DEATH PENALTY

Once upon a time, you could find no greater proponent for the Death Penalty than me.

Hang them, fry them, poison them – let justice be done, I felt.

I changed my mind about that several decades ago.

What changed my mind?

Well, I came to understand that people who favour the Death Penalty want revenge rather than justice. But they want the state to provide that revenge because they are incapable/unwilling to do so themselves.

Cowards? Maybe. Can you look into a person’s eyes and kill them? I doubt it. But you’re happy for the state to do it? What does that make you?

Aggrieved relatives? Maybe. Hardly the kind of clear-minded people you want deciding life and death matters. Especially if the evidence is scant or you get it wrong.

I understand people want revenge. I’m Serbian. I understand revenge really well.

But in legal cases, surely what is required is justice?

Further, the Death Penalty is not a deterrent. Knowing they will be put to death if they are caught has stopped exactly how many people from committing heinous crimes?

Also, what is wrong with us that we trust the state and its retarded and corrupt apparatchiks (ie. the cops) to actually get the right person?

Sir William Blackstone held: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”. And I agree.

See also

Esoterica

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HYPOTHETICALS

1 March 20210

Miscarriages of justice occur all the time. Innocent people are murdered by the state or spend their lives in jail because the cops got it wrong, or were corrupt in their practices.

So the next pro-Death Penalty argument would be: “What if the crime was so appalling and he/she was caught red-handed and confessed? Surely killing that person would be right and proper rather than waste tax-payer money keeping them in jail?”

This argument is put forward by people who have no idea what jail is like. The loss of your freedom and rights is to me, far worse than death.

Of course, jail is not a deterrent either.

There are monsters out there. I know. They have always been there and they will always be there.

I no longer believe state-sanctioned murder is the way to deal with them.