Some people, not most, say the death penalty is not right. However, what other punishment is warrented in a case like this? If this guy is convicted shouldn't he be executed?
"Edwards is accused of kidnapping, raping and killing Hayes. If convicted of first-degree murder, Edwards could face the death penalty.
Authorities contend that Edwards carjacked Hayes and Nicholas, drove to Rocky Mount and forced the woman to withdraw cash from an ATM.
Hayes and her husband, who was stationed at an Air Force base in Virginia, were driving home from a trip. Her husband and brother were inside the pharmacy when the kidnapping occurred.
Afterward, Edwards took Hayes and the then 11-month-old baby to a remote spot in Nash County, raped and beat the woman to death with a tire rim and left the boy for dead, authorities said.
The boy survived 90-degree heat in just a diaper but suffered a severe sunburn.
C.D. Thompson of Nashville testified Thursday that he found the boy and his mother on a path near his home while walking his dog. He told the jury that his dog stopped in his tracks, which usually meant a snake was in the path.
"This time, it wasn't a snake, it was a baby," Thompson said. "He was laying face-down in briars of honeysuckles.
"There were flies all around the baby. No sound. No movement. I thought the baby was dead."
Thompson said he also saw Ginger Hayes' body, returned home quickly and called the sheriff's department. When deputies arrived, they found the baby was still alive and rushed him to the hospital."
It's really hard to say what penalty is actually warranted in any criminal case. Some people think in terms of reciprocity, some in terms of rehabilitation, and some in terms of prevention. Any of these, if considered in different ways, could suggest different appropriate responses to crime.
I don't think that citing a particularly heinous crime is going to change the fact that people view the role of society in imposing justice from vastly different perspectives.
Also, you're starting an awful lot of new political threads for your first couple of days on the forum You may want to hang out and get a feel for the place for a while before jumping in quite so hard. We've been through a lot of these debates before, and it can make you seem trollish if you seem to want to have them ALL on your first day Posted by michaele8 (Member # 6608) on :
Personally, I had not thought about starting a death penalty thread but in another thread it came up and I felt it warrented more attention than merely a reply.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Better threads on politics than dobie threads. Though you might wanna dive into some other folk's threads just so it doesn't appear as if you only wanna grandstand.
Can't agree though. He's locked up, and if he's found guity, he's gonna remain locked up for as long as society's representatives feel necessary to maintain safety. Putting blood on our hands doesn't make those of us on the outside any safer.
Governmental execution is just a way of saying killing people is okay as long as the victim is helpless and the killer is stronger than those who might take revenge. How many people does it take to change a homicide from being a murder into being a good deed?
[ June 11, 2004, 06:43 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Governmental execution is just a way of saying killing people is okay as long as the victim is helpless and the killer is stronger than those who might take revenge.
No, it's not. It's a way of identifying certain actions as being so horrible that society has decided they deserve the ultimate punishment.
Look, there's a lot of reasons to oppose the death penalty, especially as practiced in this country. But refusing to differentiate between the morality of the same action in different circumstances is not performing a true moral calculus.
Dagonee
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
And again I ask, how many people does it take to change a homicide from being a murder into being a good deed?
Cuz that is all you are saying with "society", that some given number of people have the right to define which "certain actions as being so horrible" that it changes homicide from being murder into being acceptable behaviour.
So give the number.
[ June 11, 2004, 08:52 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
2.
Whatever. It's a ridiculous question. Someone who kills someone in self defense can have their homicide turned from "murder" into acceptable behavior by the police that investigate, the prosecutor, the judge, or by 12 members of the jury.
Dagonee
[ June 11, 2004, 08:47 AM: Message edited by: Dagonee ]
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
[edited because I shouldn't have said it to begin with]
Farmgirl
[ June 11, 2004, 09:51 AM: Message edited by: Farmgirl ]
Posted by kerinin (Member # 4860) on :
here's an argument against it. The judicial system is a human institution, as such it is inherently and unavoidably subject to human mistakes. The death penalty is irreversible, and simultaneously the greatest concievable infringement on the rights of a citizen. i believe it was Franlkin who said something along the lines of it being better to let a thousand criminals go free than to unjustly punish a single innocent man...?
i think if you look at the statistics of who is put to death after being convicted of 1st degree murder you'll see that it is by and large poor black men.
Posted by kerinin (Member # 4860) on :
here's another argument against it: if the purpose of the death penalty is to punish those who commit atrocious crimes, why have we settled on such a pathetic method of punishment? i can think of a lot better ways of punishing people - giving them shock therapy until their mind turns to jelly or something like that.
the only real argument i can see for the death penalty is that people who commit multiple murders and are either incapable of change or would be require more effort than the society sees fit to expend to be changed should be removed from society, and we as a society should not be obligated to pay for feeding and clothing them for the rest of their lives. I think (and i'm not sure here but...) that it has been shown that the death penalty doesn't act as a significant deterrant, so that argument doesn't work...
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
But incarceration is irreversible too. You can't lock someone up for 10 years, find out you were wrong, and then make everything all better. The man was in prision for 10 years. It's a fact of his life that cannot be erased. Unless we're going to start only punishing crimes by taking away things (like money) that we can later restore if we're wrong, we're never going to have anything even like a system of reversible punishments.
As to the "we're just as bad as them if we kill to punish killing" argument, you can say the exact same thing when we punish kidnapping by locking people away in a prision or levying fines against thieves. The actions are equivilent, but the contexts are very different. Either we as a society have the moral right to punish people for crimes they commit or we don't.
You can argue in the specific case that capital punishment is not something we should not be doing and, I think, have a pretty compelling case, but if the basis of your argument is that we as a society can't do bad things to people, then you're throwing away the entire notion of a justice system.
For me, I think that I could only support the death penalty if the people applying it could recognize that the person they are causing to be killed is a human being with all that entails and not an inhuman monster and still decide that it is better that this person be killed than other forms of punishment. It's my opinion that any society that relies on dehumanizing the criminal (as I think ours largely does) is not acting solely out of a motive for justice, which to me is only bankable moral justification.
Of course, this goes for al the lower crimes as well, but I'm willing to take a more utilitarian attitude towards this. The world isn't perfect and our extremely imperfect justice system goes hand in hand with our extremely flawed morality. However, just because it's not really justified doesn't mean that it or something like it is not necessary. The best I think we can hope for is that people realize that we're acting out of necessity at least as much as we are any sort of justice. For myself, I've yet to be convinced that capital punishment fits under the necessary column.
[ June 11, 2004, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
Posted by kerinin (Member # 4860) on :
quote:But incarceration is irreversible too. You can't lock someone up for 10 years, find out you were wrong, and then make everything all better
sure you can, you can let him out. obviously this won't give him back the 10 years he was in prison, but it will give him the remainder of his life. I don't see how that can be seen as being so trivial as to dismiss. Many people (especially since DNA testing) have been found wrongly accused, don't you think they're glad they weren't killed? would you argue that since we already wrongly took a few years of their life we should go ahead and finish the job?
quote:The best I think we can hope for is that people realize that we're acting out of necessity
except that:
quote:Research on capital punishment indicates that the desired general deterrent effect may not be present. At best the rate of capital crimes drop off following a an execution only to rise again to higher levels before tapering off to "normal," therefore not producing any overall reduction. Also, there appears to be little, if any, difference in rates of capital offenses between states which impose the death penalty and those that do not. In fact, an inverse correlation has been documented; when states abolish the death penalty a corresponding drop in capital crimes is reported (Pfohl, chapter 3, 1994)
if it's not a deterrant it's only value is as a moral reaction or retribution. executions don't stop killing, they just make us feel good.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
But it sure is a good incapacitation.
Dagonee
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote: In fact, an inverse correlation has been documented; when states abolish the death penalty a corresponding drop in capital crimes is reported
By definition, if the state has abolished the death penalty, there are no capital crimes.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
You may want to hang out and get a feel for the place for a while before jumping in quite so hard. We've been through a lot of these debates before, and it can make you seem trollish if you seem to want to have them ALL on your first day