[hntroll666]

> barbaric

Sorry, but that's exactly the kind of world we live in. The world simply is barbaric no matter what we would prefer. When people mess up a little bit, we put them through a process that, despite its massive inadequacy, is intended to rehabilitate them so that they can return to society. The death penalty is for when someone commits a crime so severe that they cannot ever return to society. If you are not able to think of this kind of situation, I suggest you may not be very familiar with the details of truly horrendous crimes. If we don't have the death penalty, we end up in the strange position of housing and feeding and providing medical care for the most harmful people in society at the expense of their victims.

[piva00]

With this type of argument you attack one of the central tenets of human rights where every human life, no matter what, is worth the same. The moment you define that there are certain crimes where a human life is not the same as other human lives, no matter the reason, you move away from this core tenet.

It's all a matter if you believe in that core piece of universal human rights or not.

[gher-shyu3i]

> one of the central tenets of human rights where every human life, no matter what, is worth the same.

You have to define who made up this right. Not everyone will agree. Most people will have boundaries on that no matter what all human lives are the same. Killing someone else on purpose breaks that boundary.

[greedo]

I think you're sadly mistaken that there's any intent to rehabilitate people "who mess up a little bit." Our criminal justice system is an emotional retributive system. Rehabilitation gets perhaps 1% of the attention it should, and is far outweighed by the inherent brutality of the entire system.

[raverbashing]

This right here

I think arguing for its abolition on the basis of "the system is bad" is completely valid

> familiar with the details of truly horrendous crimes

And this still happens. And I agree, society is sometimes too tolerant with people who have no business in being in it (which, true, is a much smaller percentage of people on death row)

But don't expect the legal system to try to improve how many innocents they convict.

[saiya-jin]

Its way way way more complex than that. One point is that you have life imprisonment without parole - the same effect of people not coming back to society is achieved. Another one is expense - death row costs AFAIK are higher than life imprisonment, so the harmed society pays even more.

As for truly horrible crimes (which is something else to each of us), there are also tons of different views - do we want to be in society that is above emotional vengeful reactions, and more about compassionate loving ones? Ie like all good christians/muslims/etc are supposed to be according to their holiest books? You have to start somewhere if you even want to get there. You have to be morally strong to act in smart and compassionate way if you want to claim progress of mankind in this area. And so on.

I don't have a clear position on this myself and not stating some higher moral ground, since there are many pros and cons on both sides and quick emotional reaction to some murderous pedophile is as expected. But I am 100% certain that this very topic reveals a lot about mankind and us humans in our progression to be a better species, compared to primitive uneducated masses of the past. Or regression, its up to us.