US: The Arkansas executions, first blood

[Independent voter]

True men of science embrace "moral relativism". If you are morally judging the US or even saying it's unethical, then you're venturing into the realm of philosophy which is the same thing as religion.

Just don't want anyone to become a hypocrite here.

[pateuvasiliu]

You killed someone! That's bad! So we're gonna' kill you to show you that killing is bad!

Reminds me of when Obama bombed muslims to show them that bombing other muslims is bad.

[Citizen T]

You don't punish a child or thief for the sake of punishment. With children, you hope to teach them in bettering themselves. With thieves, you attempt to dissuade the lifestyle and (often times) have them compensate for the damages. None of that is achieved through execution. Simply answering "justice" is weak support, you can call skinning a shoplifter justice and who's to say it isn't? ATM the best support for the DP is emotional rewards, people want to see a perp dead so he/she ends up dead.

The justice system is supposed to be a combination of punishment and rehabilitation. Societies decide whether or not to use the death penalty. Some societies have determined that some crimes are of such a heinous nature that either rehabilitation is not possible or that punishment should far outweigh rehabilitation.

Regardless of your personal beliefs, the US Constitution allows each state to determine whether or not to use the death penalty. I don't know where you live but if you have strong feeling regarding it's use then you can volunteer your time/money to help create legislation to ban it's use or even to amend the Constitution to do so.

[Spectral]

You don't punish a child or thief for the sake of punishment. With children, you hope to teach them in bettering themselves. With thieves, you attempt to dissuade the lifestyle and (often times) have them compensate for the damages. None of that is achieved through execution. Simply answering "justice" is weak support, you can call skinning a shoplifter justice and who's to say it isn't? ATM the best support for the DP is emotional rewards, people want to see a perp dead so he/she ends up dead.

Retributive justice is a philosophically valid form of justice. I think it's obvious that people will have different intuition about what the appropriate levels of such punishment would be, but the basic intuition that many people have that a relative sterile, lawful execution of a murderer by the state is entirely reasonable. The idea that this should be totally off the table is a very modern, very radical idea. Maybe it'll turn out to be the long term consensus, but it's not obvious that it'll be so.

[slime]

Arkansas executions: first prisoner killed after legal challenge fails

He most likely was innocent.



I don't have any words for this. I think the UN should intervene and punish every1 involved. We can't stand by and do nothing while we let this massacre go ahead.

The comedy... I'm still laughing at "the UN should intervene".

[Spectral]

Given that the hypocrisy is based on his reasoning and you just scrubbed it clean of his reasoning, that's not surprising.

Sorry, I'm not following. Do you mean that the hypocrisy was in the post before the post I replied to?

What I'm getting at is that I think people that aren't keen on execution draw a bunch of false equivalences and then call people hypocrites. There isn't a double standard, there's just actual differences between Sharia and Western Common law.

[Barnabas]

Retributive justice is a philosophically valid form of justice. I think it's obvious that people will have different intuition about what the appropriate levels of such punishment would be, but the basic intuition that many people have that a relative sterile, lawful execution of a murderer by the state is entirely reasonable. The idea that this should be totally off the table is a very modern, very radical idea. Maybe it'll turn out to be the long term consensus, but it's not obvious that it'll be so.

No there will be plenty of families that will still want the state to kill the person that killed their loved one.

[triplesdsu]

Arkansas executions: first prisoner killed after legal challenge fails

He most likely was innocent.



I don't have any words for this. I think the UN should intervene and punish every1 involved. We can't stand by and do nothing while we let this massacre go ahead.

This immediately made me think of Chapelle's Black Bush skit. UN sanction me with your armies. Oh, you dont have an army. Then I would shut the f*ck up then.

So why is it that this appeal to test blood from a 1993 case is being argued in 2017? It couldnt possibly be some shady defense technique to wait til the last minute to delay the execution. They had 24 years to test it. DNA has been around since the last 20 years. I also dont see any where in the article to support how he was likely innocent. A pair of unidentified fingerprints in a home. *gasp*. I could be killed tonight and there would be unidentified prints from people who have entered my home to do work, try to sell me shit, etc that wouldnt belong to my killer. It on it's own doesn't really mean much. The article itself doesnt exactly mention anything other than the blood that led to his conviction, so it's really hard to say one way or another about its guild. Juries arent known for being smart, but I have more faith in them then articles with cherry picked details trying to push an agenda like this one.

Kudos to Arkansas though, for finally getting to their cases. Now if only CA would pick up the pace.

[Spectral]

Ghostpanther justified it on the basis that it's constitutional here and the opinions of anyone who doesn't live here don't matter. It's a very straightforward appeal to what is the case because it is the case. The logical extension of that reasoning, found in Patesiadvasdfasldfldsalluv's post, is that Americans have no business objecting to or being outraged by stoning in the Middle East, which are legal there. His view is not exactly uncommon, yet those same people often have no problem demanding intervention in other countries.

Ah, gotcha, that makes sense.

Yeah, I'm something of a constitutionalist, but it's not my reason for supporting execution for particularly brutal murderers nor is it my reason for rejecting the execution standards of other nations. I also just flatly don't support intervention in other nation's legal systems, no matter how good or bad I think they are.

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No there will be plenty of families that will still want the state to kill the person that killed their loved one.

There will also (likely) continue to be people that share my moral intuition that some motherfuckers just deserve to die. I find the continued existence of a Tsarnaev brother to be a moral abomination, for example.

[Tackhisis]

So we're gonna' kill you to show you that killing is bad!

No. Murdering is bad and prohibited. To prevent the further harm to society by removing the murderer is good.

[Easo]

I am fascinated at the lack of DNS tests. Are you affraid of technology or what? Some prosecutors/judges will lose their jobs?

[Skroe]

If the state can take a man's life, especially when there is such significant possibility of it being the wrong person, the state can take anything.

Death penalty is fine. The Process is a disaster. Stop them all, clear the board and redesign the process.

[breadisfunny]

You killed someone! That's bad! So we're gonna' kill you to show you that killing is bad!

Reminds me of when Obama bombed muslims to show them that bombing other muslims is bad.

it's justice being served.

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I am fascinated at the lack of DNS tests. Are you affraid of technology or what? Some prosecutors/judges will lose their jobs?

why would we do domain network server tests?

[pateuvasiliu]

it's justice being served.

And who the fuck are you to decide that killing someone is justice?

You referred to me as horrible just earlier because I said, and I quote YOU here, that pushing women down the stairs is OK.

Who are you to say that killing someone is justice, but pushing someone down stairs is not?

You're a bloody hypocrite prancing on what you think is a high horse when in reality it's a decrepit donkey. There's a reason I've made myself immune to the opinions of people like you, your so called morals are as sturdy as a japanese house during the feudal days.

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No. Murdering is bad and prohibited. To prevent the further harm to society by removing the murderer is good.

Psychopaths didn't choose to be fucked in the head. They need help, not a fucking bullet. It's no different from being attracted to something others would find unnatural, it's all in the chemistry of the brain. And they can be helped.

If you put a bullet in their head knowing you could've fixed them you're no better than them.

[Astalnar]

Arkansas executions: first prisoner killed after legal challenge fails

He most likely was innocent.

I don't have any words for this. I think the UN should intervene and punish every1 involved. We can't stand by and do nothing while we let this massacre go ahead.

No, no matter how fucked up you think this is, UN intervention is still not the answer. That aside, even if the UN for some ludicrous reason decided to intervene in the US internal affairs (which is as likely as me winning a jackpot without playing) the USA still has veto powers. Which means, US tells them to fuck off, and they must.

By very definition of the word, this is not massacre. It's an execution. Massacre requires brutal slaugter of many people, not one. You can argue it is injust, and I would tend to agree, but blowing it into something that it is evidently not doesn't help anyone.

[Xargoth6634]

Arkansas executions: first prisoner killed after legal challenge fails

He most likely was innocent.



I don't have any words for this. I think the UN should intervene and punish every1 involved. We can't stand by and do nothing while we let this massacre go ahead.

I'm against capital punishment too, but the UN can't do shit to us here in the US; they have no power.

[Mormolyce]

It's Arkansas.

They had this drug cocktail they'd kill prisoners with. Anti-death penalty types launched a protest against the companies that made the drugs thinking that if they made the death penalty horrible enough it would be banned.

Supreme Court ruled that state can execute a prisoner by any method as long as they made a good faith effort to make the execution painless and humane.

So the anti-death penalty folk made execution a lot more miserable for prisoners and that's all they did.

Which Supreme Court ruling are you referring to?

And as for the long term, we'll see about that:

U.S. executions hit 25-year low as capital punishment wanes: study

The number of U.S. executions fell to a quarter-century low in 2016 as new death sentences plummeted, indicating capital punishment is on the decline, a study released on Wednesday showed.

The number of U.S. executions in 2016 was 20, the lowest since 1991, according to the study from the Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment.

While 31 states have the death penalty, only five held executions in 2016. Georgia carried out the most at nine while Texas was next at seven, it said.

The number of new death sentences in 2016 is expected to hit 30, a low not seen since the U.S. Supreme Court declared existing death penalty statutes unconstitutional in 1972, it said. That figure is down by more than 90 percent from a recent high of 315 in 1996.

Legal battles and a sales ban on execution drugs will likely hold down the number of executions next year while the high costs of death penalty cases is set to keep capital punishment prosecutions down as district attorneys instead seek sentences of life in prison without parole, legal experts said.

"America is in the midst of a major climate change concerning capital punishment," said Robert Dunham, the center's executive director and the report author.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN14A0AO

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You killed someone! That's bad! So we're gonna' kill you to show you that killing is bad!

I remember years ago hearing about an abortion clinic bomber (or murderer? I forget) being executed. In short, he killed some people because he thought they were killing people, and the state killed him for killing those people.

[Easo]

why would we do domain network server tests?

Sorry, DNA tests.
P.S.
Though it is always DNS. /meme

[omfgreally]

MMO-C should start working with IP-bans.

How authoritarian of you, don't like someone's opinion, ban them, yeah keep it up, buddy I'm sure you'll be next.