Wouldn’t a lot of people simply sign up to “no death penalty” protection agencies? They could guarantee that their customers would face life in prison but not kill them. Would the deterrence effect be enough of an economic incentive for them to not offer such terms?
Really interesting but surely only potential non-criminals would sign up to such an agreement? What would be the benefit to the potential non-criminal of signing up to an agreement that exposes him, put not potential criminals, to the danger of becoming the 1/250 wrongly executed? It almost sounds like there would need to be a higher degree of certainty for the conviction of non-signees, thereby lowering the number of them executed in relation to signees.
Murder is not a sane act, whether premeditated or spontaneous. If a dog goes mad and attacks a person, it is put down humanely, not 'punished',in order to prevent it attacking any more people.
If someone has committed a crime to which the response is the imposition of the death 'penalty' there is no reason to make that person suffer physically in the course of being despatched.
A general anaesthetic could be used to render the criminal senseless then the heart could be stopped by means of cardioplegia and simply not restarted.
The 'executioner' would not have to live with the unpleasant knowledge that he/she/they had inflicted suffering upon anyone and the object of the exercise would be attained - ridding the world of an individual who could not be trusted to refrain from murdering again. Simples.
The word 'punishment' in capital punishment doesn't refer to making the guilty suffer unnecessarily and no one is suggesting that we should torture people before executing them, only that they should be 'put down', as in your example of the mad dog that attacks people. Not sure where you got the idea of making someone suffer physically from.
I also disagree with your claim that 'murder is not a sane act'. I consider murder wrong yet that doesn't mean I can't understand what motivated someone to murder someone else: revenge, heat of the moment anger, desire to inherit grandma's money. If the act were not sane then I, who I take to be a sane person, wouldn't be able to understand the murderer's actions, yet I do.
Wouldn’t a lot of people simply sign up to “no death penalty” protection agencies? They could guarantee that their customers would face life in prison but not kill them. Would the deterrence effect be enough of an economic incentive for them to not offer such terms?
Really interesting but surely only potential non-criminals would sign up to such an agreement? What would be the benefit to the potential non-criminal of signing up to an agreement that exposes him, put not potential criminals, to the danger of becoming the 1/250 wrongly executed? It almost sounds like there would need to be a higher degree of certainty for the conviction of non-signees, thereby lowering the number of them executed in relation to signees.
A very brief complementary perspective:
https://jclester.substack.com/p/capital-punishment-or-death-penalty
My take on capital 'punishment' is this:
Murder is not a sane act, whether premeditated or spontaneous. If a dog goes mad and attacks a person, it is put down humanely, not 'punished',in order to prevent it attacking any more people.
If someone has committed a crime to which the response is the imposition of the death 'penalty' there is no reason to make that person suffer physically in the course of being despatched.
A general anaesthetic could be used to render the criminal senseless then the heart could be stopped by means of cardioplegia and simply not restarted.
The 'executioner' would not have to live with the unpleasant knowledge that he/she/they had inflicted suffering upon anyone and the object of the exercise would be attained - ridding the world of an individual who could not be trusted to refrain from murdering again. Simples.
The word 'punishment' in capital punishment doesn't refer to making the guilty suffer unnecessarily and no one is suggesting that we should torture people before executing them, only that they should be 'put down', as in your example of the mad dog that attacks people. Not sure where you got the idea of making someone suffer physically from.
I also disagree with your claim that 'murder is not a sane act'. I consider murder wrong yet that doesn't mean I can't understand what motivated someone to murder someone else: revenge, heat of the moment anger, desire to inherit grandma's money. If the act were not sane then I, who I take to be a sane person, wouldn't be able to understand the murderer's actions, yet I do.