In the case of murder or rape, I would support the perpetrator having to support the victim's families for the rest of their lives. I would also support making these people "outlaws", and having certain "revengers of blood" who could legally kill these people at any point.

My desires are a bit of a mix between the Law of Moses system of government, and Medieval Iceland's government. And yes, Medieval Iceland had their feuds, but it was estimated that in the "civil war" that ended their system of government, their death rate (for those fighting the war) was smaller than our murder rate today…yet that was enough violence for them to consider it "extreme" and to desire to seek refuge under the King of Norway (which proved to be worse than they expected).

The issue isn't whether or not we have laws and government. The issue is what kind of laws and government we'll have! I, for one, like the idea of being free–and both Medieval Iceland and Judge-based (ie, pre-king) Law of Moses Israel have elements of freedom I find very attractive.

"Tookie" Williams continued to direct gang activity while in prison; he planned on, if not actually attempted, to take the lives of prison guards in an escape attempt. Are you sure there's no need to kill these people anymore?

However, we have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in order to ensure our safety and security as a nation and as a people. We've bombed entire cities flat.

The problem with the death penalty is not the possibility of mistakes, it is the uncertainly of the outcome. A shorter process and more certain outcome would serve as a better deterrent than a consequence that may happen, someday… maybe.

Further, I see no reason I should pay to support, house and feed a criminal for the rest of his life. How "austere" do we make it? Do we turn a life sentence into a lifetime of low-grade torture for the convicted? Do we give the give the government the power to place a person into a lifetime of indentured servitude? Frankly, killing them is to me far less moraly repugnant.

If you do away with the death penalty then don’t you also have to do away with any authorization for a police officer to use deadly force?

After all, if you can’t kill them after a jury found them guilt of murder, and they exhausted all the appeals, by what right do you claim to allow one lone officer who knowingly took a dangerous job to walk into a hostile situation to shoot and kill some random person based on a judgment call that may have lasted 0.5 seconds? I mean yeah he may have thought the scared woman running away from the rapist was trying to hill him when she charged in his direction holding something (mace) in her hand, but was that any reason to shot without a full trial? I mean no trial could ever result in death so how can the police casually hand it out on the street?

What kind of justice would that be?

Then we run into a further problem:

If we take it away from the police, then what justification do you have to kill some person in your home? Clearly our stance on prison vs execution says that we are in favor forced endurance of beatings, and rapes, and even the risk of being murdered rather than maybe, possibly, potentially, killing someone who was in the wrong state of mind, who suffered emotional trauma as a child, who was oppressed by society, who was off their medications, whatever, you could now know that that person deserved to die for their actions and that their where no extenuating circumstances.

So to paraphrase an incendiary line “Just lie back and enjoy it” because society will impression the bad person latter, you can’t judge them worthy of death in your home that fast, just because they have beaten you till you can’t move anymore and are talking about moving on to your child once they are done with you.

You No longer have any right to a lethal or potentially lethal defense.
No Guns, no knives (might actually hurt someone you know), no tasers (tisk, tisk people dinging when we use those), no martial arts (you are a weapon now), also no improvised clubs, golf clubs, dogs, etc. Oh, wait, I am describing England these days, and their lovely legal system and we can see by the statistics that works so very well. Oh. Wait. No we can’t.

Because no one ever has the right to kill in this brave new world we created. Well, no one except for the rule breakers, criminal, social deviants, and mothers who would be willing to go to jail (to get raped, and beaten) in order to defend their children.

And that’s the thing. Ultimately some things deserve death, and in the process of doing that some Innocents will die, and that’s sad and something that should be prevented if possible. But not always, a lot of innocents die everyday on our roads because we don’t all drive 22 miles an hour. Innocents die because school busses still don’t have seatbelts. An innocent may die in front of your eyes, because no one in their family or in the restaurant cared enough to set aside 8 hours to go learn CPR. Innocents die in war, when you bomb the munitions depot that the enemy put under the hospital, but that’s the way it is, which is why the Geneva Convention allows such an action.

Sometimes you just can’t separate the wheat from the chaff. Sometimes even after the best effort, and giving it your all, it happens Some Innocents Will Die.

The Innocent Die. We should try to prevent it, but not at all costs, only at reasonable costs, and where we can reasonably be expected to identify innocents. We don’t know who will die each day in a car accident, but we drive. We don’t know when we will get struck by lightening, but we go outside, we don’t know when a person will murder us, but we hope that society will see justice done.

If a society ceases to be willing to kill anyone, every, no mater what they have done, then that society is doomed unless if can find a protector who will do their killing for them at some reasonably well removed, impersonal, and acceptable level. Witness the fact that no country made up only of pacifist still exists. It’s not a sustainable position. Evolution, human nature, calls it what you will, but men who value their personal gain over the society’s values will not let that society exist. They will destroy it from without or within, but they will destroy it for “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”.*

(URL: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_all_that_is_necessary_for_evil_to_triumph_is_good_for_men_to_do_nothing_mean, also very illuminating is the original wording here: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_%27Evil_will_prevail_when_good_men_do_nothing%27)

One other thing as a casual aside to the legal problem of doing away with capital punishment.

If you do away with the death penalty then don’t you also do away with any authorization for a police officer to use deadly force?

After all, if you can’t kill them after a jury found them guilt of murder, and they exhausted all the appeals, by what right do you claim to allow one lone officer who knowingly walked into a hostile situation to shoot and kill some random person based on a judgment call that may have lasted 0.5 seconds?

What kind of justice would that be?

Then we run into a further problem:

If we take it away from the police, then what justification do you have to kill some person in your home? Clearly we are saying enduring beatings, and rapes, and even being murdered is better than killing another.

So to paraphrase an incendiary line “Just lie back and enjoy it” because society will impression the bad person latter, you can’t judge them worthy of death in your home that fast, just because they have beaten you till you can’t move and are molesting your child in front of you.

You
Have
No
Right
Because no one ever has the right to kill in this brave new world we created. Well, no one except for the rule breakers, criminal, social deviants, and mothers who would be willing to go to jail (to get raped, and beaten) in order to defend their children.

And that’s the thing. Ultimately some things deserve death, and in the process of doing that some Innocents will die, and that’s sad and something that should be prevented if possible. But not always, a lot of innocents die everyday on our roads because we don’t all drive 22 miles an hour. Innocents die because school busses still don’t have seatbelts. An innocent may die in front of your eyes, because no one in their family or in the restaurant cared enough to set aside 8 hours to go learn CPR. Innocents die in war, when you bomb the munitions depot that the enemy put under the hospital, but that’s the way it is, which is why the Geneva Convention allows such an action.

Sometimes you just can’t separate the wheat from the chaff. Sometimes even after the best effort, and giving it your all, it happens Some Innocents Will Die.

The Innocent Die. We should try to prevent it, but not at all costs, only at reasonable costs, and where we can reasonably be expected to identify innocents. We don’t know who will die each day in a car accident, but we drive. We don’t know when we will get struck by lightening, but we go outside, we don’t know when a person will murder us, but we hope that society will see justice done.

If a society ceases to be willing to kill anyone, every, no mater what they have done, then that society is doomed unless if can find a protector who will do their killing for them at some reasonably well removed, impersonal, and acceptable level. Witness the fact that no country made up only of pacifist still exists. It’s not a sustainable position. Evolution, human nature, calls it what you will, but men who value their personal gain over the society’s values will not let that society exist. They will destroy it from without or within, but they will destroy it for “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”.*

(URL: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_all_that_is_necessary_for_evil_to_triumph_is_good_for_men_to_do_nothing_mean, also very illuminating is the original wording here: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_%27Evil_will_prevail_when_good_men_do_nothing%27)

Using deadly force to stop the commission of a crime and using deadly force as retribution for a crime are two totally different things.

There's a reason you can shoot someone trying to rape you, but you can't hunt a rapist down a week later and shoot him.

You use deadly force when there are no other options to address an immediate threat – not so much to "deal justice," but to prevent harm to yourself or others. Once the immediate threat has passed, we turn to other systems for our justice.

The justice system can address the issue a citizen or police officer might address with deadly force (stopping a threat) by removing criminals from society permanently. If you believe, as I do, the justice system should go further, and actually punish offenders for their crimes, well – which is more punishment? A long life of hard labor in an austere prison, or a swift death?

You actually have to argue your point, not just assert it and insult people for disagreeing.

"I never said a private death penalty was a good idea, only that it would be the libertarian argument if this really were a debate about limiting the power of the state rather than coddling criminals, as libertarian-leaning DP opponents are wont to suggest."

No, it would be the anarchist/mafiosi argument. The classical liberal argument revolves around civil liberties and a fair appeals process. Since there's always a possibility that new evidence will become available, partially reversible means of removing people from society (such as imprisonment) are generally favored over execution.

"But smarmy, self-righteous punks like you won’t allow ordered revenge, either, because your real sympathy lies with the killer, not his actual or potential victims."

The reason you have laws instead of private revenge is because revenge tears apart society. That doesn't mean the law has to be vicious or vengeful in its own right. Countries which lack a death penalty do not, by and large, have a problem with blood feuds and vendettas.

It's not a matter of sympathy in the slightest, it's a matter of what's right. The US comes the closest of any country in the world at administering the death penalty as fairly as possible. The result? Prisoners on death row are still exonerated at times, the appeals process is more expensive than life imprisonment, and executions are stunningly rare. Having a fair and just death penalty is more trouble than it's worth. And solving any of these problems (shortening the appeals process for instance) would make the system less fair, less just, and more likely to kill innocent people.

And what's your counterargument against that? Something in your guts that feels like sympathy for people who want bloody revenge? That's not an argument at all, that's an emotion.

Imprisonment is a means of removing someone from society. It's reasonably effective at that task and (as Inconvenience noted) "perhaps we should remove these people’s ability to communicate to the outside world".

"Or do you truly believe that “Pookie” Williams was just a writer child book, and John Wayne Gacy was just a clown that painted?"

I think Gacy and "Tookie" Williams were both violent criminals who, for the safety of others, needed to be locked away for the rest of their lives. There's no need to actually kill them anymore.

There's no problem with identity. Their actions can kill far more people and destroy far more lives than any individual ever could. The need for very powerful disincentives seems clear enough to me. Politicians tend to be rational actors, also, so they respond to incentives in ways that common killers may not.

Wanting to imprison someone for live [sic] instead of killing them in cold blood is a "soft spot" in one's heart?

Yes, although "wanting to imprison someone for live" isn't exactly an honest characterization of the issue, since we all know that once the death penalty is off the table, fewer will get LWP, either. [OK, I lied - "we all" probably don't know this, just the large subset of "we all" who aren't complete retards.] The fact that you care so much about keeping alive the worst of the worst, despite the statistical certainty that far more innocents will die this way than ever would as a result of wrongful convictions, clearly shows a soft spot in your heart for people who do vicious things to others, and an appallingly callous one for everyone else.

OK, that's just idiotic. "Privatizing the death penalty" means blood feuds and vendettas. The entire reason we have laws and government is to avoid that shit. This is ancient knowledge and you’re a fucking dumbass for not realizing it.

Either that, or your a fucking dumbass who can't read. I never said a private death penalty was a good idea, only that it would be the libertarian argument if this really were a debate about limiting the power of the state rather than coddling criminals, as libertarian-leaning DP opponents are wont to suggest. I agree that allowing private individuals to take revenge on the perps is a terrible idea, for the reasons you gave. That's why we need ordered revenge, after due process of law, rather than allowing private citizens to take revenge on their own. But smarmy, self-righteous punks like you won't allow ordered revenge, either, because your real sympathy lies with the killer, not his actual or potential victims.

Inconvenience:

I struggle to see how I have a soft spot for vicious people. My continued issue with the death penalty is that it degrades the executioner.

That's a great reason not to work as an executioner yourself, but it's a really crappy argument against having a death penalty at all. Plenty of others are willing to do that job for you, don't feel degraded as a result, and certainly don't care a whit that you consider them degraded for doing a hard job that few want to do themselves, but an overwhelming majority wants someone to do. Some of us think posing in Playboy degrades women; should we ban that, too?