I agree with the death penalty in principle. In practice, I would only agree with it under the dictatorship of the proletariat because a bourgeois state should not have that amount of power.
I’m all for rehabilitative justice, but if it can be proven beyond any reasonable doubt that you:
- intentionally murdered an innocent person
- raped someone
- molested a child
- are a nazi
- committed war crimes
then you have forfeited your right to be a part of society and should be removed from it. Imo there is no amount of re-education or rehabilitation that can fix a person who has done any of the aforementioned things.
Thoughts?
There is a lot to discuss with capital punishment obviously, and I still feel mixed.
I do find it odd that one of the justifications of life imprisonment over death, is that it will make the offender suffer more. Which is just legally incorrect, most of the world specifically outlawed capital punishment because it’s seen as very cruel, and states that still use it site it’s cruelty as a deterent.
It’s odd because it contradicts the point of life imprisonment being more humane. I’ve noticed the arguments for life are not coherent when combined, you either subscribe to the cruelty of life, or the eye for an eye makes the world go blind logic. Yet the death penalty has no such issue, all lines of logic fit together neatly. It is undeniably a powerful legal statement.
I think for now I lean towards life imprisonment. It should not be the decision of anyone except the offender, if they wish to rehabilitate or not. But I do make an exception for notable offenders. I find it cruel and sadistic to keep a serial killer locked up in solitary for the rest of their years. Allow the appeals to expire and just let them go peacefully.
I once heard a former inmate say the only thing worse than being sentenced to die in America is being sentenced to live in America.