Funny. In 2007, Japan executed somewhere around 9 people. And if you’re under the impression that Singapore has a great human rights record, you’d be wrong — they have an incredibly punitive justice system, and they often punish people in horrific ways.

And the same is true of South Korea, whose motto ought to be “Providing PR for North Korea Since 1950″. Their laws are largely remnants of the brutal military dictatorship that ruled there until 1989. Their National Security Act (국가보안법 [국보법]), and the jurisprudence on it, is worth a look for anyone interested in exactly what the ROK’s attitude toward fundamental human rights is. Essentially, the NSA gives the state the power to crush any form of dissent, with penalties up to and including death.

Even if you’re being totally deontological in your reasoning, it breaks down – at what point is a state culpable for its own inaction? Doesn’t it have a duty to prevent harms and not allow its own inaction to cause deaths?

Sam,

If you believe that the state must do all it can to prevent harm and not allow its actions/inactions to cause innocent deaths, how far do you want the state to go?

For instance, authoritarian regimes such as Singapore and the PRC during the Maoist era were quite effective in almost eliminating crimes of all types, including violent ones due to what we would consider excessively harsh punitive justice systems and invasive surveillance of their citizenry. Do we want to pay the heavy price in the loss of personal freedoms and privacy to achieve this chimeric absolute security/safety standard?

if you’re under the impression that Singapore has a great human rights record, you’d be wrong — they have an incredibly punitive justice system, and they often punish people in horrific ways.

Yep….just google Michael Fay or listen to Weird Al Yankovic’s song “Headline News” to get an idea of what Singapore “justice” means. What’s more notable is that as harsh as Fay’s caning was with the widespread Western protests in the media…he actually got off easy compared to what would have happened had he not been an American/European citizen.

Theoretically, I wouldn’t have a problem with the concept of the death penalty. That there are some people so dangerous or irretrievable that killing them is the safest option is something I don’t dispute.

It’s practical application that makes me oppose the death penalty.

First – we’ve shown, repeatedly, that we as a society can’t be trusted with the death penalty. We apply it unfairly. We have executed the innocent, and undoubtedly will again. We have death penalty cases that drag on for years – and others where the inmate can’t even get competent counsel.

Second – I don’t like what the death penalty does to us as a society. We don’t use the death penalty regretfully to remove a danger (the way we remove a dangerous dog), but gleefully as revenge. There’s no other explanation I can think of for why we would revive a death row inmate who has a heart-attack a few days before his execution – and then march him off to be executed. We don’t want them dead – we want to kill them ourselves, and I don’t like feeding that mentality.

This sort of utilitarian argument is facially appealing but ultimately doesn’t work. The televised torturing to death of a condemned prisoner might have ten times the deterent effect of a simple “humane” execution — but it ultimately did more good than harm, how could it be claimed to be inherently immoral? Merely pointing to the pain of the condemned person doesn’t suffice, because the deterent value of that pain might spare countless innocent victims from even greater torture at the hands of sadistic murderers.

I respect your position in the sense that you personally find it abhorrent. I personally don’t have strong feelings one way or the other. But can you articulate *why* it is inherently so bad?

Surely theoretically (in the thought experiment sense, to test our intuitions) in some cases it could be justified – for example to save many lives (in emergency situations like riots, or mass desertions in the military). Presumably you think the death penalty is immoral because it is wrong for the state to take lives, or something like that. But what about a state that is too lax in its criminal laws which ultimately costs more lives? Again, not making any empirical claims about the death penalty in its current operation and how much it actually deters – just as a thought experiment.

Once you accept the thought experiment, and if it could be show that, properly applied, it could deter crime and ultimately do more good than harm, how can it be claimed to be inherently immoral?

Even if you’re being totally deontological in your reasoning, it breaks down – at what point is a state culpable for its own inaction? Doesn’t it have a duty to prevent harms and not allow its own inaction to cause deaths?

I bring up firing squads because, although they’re frequently brought up as the epitome of a minimal-suffering death, even if nothing goes wrong, the prisoner will be aware of something essentially the same as the latter. See Norman Mailer, The Executioner’s Song 981-2 (1979).

Gary Gilmore didn’t choose death by firing squad because it would be more painless — he chose it because he was raised a Mormon. Read his brother Mikal’s book, Shot In the Heart. Very, very depressing, but it gives you an idea of the kind of fucked-up upbringing that leads to a Gary Gilmore.

At a minimum, our standard should be that if the method is considered too cruel when applied to a dog, it’s too cruel to be applied to a human. And since this particular drug combination is not used by veterinarians on the grounds that it causes pain to the animal, what does that say about us that we’re more willing to be kind to a vicious dog that kills people than a vicious human who did the same?

Cara, a large enough caliber gun placed directly on the head in a strategic spot will kill (remove consciousness) in a few milliseconds, because the entire head, including the cerebrum and basal ganglia, will be ripped to shreds by the expanding energy dissipation and vaporization wave). No brain, no consciousness (unless you are religious and believe in consciousness as separable from brain activity, for which there is no scientific evidence whatsoever). It’s a ghastly mess afterwards. (I have some forensics training, and I have seen many pictures of the above scenario’s aftermath).

Agreed, but I wasn’t under the impression that this is how a firing squad was usually conducted. I guess that movies and TV aren’t going to necessarily be the best source, but the actual footage of firing squads I’ve seen sure as hell didn’t look like what you described. If I’m wrong and this is standard firing squad practice, then fair enough.