A campaign to stop capital punishment and a campaign to make the death penalty more painless and reliable are not mutually exclusive. It is alot easier to take an all-or-nothing uncompromising moral stance when you are not the one on death row.

By zero progress I meant that if a state accepts a policy of capital punishment, I find it incredulous that the current mechanism of killing a person are so flawed and primitive. While the video of this post is a parody - one that demonstrates "new" technology - it is a shame that we don't have a very advance way to end a life. One that performs the task immediately, painlessly with absolute reliability.

I don't follow.

How is an injection "no better than" and "zero progress" compared to decapitation?

And what about ripping someone's head off and smashing it with a giant meat tenderizer? Isn't that progress?

Is it that you're taking an anti-capital-punishment stance? If not, what do you mean?

Guillotine: (per wiki) "...as the French Revolution progressed, the National Assembly researched a new method to be used on all condemned people regardless of class. Their concerns contributed to the idea that the purpose of capital punishment was simply to end life rather than to inflict pain."

"The machine was successful as it was considered a humane form of execution,"

...and all these years later and all the current methods (chair,shots, etc) are still no better than the Guillotine. Zero progress

Pretty obvious they expected this reaction by having police present in advance.
Pretty obvious the film was intended to get exactly this reaction.

Normally I'm against setting people up like that.

In this case though I actually find myself considering if this isn't a rather brilliant method of essentially purging the extremists out of society. If your willing to jump straight to violence at someone else's free speech, you are a problem and need to be removed. The faster the extremists are weeded out from the moderates the better off everyone is. It's disturbing how many self-proclaimed 'moderates' support capital punishment for blasphemy and converting away from Islam. IMO holding that view classes you firmly as an extremist and someone completely at odds with the society in which I live and wish to continue living in.

I'm actually not 100 % against the death penalty, but it's a hard nut to crack in any case. I think there are crimes so heinous that you can forfeit your continued existence, where the line goes - that's the hard part.

I would also add that it has to be very very certain that the person did it for capital punishment even to be considered. If there is even the slightest doubt, even where a court would still convict, then capital punishment would need to be out of the question, because it's such a severe sentence.

Saying; "Naturally, I don't believe in capital punishment." is a supposition. You infer that to believe in capital punishment goes against consensus, which is not the case. The majority are in favour of it.
Contrary to your opinion, there is a humane method. It is used by Dignitas and affords the "subject" dignity and a stress free death.
You say; "Capital punishment seems to be more about vengeance than justice or problem solving." Capital punishment IS about vengeance, justice and problem solving. But justice is the key. Until it has been proven - not with reasonable doubt, but unequivocally - that the accused is guilty, he/she should NOT be executed. People are not interested in whether execution has a deterrent effect (prison appears to have no deterrent effect either. N/York alone has a 65% recidivist rate). The causes of crime are myriad, but that is a separate issue which needs serious debate. We are talking about having your child raped, tortured and murdered by a fellow "human" who then turns to god, plays to the emotions of decent human beings, and asks for forgiveness. This is not something the victims families are interested in. They want justice. Yes, they want vengeance. But they, ultimately, want to see that society values the life of their child. The ultimate crime deserves the ultimate sentence.

Naturally, I don't believe in capital punishment, but it seems to me their lethal injection procedure is too complicated for its own good. A massive opiate overdose (which could be delivered subQ or IM) would initially be euphoric, the person would fall asleep, stop breathing and then die of asphyxiation. There are caveats, of course (like they might not actually die and just end up severely brain-damaged from lack of oxygen), but these could be sorted with an additional injection of something more directly lethal once they were unconscious.

When it comes down to it, though, there really isn't a "humane" way to kill someone. Perhaps more or less "humane" ways, but it's still well down the "humane" spectrum.

Anyways, capital punishment seems to be more about vengeance than justice or problem solving. Also, given that it's not possible to undo, and the embarrassingly large number of cases overturned by DNA evidence as of late, it's just not worth it. People that truly are irredeemable psychopaths should just be given a lifetime sentence with no chance of parole. This wouldn't be a problem if they would stop incarcerating drug users for stupid-long periods of time. Prison should be for people incapable of living in society without causing harm to others. That's a case of mental illness, and should be treated as such.

Privatized prisons wouldn't like that, but if you eliminated all the incarcerated people who could be redeemable with the right treatment, we could direct our resources to maintaining and attempting to treat the truly criminally insane.

Bit of a rant, but the system seems to be broken and getting more broken all the time.

I had a relatively pragmatic view of the death penalty until I read The Idiot.

http://www.3waystolive.com/2008/06/dostoyevsky-on-capital-punishment.html

Also, no "natural rights"? That's really dangerous. I'd love to see some material rationalizing that.

Boy did you miss the point.

He wasn't making a comment on religion... he was making a comment on the death penalty.

He was explicitly stating how wrong people are to use the bible to justify capital punishment.>> ^A10anis:

So, "an eye for an eye" is gods word, but he has been misunderstood? Hallelujah, we can all rest easy, god was just bad at communicating his tenets. Now, off you go and interpret his word any way that suits you. Religion is so obviously man made and, as such, ambiguous nonsense.

what about capital punishment?

Are you OK with the criminal justice system inprisoning people who are innocent? Yes or no.

My answer is that the question is idiotic. You can't answer complex societal questions with Yes/No answers. Boiling it down to that simplistic a level is ridiculous and childish.

Society is complex. There is no such thing as a perfect system, and certainly no such thing as a perfect system of justice. That by definition means that there are going to be instances when innocent people are wrongfully convicted of crimes for which they were not responsible. Does that mean society should just pack it in and not bother at all with the rule of law? Of course not. Does that means sometimes justice will horribly miscarry? Yes it does. But the overall benefit is outweighed by the cost. People in a civilized society need to know that there is some measure of justice to which they can appeal to with a relative degree of confidence. That is worthwhile.

Many people on the right say the Death Penalty is a deterrent. I have not seen conclusive evidence of that. However - I do not need it. Many people on the left say that since capital punishment is such a 'final' solution that it should not exist at all. I say that is total hogwash. Even the most dyed in the wool neolib will come to a certain point and say there are SOME people who deserve it - usually anyone who opposes their ideology...

My stance is that there are those in society who through their actions have abandoned the right to exist within society. Their crimes are so vile and despicable, that they have wilfully chosen to abrogate their right to continue in it. For such creatures, the death penalty is not revenge. It is not punishment. It is justice. That's all.

In the last few days we've gotten a real good look at how hardcore right the Tea-Party is. Blame all Muslims for 9/11! Capital Punishment? The more the merrier! Letting sick people without health insurance just die already? Yay! To think that any candidate who believes those same things has a chance in hell in a real election is truly funny.

American Exceptionalism indeed!

I'm not for or against the death penalty - every case is individual, I know, and I've never made an absolute stand on it.

It's the politics of this situation that drives me crazy. They could have been talking about street sweeping.
Streets sweeping is costing us 20 billion dollars, we should no longer clean the streets - sound absurd? Yes it does. They should be looking into WHY it is costing so much money.

Don't use the absurd cost as a reason to abolish it. Actually give us a sound reason (other than religion) as to what we should be doing in place of capital punishment.

I'm not trying fuel a pro vs. con argument here. I just don't support the logic of $$ vs. death ratio in the argument.

Even if capital punishment was morally legitimate (which I don't think it is), and even if we could justifiably say that each of the 234 executed prisoners was actually guilt of the crimes for which s/he was sentenced (which I don't believe is even statistically accurate), it would still be grotesque to react to the execution of human life with cheers and applause, as the audience does here.

Certainly, a mood of solemnity and regret would be more appropriate. Meanwhile, Christian Conservative Republicans hoot and howl over executions in the same way their forebears reveled in watching the Christians being thrown to the lions for entertainment. Such hypocrisy is not just shocking and appalling, it's indefensibly dangerous.