Some crimes, and I emphasise some, should not need to be trialed in the traditional manner. They shouldn't even see a court room. Video footage of a man raping a child (and yep, the sickos do tape themselves), should instantly wave all rights the offender has. We don't need to talk to him or hear from his 3rd class teacher. We shouldn't care if the actions can be justified because they can't.
The court does more than assess the guilt of the perpetrator. I'm not especially familiar with the structure of government down under, but here we have a thing called the separation of powers, which divides our government fundamentally into three branches, legislative, executive and judicial. The legislatve branch makes the laws, executive branch enforces the law, and the judicial branch interprets the law.
One of the most important reasons of putting someone on trial is simply so you don't get too much power accumulated in one group of people. If the police have the powers of both the executive and the judicial branches there is a great deal of room for corruption. As it stands, if a cop plants evidence, at least a person can try to prove that the evidence was planted when the case is moved out of the executive branch into the judicial branch. Who, exactly, is the alleged child rapist supposed to make his case to that the footage of him was fabricated? The police officer who fabricated it? Have you seen Lord of the Rings? Have you seen The Matrix? Video footage can be forged. Don't you think that someone facing the death penalty ought to be able to have an expert inspect the tape to make sure that it hasn't been digitally altered? Think about it...ten years ago you would have considered photographs every bit as damning and look what a regular Joe can do with photoshop right in his home on a $500 PC.
Too simple? Hell yes, also effective, financially viable and a massive deterant.
Effective at what? Spend five or ten minutes with google and have a look at the evidence. I know that it is intuitively appealing to think that it would be a deterrent, because you imagine yourself considering doing something for which the punishment would be death and thinking, "No ---smurfing--- way!" But you would also have been deterred by the threat of many other, less severe punishments. The death penalty is NOT a deterrant. People who would not be deterred by a life sentence would also not deterred by the death penalty or any punishment. In fact, there is evidence that suggests that criminals who believe they will face the death penalty are more likley to use violence or murder to avoid capture, and that therefore the death penalty might even increase the rate of violent crime. One thing for near certain, it
does not decrease the rate. U.S. states that have implemented the death penalty recently have not had a reduction of violent crime. Hell, look at Canada's statistics:
The abolition of the death penalty in Canada in 1976 has not led to increased homicide rates. Statistics Canada reports that the number of homicides in Canada in 2001 (554) was 23% lower than the number of homicides in 1975 (721), the year before the death penalty was abolished. In addition, homicide rates in Canada are generally three times lower than homicide rates in the U.S., which uses the death penalty. For example, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, the homicide rate in the U.S. in 1999 was 5.7 per 100,000 population and the rate in Canada was only 1.8. Canada currently sentences those convicted of murder to life sentences with parole eligibility. (Issues Direct.com, 8/4/02).Could there be other reasons? Sure. Maybe Canada's economic situation has greatly improved in the same time period. I don't know. But the evidence is still pretty compelling. It's at least worthy of asking yourself if maybe you're priorities about society and government aren't mixed up. Maybe the pros of the death penalty are that they make you feel vidicated. They make you feel like that that person got his/her just desserts, and you are a big fan of "fair". Maybe it's your emotions, when thinking about horrific things like child rape, that allow your mind to gloss over the evidence that the death penalty does not decrease the chance that similar atrocities will recur in your society and, in all likelihood increases the chances.
Would you like australia to implement capital punishment so that you could have a relatively violent-crime-free nation like the good 'ol U S of A? What if the combination of socializing the populace from an early age to believe that killing is an appropriat solution in some cases, and what I said above about motivating killing to avoid capture are justified purely on the deterrence argument, but then you find that there is no deterrent factor? You get all of the bad with none of the good.
God...I am getting worked up over this.
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Topic: I've seen some random and cruel stuff, but... (Read 39272 times)
