May you never, never have to test that comfortable theory. As I mentioned earlier, I say we should have let him live and suffer. You don't seem bothered by that concept, HM.

A better way of looking at the word justice would include the other shades of it as well.

A idea that is synonymous with justice is equitability.

Taking someone's money would require repayment, breaking someone's things would require their replacement, causing someone to lose their life would require you to lose your own.

Emphasis mine...
Dictionary dot com

Main Entry: justice
Part of Speech: noun 1
Definition: lawfulness
Synonyms: amends, appeal, authority, authorization, charter, code, compensation, consideration, constitutionality, correction, credo, creed, decree, due process, equity, evenness, fair play, fair treatment, fairness, hearing, honesty, impartiality, integrity, judicatory, judicature, justness, law, legal process, legality, legalization, legitimacy, litigation, penalty, reasonableness, recompense, rectitude, redress, reparation, review, right, rule, sanction, sentence, square deal, truth
Antonyms: injustice
Source: Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.1.1)
Copyright © 2005 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

One of the aspects of justice that I diverge from Lady Sidhe, OnyxCougar, and others on is this whole suffering thing. Suffering, or torture for that matter, induced by the state is not justice. If someone has been appropriately sentenced to death then that sentence should be carried out as swiftly as is practically possible. Don't leave the guy to suffer waiting, don't leave the citizens carrying his tab, just do it. The decision has been made but justice is not served until it is carried out.

But if you take the killer's life, you can't give it back to the victim. Your analogy fails.

Not at all because the role of the judicial system, ideally, is adjudicate such cases, based on facts, and apply the sentence based on the situation. That's why there are so many flavors of prosecution for taking someone's life.

Also, I'm not taking the killers life. The justice system is taking his life as part of a well known and documented process of redress. That's why we put them there in the first place.

When L. Dennis Kozlowski, Ken Lay, et al, screw millions of people out of their retirement savings, do the millions get them back? No, any retribution for their crimes goes to the state.
Tookie's retribution goes to the state also. :eyebrow:

I was responding to this:and other posts of the same ilk. In a theft case, if the stolen goods are recovered, they may be returned to the owner. This can't be done in a violent crime. In an assault case, beating the convict wouldn't erase the victim's wounds or trauma. In a rape case, raping the convict wouldn't unrape the victim. Likewise, in a murder case, killing the convict doesn't revive the victim. The victim gets no repayment.It was a generic "you". As in, "you can't jump over the moon" isn't singling you out as an individual; nobody can.

Exactly. Not the victims and their families. As I said earlier, in a criminal case, the victim is merely a witness in the state's prosecution.

I don't know what you guys are talking about. Besides Jail, the court ordered me to pay "resitution to the victim". I had to pay the City of Mountain View $2,200 to replace the light pole. I know of cases of restitution to people injured in DUI accidents.

When you settle w/o trial, you can agree in plea bargain to things that would be illegal for a judge to sentence. For example, sentences including AA Meetings have been thrown out in many states on Freedom of Religion, but are in many plea bargains. You can't sentence someone to take Anabuse, but they can agree to it to avoid trial.

Restitution is not so clear.

[quote=Troubleshooter]One of the aspects of justice that I diverge from Lady Sidhe, OnyxCougar, and others on is this whole suffering thing. Suffering, or torture for that matter, induced by the state is not justice. [quote]


Dude. Suffering and torture ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

I was going to say something mean here, but, I won't.

How do you differentiate between, and torture?

I would have to say that time in jail is suffering, but not torture.

I don't believe in the death penalty. Instead, we should lock them up and throw away the key, take their freedom. Quietly with no big story, we would forget their names.

So forcing someone to deal with prison life for 25 years is ok even though they've been found to deserve having their life taken, that isn't torturous?

Of course, that sets up a good tangent for wondering about the justice of 25 years in prison for an ounce of weed and a .38 but that's a different debate for another day.

Something I didn't put in a letter I had printed in yesterday's Ventura County Star:

Stanley Williams's (I eschew the emotionally manipulative use of his nickname, except for something I'll include below, as a sort of countermanipulation) execution for his sins completes, emphasizes, and fulfills the antigang message he put out in the books he co-wrote: doing criminal things is bad even if you have friends who approve of your doing them and will partner with you in these misdeeds. Williams died rather young after wasting his life in villainy on a rather large scale, and promulgating villainy on a larger scale yet.

Tookie also rhymes with "dookie." Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Three things I did put in that letter:

"Objections to the death penalty seem to me without wisdom, on three counts.

First, those who object to the death penalty are unable to distinguish a rightful killing from a wrongful one. In this, these people completely miss a moral point that has been clearly understood since the Bronze Age. No one of any depth of wisdom speaks against killing an unlawful, murderously inclined attacker in self-defense, and what is the death penalty but extending that inalienable right to society at large? If killing in self-defense is right, so is execution. Both are hard things, but is not suffering murder harder? [See the pics earlier in the thread if you're really not sure]

Second, the objectors do not appreciate the value of damage control. Dead murderers murder no more, period. Isn't that what we want? I want murders to stop more than I want murderers to keep breathing. Is this somehow not sensible?

Third, opponents of the death penalty are unwilling to fight evil to the last extremity; their commitment to human goodness comes short of mine, and short of what it should be. This lapse is deplorable, and I say it is insupportable. Why demand that evil not be fully atoned for? Where is our valuation of four innocent lives wrongly taken, in [all this] 'Save Tookie'? Nowhere that I can see."

The long time on Death Row for the condemned actually isn't the minus some make it out to be. It is a measure of how carefully we try to ensure we're doing right -- this society tries to check its decision to kill some evildoer in the name of the public good in every way humanly possible. A couple of decades is not an unreasonable span of time for new evidence, exculpatory or condemnatory, to come forward.

Ever had a look at the execution stats for Red China? Circa 14 million since 1949. Their standards are low and careless, and I don't think they've quit billing the relatives for the cost of the cartridges.

P.S.: Radar and I have similar views of the death penalty.

Wrong. As usual, you presume much and understand little. The ability to distinguish a rightful from a wrongful killing is not a prerequisite for opposition to the death penalty. It is in no way a condition for opposition to the death penalty. It is neither sufficient nor necessary. Nor does the contrary argument apply, that opposition to the death penalty precludes the ability to distinguish rightful from wrongful killing. Neither point has any causative influence on the other.
More baloney. Why? Because state execution is not killing in self defense, it is in the most deliberate way imaginable, pre-meditated killing. No one with with any sense considers premediated killing self defense; it's murder. Look it up.
Damage control? Oookaaay, you're off to a possibly good start, but you trip and fall on your face right away in your extrapolation. You and I agree that stopping murders is desirable, sensible. But if the prevention of murder is what we're striving for, and killing is our method (how freakin orwellian is that "logic"?), then why stop there? Sure, some murderers kill again, but a much much larger pool of potential murderers can be found in the general population. Of all the people who commit murder, most of them are first timers. Why not just abort them all? Or if bulk killing is your emphasis, then how about assasination? Think how many deaths would be prevented then! Absurd, you say. Yeah, killing to stop killing is pretty absurd.
I will, for the time being, leave aside your pompous ravings of your superiority, and your evaluation of my "commitment to human goodness".

Atonement is a big word, a big idea. If atonement is your goal, do you consider execution as atonement? I don't. What if, as in this case and others, if the condemned goes down to die continually protesting his innocence? What of the case of the conspicuous absence of remorse or contrition? Where is the atonement then? Can atonement be extracted? Or can it only be accepted? And how can you measure the fullness of atonement? You've selected a good and important aspect of this process, but you try to make it do something it can't do: be measured, be taken.
On this point, we agree. It is true that the long delay between sentencing and execution has some costs and complications, but it's worth it.

However.

I have an increasingly hard time imagining you as a real person. The high handed language, the raucous exclamations of your superiority, your blanket condemnations of everyone opposed to your postion, these make for incandescent campaign rhetoric, but it is not the language thinking people use to exchange ideas. You, hmm, your posts portray you as a training bot, a sparring mannequin to sharpen my own thoughts, my own ability to articulate my ideas. That's worthwhile and I'm happy for it. But I just can't get my head around someone who contends that opposition to the death penalty is evidence of a deplorable deficit in one's commitment to human goodness. You have got to be kidding me.