Because mass murderers kill more human beings. Same for serial killers.
I know it's an obvious answer at least at first, but could you deeply, logically explain why someone who's killed multiple people deserves to die more than a person who's only killed one if you were asked the question? In either case, their crimes made them murderers. Why should someone who's committed the ultimate crime by malevolently taking one human life not be repaid with the same ultimate punishment that someone who's committed the crime several times would receive?
And yes, my view is in part emotional: the need for justice and peace of mind that these monsters won't kill again.
Supporting emotion in the law system is the kind of thing that leads to tighter gun control because some psycho shoots up a school, or a ban on alcohol because drunk parents abuse their children. Also keep in mind that most crimes like these are committed out of emotion as well. How can you justify the allowance of emotion in deciding someone's fate if you support a "fair" system? Emotion in itself is a logical fallacy and basically translates to impulse.
Being correct "more often than not" only means that 51 percent of the people we execute were actually guilty. An error rate of up to 49 percent in our justice system is NOT acceptable to me, even if we were just talking about money as opposed to human life.
You seem to have missed a pretty important keyword in my post, because no one here is saying "more often than not". I said
way more often than not. To think that even a whole percent of all the people convicted of crimes in this country might be innocent is a little heart-breaking, but so long as we know that the numbers are proportionately low (and I mean
low), I see no reason to spare millions of people justice because a small handful of them may in fact be innocent. Beyond that, the investigation and judicial systems are constantly evolving. With the advent of new technology and new peaks in culture, we're able to refine our processes to be a lot more sure of what we're convicting people for.
A life sentence is not irrevocable.
Unless the accused person has only spent an insignificant amount of time serving a sentence they didn't deserve, it most certainly is irrevocable. Consider the impact that serving a mere 7 years in a life sentence would do to a person who is innocent. If they were young, then there is a great chance that may not have been able to start/finish their higher education, and if they had never had a meaningful job before, they're essentially left with no means to have a career since no one wants to hire someone for a good job with no experience or degree, and college costs are so high. It would be like being asked to place well in a race which you were taken out of half way through and kept out until it is almost over. You'd basically be starting from scratch, only without the luxuries of being younger and having a social life.
Newly-available DNA evidence has freed a number of people on death row or serving life sentences. Who knows what other kind of evidence science may discover?
The ability to identify DNA is incredibly new. If anything, it's never been a better time to stop doubting the legal system as much as we do. Like I said above, the advent of new technology allows us to be a lot more conclusive in our decisions than we've ever been, and that's why an old generation of prisoners are benefiting from it.
Yes, a person who's wrongly served years in prison has lost those years of his life. But at least he's still alive to sue the state that convicted him for compensation.
Unless the government can make someone younger, provide intensive social classes and ensure that the accidental conviction won't show up on background checks (which it will), then the state cannot compensate for what they've taken from the person.
As for religion, another poster expressed surprise that Christians would support the death penalty. I was pointing out that a religion that postulates bloody violence in this life and an eternity of torture for non-believers in the next is a bad example for a humane view of criminal justice. To one who thinks eternal torture is a just punishment for a mere thought crime, executing a person for an actual crime should raise no moral/ethical issues.
Your thoughts on Christianity are pretty clear (and pretty wrong, by the way), and definitely not helpful in a thread like this. (not only talking to you, by the way) I created this thread so we could discuss the meaning of punishment, revenge and justice, and the way they should or shouldn't relate to the death penalty. Religion has no place in a discussion about the philosophy of the rights and wrongs about the death penalty, and as such, I'd hope that people would just ignore it instead of using the opportunity to cheaply insult it.
