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Originally Posted by Seaver
Actually, I believe it does support the death penalty. Your argument is about the humanity of the convicted. It is not about the wrongly convicted, as that is a completely separate argument about civil legal system.
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Actually, no, my argument is more about the humanity of the rest of us. The only reason I brought up the wrongly convicted was in reference to Halx's post. I agree it is a totally separate argument and largely irrelevant in the context of current jurisprudence as the technology that has exonerated those on death row who were convicted in the past is standard procedure in the capital cases of today.
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My argument is that these killers knowingly gave up their right to humanity by killing innocent people. These killers are no longer innocent of taking another person's life, the majority of their rights as citizens was knowingly forfitted. The fact that the state is employed to end their life is not a contradiction in morality, as I believe that for the greater good murderers should be executed.
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Well, fine, as long as you realize that, like mine, this is only an opinion on their right to life. We just default to different ends of the spectrum.
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You attempt to divide justice and vengence. This is a misguided argument because justice is simply an institutionalized repayment in some manner. For more petty crimes fines or jail time is sought, one pays money or his freedoms for an amount of time to make ammends to the society. The greater good is not served when we put someone away for life, it is more cruel to the prisoner (in my opinion), and it creates a much more dangerous atmosphere for those who have not committed such violent crimes.
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Please, if you care to, explain to me how the greater good is served by ending their life. And you are supposing that everyone in prison for murder is necessarily more dangerous than those who are in prison for say, armed robbery or dealing drugs? Is your idea of the greater good simply protecting prison guards from people who may or may not try to do them harm?
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Your argument about forced prison guards is not valid either. There are much higher penalties for killing a police officer on duty than an average citizen. Are they forced to be Police Officers? Are their lives worth more than the average persons? No, it is because they volunteer to do a dangerous job that is needed. But according to your argument is that no guards are ever killed on duty because no one then would be a prison guard.
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I'm having trouble understanding this but I can tell you misunderstood what I wrote. What I meant to say was that, if every person serving a life sentence for a capital murder conviction wanted to kill the guards at their prison, there would literally, be no prison guards left alive. The number of these people populating our prisons is far greater than the number of guards. We are the murder capital of the world, after all. And I could digress here into my thoughts about our culpability as a society for this prevalence of people willing to kill but I'll spare ya'll.
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And no, your attempt to diffuse the argument by asking if we seek every murderer the death penalty does not work. By extending far beyond the argument into realms never even stipulated it does not lend itself to being a diffusion. An equivilant would be to say that since you do not believe that capital punishment is moral, do you suggest we let every prisoner out of prison?
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Again, I'm having trouble understanding this. I referred directly to those convicted of
capital murder charges - those which carry sentences of life imprisonment or death. I did not infer that you thought anyone convicted of any murder charge should be put to death.
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The argument that I put forward is capital punishment is valid because of the greater good. Prisoners on capital crimes create only sorrow, havoc, and fear. While in prison they still only provide these, as life sentences provide them an opportunity to justify that they can not be punished in any other way and therefore are effectively immune from punishment. The danger they do to hard working individuals, and the pain they could cause by injuring or killing a prison guard is not worth the risk in my opinion.
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If we knew that everyone, or for the sake of argument even most of them, posed a direct threat to prison guards I would at least be able to see some basis in this argument, but we don't. And in fact, and prove me wrong if you can, I don't think there is any evidence to prove that prison guards are more at risk in other countries, or even our own states, that do not practice the death penalty than in those that do.
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Of course you will try to misconstrue my argument to say that everyone who does not give good to a society should be executed, that is not what I'm saying to do not even go down that route. You say our arguments do not address or defeat your argument, though conveniently yours completely defeats ours. Do you not think that this may be because you have an opinion which you would rather not change because of your beliefs about those who do support capital punishment?
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Wow, do you really dislike me that much? Is that the way I seem to you? That is so totally unlike something I would say. Yeah, let's not go down that route. It's your fantasy not mine.
No, your arguments do not defeat my theory that killing people we have under state control is an ethically questionable practice for us to be engaging in. But really, why must there be a defeat of some kind? I conceded with xepherys that we just have different opinions on the subject. And his (?) final argument ultimately is the only one that really addresses the implications of my doubt about it. That being that there are no implications. They should be killed because their lives are worthless.