i find the tv show entitled "A Better Man" to be offensive.
obviously it is targeted at a small segment of us australians who think that we are on moral high ground
everyone else enforcing capital punishment are barbaric

in the movie (supposed to be based on the true life story of this drug smuggler), the poor young australian was hanged because he was doing smuggling drugs for his family

wow...how self sacrificing

he was doing it for his family but he didnt care a damn about the thousands of young lives destroyed and many more who will die of overdose of drugs

with shows like this, osama and gaddafi and even hitler can be elevated to heroic status

@individual/runner/hasbeen etc

if we do not push back to such misguided values, who will ?

csteele,

>25 But if out in the country a man happens to meet a young woman pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. 26 Do nothing to the woman; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor<

So, is the above not saying the man shall die - for rape, or for murdering a neighbor?
Your quote, not mine. Death means death. Of course where proven.

Pick and choose how you like, so many passages support the maximum penalty for the most severe of crimes - the murder of an innocent.

What would Christ say? Who can really know?
Preventing the stoning of an adulteress (or prostitute) is indeed commendable - since neither would we now consider such a severe penalty warranted (or if any penalty at all be warranted, in our now more compassionate and understanding society).

What would Jesus think about drug dealers? Surely not the death penalty, but at least something fairly severe - considering the damage done to the purity and sanctity of the victims of drugs, both physically and psychologically?

"Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do."
This thought could apply to the exercise of leniency toward those of temporary or permanent mental disability (or insanity), but surely not to the cold-blooded psychopath - whether acting with premeditation or in rash disregard?

If I am to be my brother's keeper, surely I should be prepared to kill where it is warranted to protect and preserve the life of innocents - wherever they may reside?

Giving the benefit of doubt to a psychopath (via parole) may be likened to placing the rest of society in the lion's den.
Are you willing to play Daniel, are the parole board? Should those who place society at unnecessary risk suffer the same penalty as the released perpetrator? When such is the law, compassion may be tempered by scrupulous judgement; but until then society bears a hazard it should not be required to shoulder.

Why don't we just call a stoned (real stones) to death couple collateral damage & all will be forgotten in two minutes. Isn't that what the academic bureaucrats in war offices do ?
Proven murderers should not continue to live, lock them into a cell with a cyanide capsule at their disposal. Problem solved, the parole board could be employed doing something useful.

@individual

i agree with your views posted
but on the cyanide pill, no

why were the nazi war criminals hunted down and brought to justice (not revenge)?
why were those found guilty hanged and not given the cyanide pill?
because justice had to be carried out...suicide would have been a miscarriage of justice

fine line...but nevertheless an impt one

come to think of it, why didnt i ask the opponents to capital punishment whether we should keep these proven war criminals in jail and try to rehabilitate them while the 80 million dead cry for justice in their graves?

Dear Platypus,

Talking about justice and the Nazis ...

Yes some villains were captured and punished, for
the most part shortly after the conclusion of the war.
Others escaped retribution, dying, as did Stalin and
Hitler - the evil architects themselves - without
having been brought to justice. However, while half
of the criminals, the Nazis, have been pursued all
over the world for their crimes, the other half, the
communist criminals, were allowed to go free.

They were, in effect, given tacit permission to continue
the operation of their concentration camps, to expand
their draconian systems to include psychiatric wards,
thereby raising torture, suppression, and murder to a
science. The fact that the process persisted was vividly
disclosed to the free world by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn.

Also - as stated in ,"The New KGB" :

"There is no dispute about the enormity of Hitler's
holocaust. But it is equally important to be aware of the
accomplishments of the Soviet secret police, which
brought death to at least four times as many Russians, Poles,
Jews, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Japanese, Koreans,
Chinese, Gypsies, and Romanians, as Hitler did in his
eleven years as a leader of the '1,000-year Reich.'"

@Lexi

ah..dear Lexi, let us deal with stalin and hirohito and yamashita and those who escaped punishment and the likes later

my question to you is simple and a straight forward one
it is not even academic but based on historical facts

"is it ok to hang the nazi criminals?"

or should we imprison them and try some rehab programmes?

cheers