Back to your old dishonest tactics, LEGO? That didn’t take long this time.

<<You agree that most people will be deterred from engaging in criminal behaviour if the penalty is heavy enough, then you claim that this could not apply in capitol cases.>>

No. I didn't say that at all. Go back and read what I actually said. Read this too while you're at it: http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/deterrence%20briefing%20.pdf

Your claims regarding peer reviewed evidence and climate change conspiracies are another way of saying that you’re just going to believe whatever you want to believe. And this coming from someone who didn’t know the difference between weather and climate too.

What is common sense to you is only common sense because you are ignorant of the facts and the complexities of deterrence theory. The fact that you could get this far in your argument and not have touched on the role that certainty of punishment plays in deterrence is a testament to that. It was once common sense that the world was flat. Common sense often fails us.

<<... you dismissed it with your throwaway "I already addressed that." No, you didn't.>>

I had already explained why killing an incapacitated criminal was different to killing an enemy combatant. That was sufficient. Your talk of medals, inhumanity and immorality was just an attempt to distract from that and desperately prod for a contradiction in my position that isn't there.

<<As for your "what kind of a bastard...?" quip.>>

I said “What kind of a sicko ...”. You changed it to “bastard” to make it sound like I sympathise with, or am more concerned for the welfare of, serious offenders.

<<You can incapacitate child rapist murderers for a long time, but when they get out they may do it again and that has already been proven.>>

This is also an argument for LWOP. Which is the harsher punishment, however, is debatable and subjective, but I'm happy to settle on capital punishment being the harsher penalty because I consider the risk of executing innocent people unacceptable enough to sacrifice a bit of retribution.

AJ,

Just a small point

"All that being said, it would be more accurate to compare military combat with a police shootout".

This is not more accurate or even middling accurate because police are 99.99%, in shootouts, firing at criminals whereas soldiers are usually firing at people who have never committed a crime in their lives, and would be, in most cases, good citizens of their country.

Back to your old dishonest tactics, AJ Phillips?

I went back and read what you said on the previous page and you agreed that increasing penalties reduced the numbers of people who considered engaging in criminal behaviour. Your exact words were......"When comparing a $50 dollar fine to 20 years in prison, yes." Yet though you agree that death is the heavier penalty, you will not admit that it is therefore logical that the death penalty must be a greater deterrent.

Your opposition to the death penalty is not based upon the issue of the possible innocence of an accused. You have previously declared, with much vehemence, that you oppose capitol punishment even when it is certain that the offender is guilty. Your position is purely a philosophical one based upon vanity. You live among academics who have decided that opposing the death penalty is what a rooly, rooly smart and socially progressive person should advocate. And like an adolescent sucking on a fag because he thinks it makes him look adult, you have bought the image.

My opposition to whatever "scientific" evidence you claim to have is based upon a certain knowledge that science is not always right. Scientists can be ideologically driven, and driven by economic factors and career aspirations. Climate change is a perfect example. First we had Climategate, and then the revelation that climate researchers in Australia were fiddling the data from 100 years of record keeping, in order to make the figures resemble what they thought reality ought to be. Climate scientists accuse the geologists who oppose their science of being in the pockets of mining companies. Geologists accuse the climate scientists of creating a doomsday scenario to get research funding.

In the Pacific War, allied soldiers routinely "executed" wounded and helpless Japanese soldiers. We shot up lifeboats full of survivors and machine gunned men helpless in the water. We killed them for practical reasons, and because like the very worst criminals, they did not deserve any mercy. Your claim that killing in warfare is only between armed combatants has no basis in reality.

Is Mise,

The primary reason LEGO cannot see the difference between enemy combatants and criminals is because he sees them both as threats to society. When an enemy combatant is killed, they were the frontline of a threat to our security. A prisoner who is put to death is no longer a threat to society when they are put to death. Incapacitation that is a key difference between killing enemy combatants and killing those on death row. This is a factor that LEGO is overlooking, and it was the all-important context of what I had said.

Enemy combatants have not been incapacitated, and this is why my analogy was more accurate. Whether or not they are model citizens in their own country is not relevant to the analogy.

All that aside, the difference you point out between military combat and police shootouts still doesn't help LEGO's argument, if that's what you were hoping to achieve.

.

LEGO,

Those weren't my "exact" words, but that's close enough.

<<Yet though you agree that death is the heavier penalty, you will not admit that it is therefore logical that the death penalty must be a greater deterrent.>>

I will happily admit that (to those who view it as harsher) capital punishment should logically be a greater deterrent than LWOP. The problem, however, is that that's not what the vast majority of data suggests. There are many of reasons why the data may contradict prima facie logic. Such logic assumes that we're rational beings, for starters; it could be that most don't perceive there to be a big enough difference between LWOP and capital punishment; or it could mean that there is not enough certainty of punishment (you didn't read that article I linked to, did you?).

<<Your opposition to the death penalty is not based upon the issue of the possible innocence of an accused. You have previously declared, with much vehemence, that you oppose capitol punishment even when it is certain that the offender is guilty.>>

"With much vehemence," eh? Hardly. You're so dramatic.

Continued…

...Continued

Some of us are actually capable of having more than one reason for holding a belief, you know.

<<Your position is purely a philosophical one ...>>

I've sure provided a lot of evidence-based reasoning for someone whose position is purely philosophical.

<<My opposition to whatever "scientific" evidence you claim to have is based upon a certain knowledge that science is not always right.>>

Fair enough. You at least need to know what that evidence is before you can reject it though. Trusting a common sense that is based on incomplete data and using that to reject data you’re not even aware of? Now THAT is the mark of a purely philosophical position.

<<First we had Climategate...>>

Yeah, thousands of emails and all that was found was a handful of lines that sounded suspicious when taken out of context. Hardly a grand conspiracy.

<<...and then the revelation that climate researchers in Australia were fiddling the data from 100 years of record keeping, in order to make the figures resemble what they thought reality ought to be.>>

Are you referring to data homogenisation? You don't even know, do you? You just read something on a denialist blog and it sounded incriminating so you lapped it up. But I'm not going to be drawn by your throwaway lines into a debate about climate change just because you’ve lost this one.

<<We shot up lifeboats full of survivors and machine gunned men helpless in the water.>>

This does nothing to negate my point about incapacitation. War can bring out the worst in people and you're a sick person if you think that in such behaviour there lies an acceptable rationale for implementing the death penalty too.

Anyway, as you pointed out earlier, we're generally a more humane people now. You seem to flip-flop between a pride in our improved civility, and an admiration and longing for our more barbaric past. Whatever suits your argument at the time, I guess.

<<Your claim that killing in warfare is only between armed combatants has no basis in reality.>>

I have made no such claim.

To AJ Phiillips.

Thank you for admitting that the death penalty "should logically be the greater deterrent."

I did not read your "scientific" link about the alleged ineffectiveness of the death penalty, for four very good reasons. The primary reason, is because I have no confidence that your "scientific" explanation is not without ideological bias. I would not expect that you would bother to read scientific studies like "A Mind To Crime" or "The Bell Curve" either. Because these works contradict your belief that the reason why black men are very disproportionately represented in very serious violent crime is because they are the poor oppressed victims of white oppression. Any scientific work that refutes your racist belief, you consider suspect.

In this respect, we are even stevens.

Your strongest argument, is the one about the possibility of an innocent being executed for a crime they not commit. You ask if this is "acceptable?" But if we are trading the lives of innocents here, I challenge you to name one executed criminal in Australia who was innocent, against my five innocent victims of criminals in Australia who served long prison sentences for abduction, rape and murder, who then killed again after release. Add to that one innocent woman in WA killed by an escaped murderer. Is six dead innocent women and children "acceptable" to the anti death penalty squad?

Add to that, the number of prisoners and prison warders have been killed within jails by extremely dangerous prisoners already serving long sentences.

Your premise that killing external enemies should be considered different to killing internal enemies, because captured criminals are "incapacitated" does not wash. "Incapacitated" criminal bosses have been known to continue their criminal enterprises from within prison, importing drugs that devastate communities, and ordering the execution of witnesses, informers, police officers, prosecutors, and judges. "Incapacitated" criminals escape and kill again. Extremely dangerous abductor/rapist/murderers are released from "incapacitation" to kill again because "Life" in jail almost never means what it says in this country. There are only a handful of "Never To Be Released" prisoners in NSW jails.

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