Quote: (04-04-2013 11:14 AM)cardguy Wrote:
If you support the death penalty - does than mean you should support the following as well?
http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm...0331159230
Serious question.
Technically, the alternative to a crime serious enough to get a death penalty would be life imprisonment.
Now, forcing a guy to live and grow old and die in a jail cell is to my mind pretty inhumane. It's hypocritical to say 'remove a guy from society' and then instead of giving him an honourable death, you lock him up to rot. The death penalty is more humane in comparison. (I suppose one could argue that being denied a good death is a punishment in and of itself, but I don't see the point of giving 2 punishments where 1 would do).
Paralysing another guy is inhumane, so I can't say I'd support it. If you support making a person suffer for the rest of his natural life for his crime, the proper equivalent is not the death penalty, but life in solitary.
I think a more fair ruling would be that the guy in question would be legally bound to hand over a set amount of whatever money he earns, almost like child support/alimony. Now instead society will have to support 2 cripples instead of 1.
I support the death penalty because some people are just not healthy to be left around, in the same way a gangrenous foot has to be cut off for the health of the whole, and I've met enough prisoners to realise that locking people up in cages is as cruel if not more cruel than the death penalty. I myself would rather die than be locked in a prison cell for 40+ years watching myself waste away. That's not a life worth living. Saying that the death penalty is wrong while saying that it's okay to lock people up and throw away the key is hypocritical - they are both brutal punishments in a world where punishments must by necessity exist for order to prevail. But paralysing someone seems to me overly brutal and goes far above and beyond the exercise of merely removing someone from society.