Kitteh Wrote:So it's okay to kill off victims of an imperfect legal system because our society's thirst for blood is that great.
Gotcha.
Oh, and "They deserve to die because they were convicted and they were convicted because they deserved to die" isn't circular reasoning?
Straw man. You simplified and misrepresented my argument to make it seem much weaker than it actually is. Are you comfortable with presenting compete bullshiit as your argument and hoping nobody catches on to it?
They deserve to die because they were convicted, and they were convicted BECAUSE THEY COMMITED FIRST DEGREE MURDER AND THERE WAS SOLID EVIDENCE TO CONCLUDE A JURY TRIAL WITH A VERDICT OF "GUILTY BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT." That's my argument, not what you said. Beyond a reasonable doubt means just that -- the judge and jury were presented with evidence such as ballistics, reliable witness testimony, and forensics, which concluded 100% that the perp was guilty. Beyond a reasonable doubt means he has no solid alibi, that he was connected to the crime scene by witnesses that have not been discredited by the defense, that the murder weapon has his finger prints on it, that his hair was collected at the scene. It is that solid evidence that leads to the conviction, leading the jury to conclude that they were guilty, and they are then sentenced to death. No death penalty case can be concluded without a jury trial and a verdict of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The reliability of all this is a teeny tiny bit less than 100%, which is what your whole argument hinges on. Since your argument uses logical fallacies to make up for its logical inadequacies, the only really logical conclusion is that either you don't know what you're talking about or are deliberately making untruthful arguments. Either way, arguing with you any more is a complete waste of my time.
The argument against the death penalty, for the gazillionth time, is that a civilized society that is striving to transcend murder and war cannot justify using death as a punitive measure. That is the primary reason for why the death penalty is no longer viewed as acceptable by most 1st world countries. In America there is also the argument that the death penalty is a form of "cruel and unusual punishment," which violates the 8th Amendment and therefore makes the death penalty unconstitutional. When the Supreme Court eventually repeals the death penalty, those are the arguments it will use in its ruling. It is the WEAKEST (though the easiest and shortest) approach to argue that the death penalty is improper because once in many years it convicts an innocent, and that should get the well-over-99.99% of cons that DESERVE it off the hook. Only the fuucking media takes that approach frequently, because derailed victim stories are simpler and more sensational (and sell more newspapers) than something more solid and logical.
Only a very talented writer can make a passionate and complete argument in a short amount of space that focuses around the Constitution, or a well-developed philosophical and historical viewpoint. That type of argument is progressional and requires the use of a lot of evidence, hwich is difficult to manage in tight editorial word-count constraints. It also takes incredible talent to make such an argument relevant and exciting to the general public, which generally does not care about Constitutional technicalities or philosophy. However, any last idiot can, in that amount of space, describe a sob story of some guy that was convicted in teh 1970s (BEFORE modern forensics and ballistics tech, and therefore hardly applicable to the here-and-now,) and recently released due to new DNA evidence. He then makes a tired and weak argument that there are probably thousands of innocent people in prison, (for which he has no proof,) and then it's front page news. You are buying this mediocre glib bullshiiit line hook and sinker. And you are agreeing with it simply because you have read it a bunch of times, not because it is in any way a strong argument.
xLeviathan Wrote:But but but...it's common sense to execute people who have murdered one or more other people (cough).
As much as you've said it, I fail to see the common sense in it all. What makes it common sense? 2 + 2 is common sense, not this. If this topic was common sense, there would be no argument here or in public in general.
Depending on who you ask, it's also "common sense" to lynch black people and "common sense" to gas Jews and "common sense" to blow up planes over the Atlantic. Politicians love "common sense" because it's whatever they define it to be.