Yeah, yeah. Capital punishment is judicial murder. And imprisonment is judicial kidnapping. So what?

The same old, tired arguments...

Kidnapping is reversable.

If politicians were to act in accordance with their electorates wishes, we would see a return of the death penalty in an instant.

Unfortunately, none of the whimps have the balls to make it so.

We are locked in this pseudo-world of criminal nicety where murders and worse are pandered too day by day, unrepentant to the suffering they have caused and contemptible of the system which confines them in a “lifestyle” to the cell which they occupy, until some limp-wristed do-gooder suggest they start to show contrition because a parole hearing is visible on the horizon.

So the butchers and the killers suffer their incarceration whilst they explain how they are misunderstood or how they were spanked for wetting the bed when a kid and that explains taking another’s life.

Their victims have no paroles looming on the horizon.
Their victims have no cell walls to beat against.
No do-gooder is going to come visit with the victim and listen to their complaints.

For my input to this I will support the reintroduction of the death penalty.

But I would modify its legal application.

I can understand how, in the heat of emotion, someone could kill someone else unintentionally and be genuinely remorseful.

I can equally understand how a drug dealer trades the life of his “client” for callous and cold personal profit.

The modification is simple.

Second conviction illegal drug trafficking offences should carry a mandatory death sentence.

And to all the bleeding hearts who insist such an action would not necessarily deter other drug traffickers, that is a side issue. At least this one multiple drug-dealing killer will never return to prey on the dependency of others again

Col, much simpler solution: if all drugs were treated like nicotine and alcohol, there would be no drug-related murders. Legalisation of recreational drugs is one side of libertarian philosophy I fully agree with.

BTW, do you honestly believe that death is a worse punishment than life imprisonment? If I had a choice (and I knew I was guilty), I'd choose death anyday.

Calling countries that murder thousands of unborn is certainly not civilised. Funny how many who support making conditions favourable to murder the unborn scream the loudest when it comes to putting paedophiles or multi murderers to death! Some of the European countries that appeared 'civilised' are far from it, Australia included. Being a 'civilised country' is a useless term used to push ones own opinion.

I'd have more faith in Roger's sincerity if he'd used more reasoned argument than mere sarcasim and generalisation. To compare the US to China is wrong. While Capital Punishment is practised in both China doesn't have anywhere near the same judicial processes. The Federal US government doesn't practice Capital Punishment. It is within the sphere of individual states Legislatures.

As an aside I figure this commentator realises this fact because he didn't lay the odium at the feet of the current US president. But with his obvious anti US bias I'll bet he'll bring up his history as Governor of Texas.

Also the author doesn't consider the extra judicial executions carried out across much of Africa.

As usual with the anti-US mob it's always the US who attracts most criticism. While I am critical of the practice of Capital Punishment in some states of the US at least in many of those states the subject is open to discussion and revision. The author should realise the US has the most free and liberal democracy in the world and because of this it is naturally held to a higher standard than the tinpot regimes doing most of the 'legal and illegal' killing. But be accurate please, attacking innocents in most US States doesn't help the cause.

The only debate raging is in the free media of the western world. There is little dissent in most of the tinpot dictatorships who practice Capital Punishment. The UN is the forum where we should see this issue as a raging debate. Why don't we see that?

Perhaps the author might find a way of bring the issue to the attention of that mob.

I am against all capital punishment especially in Indonesia where it is about to raise common murderers to the status of Martyr.

Oh no. Another Catholic trying to force his religious values onto the Prots.

Sorry mate, our British King gave the Bishop of Rome two fingers full of righteous indignation in the 16th century, and you have a nerve trying to tell us Prots what to do now. We don't want the Mafia, the Union Corse, or the Narcotrafficantes buying our politicians, murdering our judges, policemen, crown witnesses, or journalists, like they do in every Catholic country with no death penalty.

I wonder if the author of this article is just a religious nut, or is part of the PR machine of the Columbian cocaine cartels and organised crime?

Redneck

Your analysis is as dishonest as Rogers.

Your British King did give two fingwers to the pope and promptly turned around and lopped the heads of anyone who wouldn't let him continue his phillandering ways. Some recommendation :-) hey. But that's ok. Yep the prots values are outstanding of course. No slavery, no exploitation of people and resources throughout most of the 18th 19th and 20 centuries without those prots values eh? And let's not forget the religious based murder and mayham caused by William of Orange, Cromwell and other great men of prots heritage.

Look if you want to be non-secular why don't you take off and live in a non-secular country where your sort of bigotry is the norm. Try Israel, some of their West Bank outposts would be ideal, they also practice extra judicial executions too and don't seem to mind if that involves kids or pregnant women.

Most of us have left that non-secular crap behind and have accepted a secular design as embraced by the western liberal democracies
... who by the way have mostly seemingly abandoned the practice of Capital Punishment. Prots based ones as well. Remarkable eh? Just doesn't seem to fit your ideal does it?

Wizofaus

That’s rather a strange argument that life in prison is worse than death and therefore we should not have the death penalty.
You seem to be saying literally that for some nasty felons death is too good for them and they should suffer a life sentence instead.
By that logic we who believe in the rope are the nicer, more compassionate guys as compared to the vengeful rednecks like you who just want total, absolute suffering for the felons.

B.T.W. can you explain why criminals found guilty of capital crimes are, in the sentencing phase of a court trial, practically always asking the jury not to give them death but just a life sentence instead?

Wizofaus” Col, much simpler solution: if all drugs were treated like nicotine and alcohol, there would be no drug-related murders. Legalisation of recreational drugs is one side of libertarian philosophy I fully agree with.”

That is a fatuous comment wiz. I was not referring to the users of illicit drugs but to the dealers and traders who are parasites on drug addicts.

We have laws. Every “libertarian” accepts the need and expectation of laws.

When alcohol, tobacco or caffeine or “prescription drugs” are declared “illegal” I would have no hesitation in advocating their supply (and suppliers) be treated as no different to the illegal supply and suppliers of cocaine or heroine.

Re “do you honestly believe that death is a worse punishment than life imprisonment?”

It is said “Where there is life, there is hope”.

Death extinguishes all hope.

The reason for why I support the death penalty is : it is the absolute penalty.

I do not view myself as a vengeful or sadistic person. Any death penalty should be administered with accordance to the gravity which such a sentence deserves, using the most “painless” methods possible.

An “execution” is not some sideshow which panders to those with a salacious interest in someone else’s suffering.

But illegal drug dealers dispense their phials of evil with the full knowledge of the harm and suffering they are inflicting through abuse and addiction on to the users. They morally deserve the same sentence which is effectively their stock in trade, premature death and severely diminished potential “quality of life”.

Someone mentioned earlier the Australian electorate favours the death penalty.

This is actually a myth. At best, it would be a very tight race. For years polls showed support for the death penalty at under 50% of the population. Straight after the Bali Bombing, it increased to 51% of the population, but since 2005 it has steadily decreased.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=2165

http://www.cdu.edu.au/cdss0406/presentations/papers/Shaun%20Wilson.pdf.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/09/1060360550031.html

Or just google it...

Edward, I'm not arguing that "life in prison is worse than death and therefore we should not have the death penalty", just questioning the underlying assumption by supporters of the death penalty who claim, e.g., "murderers deserve to die" that this is the worst possible fate for them. For me "murderers deserve to spend the rest of their life behind bars" is a stronger statement, hence the "murderers deserve to die" claim fails to support any argument for reintroduction of the death penalty.

Col, I don't think dealing and trading of recreational drugs should be illegal either, simply because it's fairly obvious that the criminalisation of such activities has both failed to reduce harmful use of recreational drugs, and been responsible for the rise of extensive organised cartels that operate with no concern for human welfare. Many of those currently involved in illegal drug trading activity are cold-blooded murderers who fully deserve life in gaol, but continually attempting to throw such people behind bars is no solution to the problem.
At least part of the reason many of these people take up a life of crime is because the rewards are so great that the risks are worth it (though they also clearly lack much of a moral conscious). Take away the reward and the motivation, and such people will inevitably take fewer risks.

Why is it since the end of WW2, so many international laws have been broken?

As talked about even before the end of the Cold War, the only resort is to make use of the principles of power balance, especially concerning Iran and Israel, and as certainly helped to prevent war between INDIA AND PAKISTAN.

Indeed, during the Cold War, there was that strategic sideshow in the Middle East when Israel really broke the Code of Nuclear Deterrence which even Henry Kissinger had complained in a recently found report, that the balance of power among smaller ME nations had not only been destroyed but had given the Soviet Union, already with an arranged power balance with the US, the excuse to arm the Arab nations with Nuclear weapons.

Though thanks to our lucky stars the worst did not happen, the point is that there is now evidence that Richard Nixon was also against Israel going militarily nuclear.

So what we are faced with now using the power balance agenda, Iran should be allowed to go nuclear to prevent a pariah-like Israel not only using nuclear weapons against Iran in an initial strike, but also conventional.

The big worry is, of course, that with Putin’s Russia already building nuclear installations in Iran, Kissinger’s original concern might come to pass - because there is already proof that Israel’s present power position in the Middle East is illegal, Russia and possibly China, and even India may believe they have the right to protect Iran under International Law.

There is even reports that Iran might already possess nuclear warheads to fit her long-range rockets, no doubt illegally arranged, but certainly no worse than Israel’s illegal possession of atomic artillery right now.

Regards, BB, WA.

So this is where the usual suspects, RWDBs, trolls and wackos hang out when they have nothing better to do.

I think you'd enjoy starting your own blog where you can advocate just killing everyone you disagree with. That would solve your problem.

It's clear that none of the rabid rednecks here - including the French one - have read the actual article. Why would anyone suggest that the author is insincere or dishonest? There is no evidence for that in the article.

On the contrary, the author is obviously sincere in his abhorrence of capital punishment anywhere for any reason. He makes the point that the United States is in very poor company when it comes to the death penalty. Whoever said that the US has the most free and liberal democracy in the world needs to have a good look instead of repeating hoary old myths.

The French redneck seems to be willing to think less harshly of someone who, in the heat of emotion, unintentionally kills someone and is remorseful. Those who advocate the death penalty can claim no such defence. Capital punishment is precisely to kill someone coldly, intentionally and without remorse - in fact probably in Col's case with a frisson of dark and secret pleasure.

We live in a liberal democracy. That is a direct result of the Enlightenment and the deadly fights that went on about rights, freedoms, individuals' responsibilities and the restrictions of the powers of states and monarchs. It was a moral as much as a political and religious fight. The murder of citizens by the state for any reason has now been abolished by the citizens of almost all liberal democracies (amongst which you cannot count the Malaysian theocracy or the Singapore despotocracy).

The Enlightenment is now more than two hundred years old, if the news hasn’t yet filtered through to the particular rocks under which you live.

Only one problem with capital punishment. Sometimes the jury gets it wrong. Sometimes the police plant false evidence. That means the innocent get hanged.We need to avoid making fatal mistakes. That ends the argument about capital punishment.

Willis “in fact probably in Col's case with a frisson of dark and secret pleasure.”

That assertion conflicts with my previous posted statements re-

“Any death penalty should be administered with accordance to the gravity which such a sentence deserves, using the most “painless” methods possible.
An “execution” is not some sideshow which panders to those with a salacious interest in someone else’s suffering.”

So please advise, since we have never met and all you know of me is what you can read here, what judgmental resources have you relied upon to make such inferences to my “dark and secret pleasures” or is that just a bit of gutter post, deployed for its dramatic impact ?

HenryVIII – “Sometimes the jury gets it wrong.”

That is the risk with any media of judgment. We have no alternatives if we are to maintain a balance between social safety and personal liberty.

The greater likelihood is the guilty will go free. Despite my personal support of the death penalty, I am not advocating the dilution or amendment to any legal safety provision.

Col Rouge. I would be happy to bend my opinion in the case of known mass murderers and assorted genocidists who have clearly given orders to murder (Pol Pot, Pinochet, Franco, Saddam Hussein, Suharto to name but a few) and in the case of folk who wander into buildings and shoot or bludgeon others to death and where there is absolutely no doubt that they have done the job. But where the evidence is circumstantial-no death penalty. The police have been known to plant evidence, and as for the sort of circumstantial evidence that had Lindy Chamberlain convicted, which included a sound-deadening paint in her car being touted as blood-no death penalty. But its been recognised for a very long time that for your average murderer, the death penalty is little deterrence.