escaping and killing others, which is also very unlikely to happen.
And the real cost, we won't ever understand why he did what he did, what lead to him being capable of such a crime. Is it something genetic? Is it something to do with his upbringing? Or a combination of these things. How can you prevent it from happening with someone else with a similar pressure on their actions if you don't know what to look for? How will we know how to help those in similar states avoid committing a horrific crime if we can't figure out how to rehabilitate those who have already done so?
Can he be rehabilitated? Yes, given the proper knowlege. He's different for a reason, what is it? It may be beyond our technological capabilities to answer that question now, but the only way to improve those capabilities is by continuing the advancement in those areas. Study him, figure out where the glitch in the system is, and figure out how to fix it. We have a subject to test on, why kill him? To save some money?
Last edited by Aeson on 17-03-2004 at 23:53
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17-03-2004 07:48
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