Frank Apisa wrote:Here is my contention:
Your comment: "Capital punishment certainly incapacitates a criminal, in that executed criminals are not likely to commit subsequent crimes" ...
...misstates the actuality of the situation.
"Executed criminals" are not "not likely to commit subsequent crimes -- THEY DAMN WELL WILL NOT COMMIT SUBSEQUENT CRIMES. They will be dead -- which is the usual result of execution.
One of the disadvantages of this type of electronic interchange is that subtleties of expression are often lost. Of course, executed criminals absolutely, positively will
not commit further crimes. My earlier comments about the
likelihood of them not committing further crimes was mildly ironic -- the expression of which, evidently, did not translate well in this medium.
Frank Apisa wrote:Your subsequent comment: "But punishment short of death can also accomplish this goal. Pace the objections raised by Scrat, we can, at least theoretically, devise a system of incarceration that minimizes the likelihood of a prisoner, condemned to life without parole, committing further crimes"...
...misstates the actuality also, in that ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY preventing the criminal from EVER committing a subsequent crime CANNOT be ensured via incarceration PERIOD -- and that includes incarceration so onerous and severe as to be inhumane.
Well, first of all, we're dealing with theoretical possibilities here. Furthermore, we're dealing with evolving standards of "cruel and unusual punishment." After all, remember that I'm arguing that death penalty proponents should favor
more brutal and cruel methods of execution, which would necessarily entail the repeal of the Eighth Amendment. So "inhumane" forms of incarceration are largely irrelevant to the argument. And, as I mentioned before, if there is ever a question of which type of punishment is worse -- incarceration or death -- the proper response would be to let the
prisoner decide which punishment to endure.
Your point, though, is that
no method of incarceration can guarantee that a prisoner, convicted of a capital crime, won't commit another crime. I'll grant you that, but at what point are we entitled to insist upon that guarantee? Certainly, capital punishment would also end the criminal careers of habitual rapists, arsonists, check-forgers, burglars, and marijuana growers. Yet we don't extend capital punishment to these types of crimes, even though, in these instances, the permissible goals of incarceration/incapacitation are imperfectly met as well.
As I have mentioned before, capital punishment is
unique: thus, it must serve its goals in a unique fashion. If incapacitation can be achieved in a manner short of execution, the state is obliged to choose that method. And if incapacitation is
always imperfectly achieved, why are we entitled to insist upon
perfect incapacitation in the case of capital crimes?
Anyone who argues that execution should serve the goal of incapacitation must provide
additional justification (as I have explained in detail before) why capital punishment is needed. And if we accept imperfect incapacitation in non-capital cases, we need
additional justification why perfect incapacitation is needed for capital cases.
Frank, you seem to assume that perfect incapacitation (through means of the death penalty) is justified for prisoners convicted of capital crimes. Yet that is, at this point, an unsupported assumption. Your task, then, is to explain why it's necessary to resort to capital punishment to achieve a level of incapacitation that we don't insist upon for any other crime.