What I'm saying if you speed and get busted, you pay the fine or go to jail or whatever the penalty is. The penalty fits the crime. If you murder, you do the time or get the death penalty as the justice system sees fit. The penalty fits the crime.
Or if we go on angle two with your debate.... The government doesn't care if you speed. You will just be punished for breaking the law. And if you do it enough we take that privilege away so you can't speed again And in some cases, that is right. But why would the government post speed radars, unmanned without someone enforcing the ones that are speeding? It's because they want you to know how fast you are going and deter you from breaking the law through fear that you could get caught
Your postings say nothing except that some people agree the death penalty should be used to punish. They never say that deterrence is not a reason. And not every advocate uses every argument. I'm not even saying that the anti-DP didn't also use the same argument except saying it wouldn't work. Both sides have.
If deterrence was the reason, wouldn't they be talking about deterrence? I never ever considered deterrence a reason to support the death penalty. It never crossed my mind even. The bottom line is it's the penalty for committing heinous crimes. Society has good reason to just do away with the scum.
First, the Georgia legislature had argued that the DP could be a deterrent, and then the Supreme Court stated they didn't want go overrule that argument. Simple for you Denny, the argument was made by those seeking the death penalty all the way back to the 1976 case that kicked this whole thing off.
It does go to show that those who were in favor of the death penalty were making those arguments. It also means the courts couldn't or wouldn't consider that argument. But clear as day, you are wrong, the pro DP side used tha deterrence argument.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_v._Georgia The fact that juries remained willing to impose the death penalty also contributed to the Court's conclusion that American society did not believe in 1976 that the death penalty was in all circumstances a cruel and unusual punishment. The Court also found that the death penalty "comports with the basic concept of human dignity at the core of the [Eighth] Amendment". The death penalty serves two principal social purposes—retribution and deterrence. "In part, capital punishment is an expression of society's moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct". But this outrage must be expressed in an ordered fashion, for America is a society of laws. Retribution is consistent with human dignity, because society believes that "certain crimes are themselves so grievous an affront to humanity that the only adequate response may be the penalty of death". And although it is difficult to determine statistically how much crime the death penalty actually deters, the Court found that in 1976 there was "no convincing empirical evidence" supporting either the view that the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime or the opposite view. Still, the Court could not completely discount the possibility that for certain "carefully contemplated murderers", "the possible penalty of death may well enter into the cold calculus that precedes the decision to act".
Stop changing the debate, I never claimed that it was a deterrent. I simply disagreed with your assertion that deterrence was never an argument given by the pro death penalty side.
So if the lawyers wanting to keep the death penalty abolished argued it was no deterrent, the legislature and attorney defending the law shouldn't argue it? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furman_v._Georgia In the following four years, 37 states enacted new death penalty laws aimed at overcoming the court's concerns about arbitrary imposition of the death penalty. Several statutes mandating bifurcated trials, with separate guilt-innocence and sentencing phases, and imposing standards to guide the discretion of juries and judges in imposing capital sentences, were upheld in a series of Supreme Court decisions in 1976, led by Gregg v. Georgia. Other statutes enacted in response to Furman which mandated imposition of the death penalty upon conviction of a certain crime were struck down in cases of that same year. ... So the Georgia legislature threw everything it could into the legislation to defend against challenges. They were restoring a penalty that had been in place for centuries and that had nothing to do with deterrence before.
You're conflating too many things. There is respect for law because things like jail time and fines do have a deterrence effect. It's not that nothing deters people. What's been generally found is that the death penalty itself has little to no deterrence effect. So laws have teeth due to concepts like jail and fines and those sorts of things. The death penalty adds no additional "teeth" whether your wording for what that means is deterrence or respect. Both mean "changing behavior of potential transgressors" and it doesn't.
And yet they made the argument. You can argue they never did before, never did after, they didn't mean it, they never never made the argument with a banana on their nose. But you can't say it wasn't an argument, because clear as day it was. You were wrong Denny, admit you were wrong, it happens to everyone. And for you, it might even be a healthy step, like a crack addict going a day without a fix.
An argument. Not a compelling one. Not the source reasoning for the death penalty. Just an argument that arose in the 1960s when pointy headed liberals sought to abolish it because it was no deterrent. It is not why we ever had the death penalty. Retribution and to guarantee the person never would commit another crime, even killing another inmate if he were imprisoned for life. I agree with the judges and lawyers and justices who have dealt with the matter. The issue of deterrence has never ever been a factor in any court case that I know of. 8th amendment cruel and unusual punishment is the sole reason given by the left wing justices.
