@Psycobabble,
Psycobabble;118458 wrote:I do believe that some do not deserve to exist because of the acts they commit, but I have changed my views over the past 15 years with the advent of D.N.A. profiling. I could not imagine a greater travesty than to have the life of an innocent taken by the state only to find later that they did not commit the crime. D.N.A. has released many on death row in the past 15 years and on this basis I rebuke the death penalty as administered by the state....
I think this is key to the whole matter from a practical standpoint. The death penalty is problematic because mistakes are made, and if a mistake is discovered later on, someone in prison can be set free, which is obviously still not justice as the person cannot be given back the time they have lost, but with the death penalty, there is no restitution of any kind that is possible for the person who was wrongly condemned. So the issue is not merely what the guilty person deserves, but what are the practical results of a particular policy.
But to the original post: I would have no objection to allowing people to commit suicide whenever they wish to do so. That obviously is not our current practice, but I think it should be. That, of course, takes us beyond the subject of the current thread, so I will presently say no more on that subject.
I may also add that if life in prison is inhumane as it is done now, that does not mean that life in prison is necessarily inhumane. It may be that we are simply doing it improperly.