From: olson@husc8.harvard.edu (Chip Olson)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Re: Capital punishment (was Re: abortion)
Date: 16 Apr 92 01:25:47 GMT
 <12247@tamsun.tamu.edu><1992Apr13.085204.11735@cco.caltech.edu>,
 <1992Apr13.222723.11059@husc3.harvard.edu><1992Apr14.201623.23815@cco.caltech.edu>
Organization: Spam-On-A-Rope Inc.
In-reply-to: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU's message of 14 Apr 92 20:16:23 GMT

In article <1992Apr14.201623.23815@cco.caltech.edu> lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals) writes:

>In article <1992Apr13.222723.11059@husc3.harvard.edu>, olson@husc9.Harvard.EDU (Charles Olson) writes:
>>and the fact that capital punishment doesn't deter crime *in the slightest*
>
>It most certainly DOES deter crime:  We're sure there's at least ONE criminal
>who won't do it again.

"Maybe, but in order to make that at all significant, you'd have to have lots
more executions, i.e. several per day... some might applaud this, but given
that you'd either have to utterly clog the courts with the appeals or severely
curtail the appeals process, it wouldn't fly... unless you want to get rid
of the few safeguards we have against the execution of innocents."

>>(why is it that the states that have the most executions, to wit. Texas and
>>Florida, also have among the highest murder rates in the country?),

>Perhaps you're looking at it backwards.  Maybe it's the states that have the
>highest murder rates that decide to implement the death penalty.

"I don't have my statistics handy, but I believe TX and FL fired up their
electric chairs immediately after the Supreme Court relegalized the death
penalty in '76 (?), and their murder rates haven't exactly plummeted since
then.  Besides, the only way that executions might deter crime would be
to carry them out the old-fashioned way - in the town square at high noon,
with the head stuck up on a pike afterwards; none of this prison basement
at midnight shit."

>>"Simply put, I don't believe that anybody has the right to condemn another to
>>death.
>
>Consider the fact that if you release a murderer (either via parole or via a
>jailbreak), and he reverts to his old habits, you've condemned INNOCENT people
>to death.

"This is why I'm marginally in favor of life without parole for convicted
murderers.  Consider the fact that if a person is executed, and later some
new evidence comes up that proves their innocence, there is nothing that
can be done-- the crime has already been committed.  And a far more vile
crime it is than to let a murderer go free - at least in the latter case,
the fellow might have repented his ways and decided to re-enter society.
Our judicial system is far from perfect, and there will always be unfor-
tunates who fall through the cracks."

Castellan turns to hear a lament from a fellow traveler:

>From: renglish@cello.hpl.hp.com (Bob English)

>"At 12:01 AM on April 21, I will become a murderer.  The State of
>California, acting in my name and in my behalf, will strap Robert Alton
>Harris into a chair and drop cyanide tablets into a pail of acid, ending
>his life.  I do not condone his acts, but neither do I wish for his
>death.  I do not need his blood on my hands to restore my faith in a
>just society.  80% of the people I see when I walk down the street do."

"Amen, brother!  There's too much beauty in our fellow humans for their
judicial murder to ever be justifiable."

>He raises his glass above his head.  "To those who feel their right to
>kill outweighs the right of others to live without killing, and whose
>thirst for blood makes murderers of us all, may your thirst be quickly
>sated.  It is not only criminals who suffer when you kill, but all those
>in whose name you act."

>He drains his glass in one draught, then fires it into the flames and
>walks slowly to his seat.

Castellan's glass follows Bob's into the fireplace.  "Well said, sir!"

--
-Chip Olson. | olson@husc.harvard.edu | ceo@gnu.ai.mit.edu (seldom used)
"So come all ye lovers of the Good Life, your children playing in the sun,
And set a sympathetic flag a-flying, and be there when the Dutchman comes..."
                                      -Jethro Tull, "Flying Dutchman"