Death Penalty

[NumbItAll]

Compromise: I am against the death penalty, except for those who litter. No excuse for littering.

 

[TooConscious]

They should start crucifying people like George carlin said you start boiling a bankerthat launder drug money in oil a week a. You'd see that drug traffic drop pretty quick.

Seriously though I believe in two eyes for an eye. Trouble is you can't prove crimes like say people's who get accused of rape because the other party is disgruntled.
World is fucked hellhole. I pray for true anarchy, I'm so tired of this matrix. I must be an old soul.

 

[summers]

Seriously though I believe in two eyes for an eye.

This is my new favorite expression. Thank you!

 

[TooConscious]

This is my new favorite expression. Thank you!

Thank Bas Rutten. Unless he stole it from someone

 

[CogitoMori]

I'd be more supportive of the death penalty if people weren't incarcerated innocently. If we actually proved beyond a reasonable doubt that people commited the crimes they were accused of, people would have more faith in this method of crime prevention.

 

[Pluto]

 

[ijustwishtodie]

No. Why the fuck should prisoners who committed heinous crimes be granted the peaceful pill or at least a guaranteed way out of existence whilst suicidal people who did nothing wrong should be subjected to suffering for as long as possible? It's honestly so backwards and it should be applied the other way around since death isn't a harm to the beings who are dead whereas locking somebody up for their entire lives is a harm to that being.

 

[OptingOutSmiling]

This is weird. Before becoming suicidal, I probably would've said Yes. Now, I'm with @ijustwishtodie.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

I am completely against the death penalty. It does a poor job of reducing crime rates, PoC are more likely to be sentenced to it as a result of biases in the justice system, it goes against people's rights to life and bodily autonomy, and is a complete waste of money and resources that could instead go to rehabilitation programs. That's not even getting into how cruel the methods used are. For example, lethal injections can cause a lot of severe pain and respiratory distress.

Spoiler

Lethal injections were actually mentioned in my class when we were talking about action potentials. We were specifically talking about potassium chloride being used in lethal injections and how they work.

It involves flooding the neurons with potassium chloride in order to prevent the cells from properly repolarizing again. Basically, neurons engage in action potential in order to communicate with each other. Action potential works via diffusion (if you have a high concentration of particles in one area they will want to disperse to an area of low concentration) and electrostatic forces (likes repel, opposites attract). For these forces to be able to act they require there to be a concentration gradient (a difference between the concentrations of ions inside and outside of the cell).

At rest, the cell has a high concentration of potassium ions inside of it and a low concentration on the outside. During an action potential, sodium channels open, causing sodium to flood the cell and causing the inside of the cell to become more positive (depolarization). This causes the positively charged voltage-gated potassium channels, in response to the increased negative charge of the outside of the cell and the increased positive charge of the inside of the cell (positive-positive repel, positive-negative attracts), to open near the peak of the action potential. This leads to potassium ions leaving the cell due to the concentration inside being too high (repolarization). This leads to the cell becoming more and more negative. The sodium channels close rapidly around the peak of the action potential. Eventually, the potassium channels close and the sodium channels gradually regain their ability to open and because so much potassium has left the cell it becomes hyper-polarized. From there, the cell slowly returns to its resting state.

When you flood the cell with potassium ions (K+) it leads to the disappearance of this concentration gradient, meaning that the cell cannot repolarize due to the increased concentration of extracellular potassium. Action potentials cannot happen during the absolute refractory period due to the sodium channels not being able to open a second time until the membrane is repolarized near resting levels. They are inactivated. Since the cell cannot go back to its resting state it is unable to create action potentials meaning that it cannot communicate with other cells.

This rapid onset of extracellular potassium is known as hyperkalemia leads to the depolarization of the resting potential of the heart muscle cells which leads to cardiac arrest.

I might have some shit wrong here, so take this explanation with a grain of salt. Even more concerning, I'm going to be tested on this stuff tomorrow and I'm both behind on my schoolwork and I'm sick.

I'm glad that it's illegal in my country and I wish that the death penalty was illegal everywhere. I agree with @WhiteRabbit . It is barbaric.

 

[Forever Sleep]

It's going to depend on the person. Peter Sutcliffe (The Yorkshire Ripper) wanted to be left to be able to starve to death at the end. Should these people's needs be catered to when they've done such heinous acts? Some criminals would prefer death.

Chris Watts who strangled his pregnant wife before smothering his two young daughters and dumping them in oil containers is haunted by the voice of one of his little girls saying 'no Daddy' as he brutally murdered her. I think he deserves to hear that the rest of his life.

So- in terms of the punishment functioning as a punishment, it depends upon the person.

Perhaps in principle, I might lean towards agreeing with capital punishment. It would certainly stop them reoffending! Rapists should be castrated I think. Might be more of a deterrent to those who contemplate doing it.

Big HOWEVER though! I don't actually support capital punishment. I think our justice systems are way too fallible. People have been wrongly convicted of both rape and murder. It's bad enough they end up doing jail time. We could hardly give them back their genitals or lives if they'd been taken away!

One thing I would like to see: If someone KNOWINGLY falsely accuses another of a crime and it's proven that they're innocent, the accuser should do the time for whatever they accused them of. It can massively damage a person's life to be falsely accused of rape or theft or, whatever. 'Victims' obviously need to be listened to, taken seriously and, the case thoroughly investigated but liars damage everyone.