I find your analogies here a little strange, Pam. As a government governs by concensus, surely that means they have the consent of the people to take taxes from them? They get it from the ballot box when they're voted in. As for kidnapping - it would be called that because you'd be taking an innocent victim who'd broken no laws. Whereas, a jail sentence is something the State imposes on someone who's broken laws. So I'm afraid I'm not buying the connection here.
Leaving aside any moral, ethical considerations etc, my main objection to the death penalty has always been precisely on these grounds that Wendy has already stated.
I simply cannot buy the bizarre logic that you allow someone (the executioner) to kill someone as a response to someone killing someone. To me it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Forget any legal justifications - which is the basis on which you've made your objection above. I can't buy it morally. You simply can't decide that killing someone is wrong and then use killing as a means of punishment. To me, simple logic then dictates that the executioner must themselves be killed because they've taken a life. If taken to its logical conclusion where would it end?
I've never bought the justice angle either. It's never justice. That's impossible to achieve. It's revenge. And what separates us from the animals - usually - is that we should be able to rationalise our way past the kneejerk reactions to some horrific crime, rather than simply going with our basest emotions.
When all's said and done though, I could never support the death penalty so long as the system is fallible. And whenever there is a human element in its constructions its fallible. Many people these days hold up DNA as some magic absolute. But there already dozens of cases in the US where people who have spent years in prison, convicted on DNA, have been released when new evidence comes to light which proves beyond any doubt they didn't commit the crime.
So long as the possiblity exists that an single individual can be wrongly convicted, the death penalty will never be an option for me, personally.
LabRat
