Quibbling over whether or not something is "revenge" is a silly argument. Revenge (or retribution, or societal vengeance, or whatever you want to call it) is a major element of every criminal justice system in the world, including those that don't have the death penalty. You can still criticize that element of criminal justice, of course, but it makes no sense to single out the death penalty.
This is essentially my position. I prefer the term "paying the debt to society".
I'm going to ignore Pizaa's rebuttals until he gives something of substance. His empty rhetoric doesn't make for much of a debate.
Yeah. But is revenge really such a bad thing in all cases? Also, since we're talking about incredibly violent people here it protects people from them permanently. Even if they're just in jail, their fellow prisoners deserve protection from the truly crazy people.
It's inconsistent. That's why I'm also against giving the victim a say in sentencing (a proposal that gets mooted from time to time). I don't believe a sentence should be mitigated by how benevolent your victim was nor do I believe that Justice should be a vehicle for revenge. I believe the main purpose of the justice system is or at least should be deterrent (at the very least it should deter reoffending)
No, of course. As I said, I'm not talking about the kind of case that currently gives the death penalty is America. I'm talking about situations where, for example, a person has been deeply involved with human trafficking for years and was caught red handed. Someone who made their living off of selling children off to be sex slaves. You can't rehabilitate such a person, and their debt to society is nigh on infinite. So we have two options. Either we give life in prison or we kill them. The right of such a person to live is frankly not a significant factor in my opinion, considering the crime. So it comes down to utilitarianism, and life in prison is expensive.
And as Duck said, it's only so expensive because of appeals. If we only executed the people who were not in any way at risk of being innocent, the system could be designed such that this was not a problem.
It still makes me question the aspect of it where people see a suicide as escaping punishment but an execution as being it.
I think that's more influenced by people wanting to be outraged than anything else. I've always been rather offended by people who say things like that, suicide having been a major part of my life. Suicide isn't the easy way out. People just like to be angry.