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Do you support the death penalty? (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by cashews_best_nut@lemmy.world to c/askuk

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Last time I looked a majority of Brits support the death penalty. Which personally I've always found quite disturbing considering all the problems with it.

But 5 mins on any subreddit and you have people frothing at the mouth to hang every criminal.

Which if even more disturbing.

So what do you think?

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[–] UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 2 points 9 months ago (10 children)

You can never be 100% certain that a conviction is correct.

Never say never, there absolutely are cases of terror actions where the psycho is caught alive.

[–] GreyShuck 10 points 9 months ago (9 children)

'the psycho'

There's a detailed mental health assessment if ever I saw one.

What they did, what their mental state was at the time and what treatment might be possible are very different things. You can never be 100% certain.

[–] UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (8 children)

You can never be 100% certain.

Unless you want to drag the meaning of certainty into the absurdity of Last Thursdayism, I'd argue you can. Anders Breivik knew what he was doing, he wasn't having "an episode".

[–] peter 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think the problem is defining "100% certain" in law. People are only supposed to be found guilty when it's beyond all reasonable doubt that they did it. So how do you make a distinction between that and what would warrant the death penalty?

[–] UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm not petitioning for the introduction of capital punishment mind you, even if I do believe there are cut and dry cases where society would benefit from just ending the person's life and move on. Breivik is still making noise in the media as he feels isolated and lonely in his prison cell, pointlessly tearing up old wounds for many reading the news and causing debates.

If someone is arrested while committing the crime, they admit to doing it, and you can find dozens of evidence supporting it, that's as close to 100% certain you can get without going "uhm actually" about the phrase "100% certainty".

what would warrant the death penalty?

That line would be left to society to decide. Murdering 77 children, being in charge of a nazi death camp, christchurch mosque shooting, etc... would be some examples.

Again, I will reiterate, I do not believe capital punishment should be introduced just to accommodate crimes like those, even if I believe such actions would perfectly warrant such punishment.

[–] peter 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

That's the thing though, I know exactly what you mean but how do you write that down in a way that ensures that it's only used in those circumstances. The only alternative I can think of is leaving it up to the judges, which would get around the issue if the definition but would probably result in public pressure to use it in circumstances where someone is convicted of a crime which causes a lot of emotional response from the general public. I'm with you in that there are definitely cases where it's a waste of time to keep them alive, but I thing the implementation is impossible.

[–] UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 2 points 9 months ago

Sounds like we more or less completely agree then

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