Death Penalty: To be abolished nationwide in the contemporary world?

[mikellogz]

This thread is exclusively for Reanjohn and JL, all other Post will be deleted without notice; if you have comments please post it on the appropriate threads (CLICK HERE). This is a mano-y-mano debate and I will be your moderator.

As for Reanjohn and JL, the subject of your post should only be the Topic Index such as Introduction, Stand, Rebuttal, Response, Cross-Examination, Answers and Conclusions. Absolutely no Personal Attacks as such will be deleted immediately; NO editing of Post, please report any abuse (if there will be any) and misconduct right away. Please post your references on the body of your presentation. You may use appropriate quotation marks and/or parenthesis and pages to acknowledge your sources. Other web resources might diminish the strength of your stand and so putting the relevant quotation of your source might be more recommended. I hate plagiarism so please acknowledge your sources. Please follow the word-limit so that the presentation will be precise, to the point and will be readable. Follow the guidelines, failure to follow them can result to disqualification.

Debate will commence on March 20, 2009, Manila Time until the Format is finished. Each debater will be given up to TWO (2) days to respond. If the debater will not be able to post please state the reason and date of return. The date should not exceed SEVEN (7) Days.


Topic: Death Penalty: To be abolished nationwide in the contemporary world?
Reanjohn: Affirmative
JL: Negative

Introductions:
Reanjohn's (affirmative) Introduction –- 500 words
JL's (negative) Introduction - 500 words


Round One: Reanjohn
Affirmative's Stand - 2000 word limit
Negative's Rebuttal - 2000 word limit
Affirmative's Response - 1000 word limit
Negative's Cross - Up to 5 questions only.
Affirmative's Answer - 400 words each question.


Round Two: JL
Negative's Stand - 2000 word limit
Affirmative's Rebuttal - 2000 word limit
Negative's Response - 1000 word limit
Affirmative's Cross - Up to 5 questions only.
Negative's Answer - 400 words each question.

Conclusion:
Affirmative's Conclusion - 500 word limit
Negative's Conclusion - 500 word limit

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Ladies and Gentlemen.. Let's get ready to rumble....

Reanjohn, you may now begin with your introduction..

[reanjohn]

INTRODUCTION:

I, reanjohn, will stand firmly by the motion that death penalty should be abolished not only nationwide but also worldwide for two main reasons: 1. every person has the capacity to change and has the right to do so, 2. and any murderous act shall never be justified.

A man condemned to death due to some high-level disintegrating act he did for the community, no matter how resolute he is when the act was made, he can still change for the better, he can, and people should not be dictating how and when he will die for change is always imminent for a restless man.

Granting a man his last breath will never be justified by believing that ending him will cut the risk of having another like him. Many have considered (and still considering) that those who have been interred (and will be) were (and are) sickness in the society that needs to be removed to keep the society healthy. Why resort to such crude methods when a nobler option is available? Cure the illness or move it to your vault.

I have implicitly (or explicitly to some) mentioned that death penalty is murder. Death penalty is murder because of the barbaric way of how one is forced out of life. Unless of course he’s nuts and wishes to die and people are far more nuts than he is and agrees.

With that I’m ending my brief introduction after outlining my major premises.

(244 Words)

[mikellogz]

Let us have a round of applauses for Reanjohn's introduction, JL you may now fire your introduction.

[JL]

Before I start I just want to apologize to everyone who expected a duel between reanjohn and pooch. I know that people were anticipating the latter’s response on the matter and here I am entering the scene & replacing pooch for the negative side with little warning. Sensya na . . .

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“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” This is one saying that finds true application in these times where a complete disregard for man’s life, liberty and property is an everyday happenstance in our society. Because of this pervading malaise, I JL, staunchly proposes for the re-imposition of the death penalty in our criminal justice system.

It is a misplaced argument on the advocates of the abolition of the death penalty that sentencing a person to death is tantamount to committing murder as well. Penalizing a person for killing another person as in cases of parricide and murder which are categorized as heinous crimes under our present penal law, is quite different from the act itself of killing a person attended by circumstances which aggravates the crime itself. Trying to save the life of a criminal who has taken the life of an innocent is like coddling a wrongdoer and condoning his wrongful act but completely forgetting that the convicted criminal committed a far more dastardly deed beyond peoples’ sensibilities where human life is snuffed out oftentimes for no reason at all.

The leniency accorded the convicted criminals who have committed heinous crimes or capital offenses which presently is punishable only by a maximum term of reclusion perpetua (for crimes penalized under the Revised Penal Code) and life imprisonment (for crimes committed under special laws) have by far, as statistics would show, did not at all served as effective deterrent to the reduction of the crime rate. Putting a person behind bars even for a considerable length of time is not necessarily a sure recipe for his reformation. Detention in a not so auspicious environment especially with the sordid states of our correctional institutions only transforms these criminals into more hardened criminals who are ready again to wreak havoc to society.

With the foregoing statements, I am reiterating my stand for the re-imposition of the death penalty. My further dissertation on the matter shall follow.

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329 words (excluding the apology)

[mikellogz]

Thank you so much JL for your opening statement... We will now go to round 1, reanjohn, you may now post your stand... and the rebuttals of JL will follow..

[reanjohn]

There are 3 basic necessities to live: 1. Food, 2. Shelter, and 3. Beer (or any other luxury items you can think of; clothing is, well, not quite necessary.). Death penalty removes the person’s right to continue enjoying the food that his wife serves for dinner, removes the person’s right to continue protecting or destroying his shelter, and removes the person’s right to continue on enjoying his beer. Is there a need to remove all those rights just because he lustfully massacred a family? Yes, there is a need. But the execution of removing his rights is not only dependent on the brutal way of stuffing gooey things inside his system. There still exist a smooth way of teaching him a lesson. And by lesson I mean Lesson, not expulsion.

By these lessons that are passed upon him to carry (for burdening purposes of course) the goal is to teach him (not traumatize) the path to change. For change is the most dynamic verb in this contemporary world (followed by a woman’s decision), a samurai with an X on his left cheek, once a murderer, became a protector of the weak and enemy of the tyrants. How the heck did that happen? He was given the chance to change.

Now, why is death penalty a murderous act? Have I jumbled my definitions of Killing and Murdering? *soul stare* Let’s start with their similarities, Killing is taking away one’s life, Murdering is just a little bloodier to hear (and to pronounce), still both requires a corpse to be present after the verb with “ing”. Do people lust for the death of a barbarous man because of his barbarous act and the only measures to exact his barbaric ways is a barbaric punishment, death? Then people who condemned him are also BarBars.

Humans should love their enemies. Humans should rehabilitate their enemies into becoming what the norms of the society decree them to be. Nothing pisses your enemies better than loving them.


In my introduction I mentioned that Change is imminent for a restless man. Indeed this is true, true to every gnashing jaw in the death row. If only I am Matt Parkman I might hear their thoughts saying “I shouldn’t have done that, how foolish” or “God help me” or “Arroyo help me”. What do they have in common? You know what.

Who are we to condemn a man to death for his mistakes when we can condemn him to correct his mistakes?

P.S.
Except for the tyrants.

[mikellogz]

JL… The deck without hesitation is now on you..

[JL]

A first degree murderer has stripped all his rights as a person the moment he [violated, tortured] killed an innocent. He shouldn’t see freedom again – period.

Killing in whatever form is undesirable. However there are times when it is necessary. Most people would consider that nothing is more precious than human life. Not even justice, Or morality, Or decency, Or the welfare of the community would triumph over life. But I believe that no civilized society can deem that and stay civilized. Life is not the ultimate value. Otherwise no nation would send young men to fight for honor, or against tyranny, or in defense of freedom. Life is sacred, but some things are more sacred. And if that is true of innocent life, how much more so is it true of guilty life - of those whose hands are slick with the blood of others?

More than 130 years ago, the eminent philosopher John Stuart Mill spoke eloquently on this issue before the English Parliament: "Does fining a criminal show want of respect for property or imprisoning him, for personal freedom? Just as unreasonable is it to think that to take the life of a man who has taken that of another is to show want of regard for human life. On the contrary, most emphatically my regard for it, by the adoption of a rule that he who violates that right in another forfeits it for himself."

In my understandable desire to be fair and to protect the rights of offenders in our criminal justice system, I will not and never ignore or minimize the rights of their victims. The death penalty is a necessary tool that reaffirms the sanctity of human life while assuring that convicted killers will never again prey upon others.

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Empirical data has shown that convicted criminals who were sentenced to punishment short of death penalties were, after having served their sentence, did not at all reform but became more callous of other people’s rights.

In 1985, 13-year-old Karen Patterson was shot to death in her bed in North Charleston, S.C. Her killer was a neighbor who had already served 10 years of a life sentence for murdering his half-brother Charles in 1970. Joe Atkins cut the Pattersons' phone lines, then entered bearing a machete, a sawed-off shotgun, and a pistol. Karen's parents were chased out of their home by Atkins. Karen's mom ran to the Atkins home nearby, where Joe then murdered his adopted father, Benjamin Atkins, 75, who had worked to persuade parole authorities to release Joe from the life sentence.

When Katy Davis observed three strangers outside her Austin, Texas, apartment, she walked away. Returning later, she was attacked and forced to open the door by Charles Rector, on parole for a previous murder. The men ransacked her apartment, abducted her and took her to a lake where she was beaten, gang-raped, shot in the head and repeatedly forced underwater until she drowned.

Ruby Longsworth of Pasadena, Texas, met Jeffrey Barney through a prison ministry, then helped him get paroled from an auto-theft sentence. Her kindness was repaid when Barney raped and sodomized her, then strangled her with a cord. She had made the mistake of calling Barney "a bum" after she had gotten to know him better.

A two and a half-year-old girl was kidnapped, raped, sodomized, tortured and mutilated with vise grips over six hours. Then she was strangled to death. Her assailant, Theodore Frank, according to court records and his own admissions, had already molested more than 100 children during a 20-year period.

http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/

Try giving chances to these people.. tignan ko lang sa humantong ang mga career ng mga may ayaw sa death penalty

In sum, giving chances to these vile creatures will only resort into bigger mistakes. I am convinced that crimes which are considered heinous under our present penal laws should be reprimanded with the capital punishment of death.

As in P* tang *Ina! Seriously, wtf?! Why give these people the chance [to plead] for their life on the basis of the sanctity of life? Haller?

Oh and btw, Kenshin Himura wasn’t given the chance to change his ways and all. He hid himself from society and his own eyes witnessed how the slashers of his time get executed for their wrongful deeds. He wasn’t given the option to modify himself. He got scared on how the society acted upon the doings of people like him.

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Legal execution is NOT MURDER, the difference are worlds apart. The former is the punishment for which someone is sentenced . It is the law . MURDER is what the MURDERER committed when he/she took another human beings life. The state or executioner are mere implementors of the law. “Dura lex sed lex”, the law is hard but it is the law. The execution of an inmate by the edict of a judicial system is not violative of any law be it the law of men or the law of god.

In my introduction I mentioned that Change is imminent for a restless man. Indeed this is true, true to every gnashing jaw in the death row.

Who are we to condemn a man to death for his mistakes when we can

Proponents of the imposition of the death penalties may not have in their whole lifetime been subjected to any form of violation of their rights as a human being that’s why they seem so callow of what’s the present peace and order now in our midst. Try telling these to families who have lost a loved because of senseless killings and surely without batting an eyelash they would say to you straight-faced, are you in your right element? Truly, there is no pain as bitter as losing a love one not by natural causes but by the brutal and evil act of a man who has no regard for life.

[mikellogz]

Reanjohn, you have the respectable turn to answers JL’s rebuttals at this instant...

[reanjohn]

A first degree murderer has stripped all his rights as a person the moment he [violated, tortured] killed an innocent. He shouldn’t see freedom again – period.

He indeed stripped his rights as a person the moment he violated another’s life; we may turn down his rights as a person, but not his rights as a human. The moment he surrendered his innocence to the lust of blood is the moment the society’s rubbish is resurfaced. And I say that because becoming a murderer is not by nature, but by nurture. Either compelled to murder a person because of deep hatred or because of greed and the likes or because of mental illness.

Killing in whatever form is undesirable. However there are times when it is necessary. Most people would consider that nothing is more precious than human life. Not even justice, Or morality…

Killing in whatever form is indeed and inthought undesirable, that applies to Death Penalty. I believe that no civilized society SHOULD be so complicated enough as to make law triumph over an individual’s natural right to live. For life is the ultimate value, the most precious. Civilized means not barbaric.

More than 130 years ago, the eminent philosopher John Stuart Mill spoke eloquently on this issue before the English Parliament: "Does fining a criminal show want of respect for property or imprisoning him, for personal freedom? Just as unreasonable is it to think that…

More than I-don’t-know years ago, Victor Hugo powerfully said "What says the law? You will not kill. How does it say it? By killing!"

In my understandable desire to be fair and to protect the rights of offenders in our criminal justice system, I will not and never ignore or minimize the rights of their victims.

A Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician by the name Seneca once said that “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.”
In my understandable desire to be fair and to PROTECT the RIGHTS of OFFENDERS what? Death penalty protects their rights? How? By removing it?

The death penalty is a necessary tool that reaffirms the sanctity of human life while assuring that convicted killers will never again prey upon others.

Death penalty reaffirms the sanctity of human life. WOW for that (and I say that with all the love in the world).
Oh-ho-ho, this is what I’ve been telling our dear readers. How brute are we to pass death upon the “convicted killers” to assure that they will never again prey upon others when a nobler act is available, which will also assure that they will never again prey upon others…life imprisonment. It can be that way, why not make it that way?
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Yours:

Empirical data has shown that convicted criminals who were sentenced to punishment short of death penalties were, after having served their sentence, did not at all reform but became more callous of other people’s rights.

Minessss:

Is not a deterrent; crime rates have not gone down.
In fact, the murder rate in the US is 6 times that of Britain and 5 times that of Australia. Neither country has the DP. Texas has twice the murder rate of Wisconsin, a state that doesn't have the DP. Texas and Oklahoma have historically executed the most number of DR inmates, yet in 2003 their state murder rates increased, and both have murder rates higher than the national average.

http://antideathpenalty.org/reasons.html

In sum, giving chances to these vile creatures will only resort into bigger mistakes. I am convinced that crimes which are considered heinous under our present penal laws should be reprimanded with the capital punishment of death.

So we should resort to another mistake for these humans that you have labeled as degrading as “vile creatures” in order to protect the interest of the state and of its people? Gas Chamber, Hanging, Firing Squad, Lethal Injection, Electrocution, all of these, with formalities, certificates, special courts, are not “vile”? If change is not applicable, then put them to prison or somewhere else away from hurting someone again.

As in P* tang *Ina! Seriously, wtf?! Why give these...

Why not? “Where the speech is corrupted, the mind is also” – Seneca. We give them chance because they may change. If hardened be like diamond, pass upon them the most (probably) painful thing that can ever occur to a person, solidarity. I’ve been continuously moving in circles ever since this debate began, always stating that every human has the capacity to change and has the right of being allowed to.
How high does the sycamore grow? If you cut it down you will never know.
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Legal execution is NOT MURDER, the difference are worlds apart. The former is the punishment for which someone is sentenced. It is the…

Then NATO is wrong about their perception about the Human Rights. Legal execution is still taking away of one’s life; the word “legal” is just for formality’s sake. It might be the Law, man-made law. Every human has their Natural Rights, rights which are inherent to every humans and soon-to-be “vile creatures”, rights which no Law or no Logic can (or should) defy. I sure do hope that the Dalai Lama and the Pope’s definition of Legal Execution also equates to Not Murder.
How do you know that the execution of an inmate does not violate the law of god/s? She should have stated word per word in the ear of Abraham, umm Moses, that “Thou shall not murder, Legal Execution is OK for punishment, but you shall not murder (which is illegal execution) OK? Legal Execution is also taking away of one’s life, in a Legal Way which does not violate my Law which is Thou Shall not Murder, for Murder is not the same as killing but they are somewhat..oh god I’m lost.”

Proponents of the imposition of the death penalties may not have in their whole lifetime been subjected to any form of violation of their rights as a human being that’s why they seem so callow of what’s the present….

What about the family of the offender?

[JL]

Regarding the legality of Death Penalty, the execution of murderes is NOT a "cry for blood" or for "vengeance." It is not a taking of the law into one's own hands. It is a cry for justice through the rule of law. Since ours is a government of laws and not of men and that no men is above the law the Rule of law must prevail.

Cross Examination Questions:

1. What do you think makes a punishment cruel and atypicall?

2. On a general note, In opposing the death penalty, don't you think people who are agaisnt the re-imposition of the said law is showing disrespect for victims of violent crime and their relatives? Isn't the Death Penalty necessary as just retribution for victims' families?

3. Isn't it necessary to execute certain prisoners in order to prevent them from repeating their crimes? And don't you think that it is more cruel to lock up a prisoner for long periods or for life rather than to execute the individual?

4.. Would you still insist on the non imposition of the death penalty as a capital punishment if someone you love say your mother is raped, tortured and murdered right before your very eyes?

There are requirements before Death Penalty is imposed. It is well reserached and well studied. There must be concrete and compelling reasons and the crime must be categorized as heinous. And the highest court (Supreme Court) should have reviewed the case before he/she gets convicted.

5. Don't you think that only the worst criminals get sentenced to death?

[reanjohn]

1. What do you think makes a punishment cruel and atypicall?

If the punishment imposed on a person impairs his natural rights.

2. On a general note, In opposing the death penalty, don't you think people who are agaisnt the re-imposition of the said law is showing disrespect for victims of violent crime and their relatives? Isn't the Death Penalty necessary as just retribution for victims' families?

They show respect for life. They do not disrespect the victim’s emotional outrage, what they disrespect is the mighty logic of the penalty itself. Retribution by blood is vile. It is not a necessity; it is a luxury to please the victims.

I will stop on opposing death penalty if the corrupt officials will be in line before the murderers and such, for we are also victims of their evil deeds. Please bear in mind that I am sarcastic on my previous sentence.

3. Isn't it necessary to execute certain prisoners in order to prevent them from repeating their crimes? And don't you think that it is more cruel to lock up a prisoner for long periods or for life rather than to execute the individual?

Execution is more of a want than a necessity. A thing becomes a necessity when one can’t go on living without it (can’t we live if we know that a “vile creature” is in prison?), people may execute them but they can also keep them, why not keep them then?

Isolation for long period of time is necessary. A silent surrounding breeds a silent mind. A silent mind breeds change. 6 years in prison and 4 days after the execution breeds maggots.

4.. Would you still insist on the non imposition of the death penalty as a capital punishment if someone you love say your mother is raped, tortured and murdered right before your very eyes?

Allowing the rapist to die would pester me far than knowing that he’s alive and scratching his galis in prison. Torture is a crime, Legal Killing is also a crime.

There are requirements before Death Penalty is imposed. It is well reserached and well studied. There must be concrete and compelling reasons and the crime must be categorized as heinous. And the highest court (Supreme Court) should have reviewed the case before he/she gets convicted.

5. Don't you think that only the worst criminals (demons ) get sentenced to death?

I believe there are cats who, due to their curiosity, managed to break a plate. Some cats causes harm when outraged or because of greed. Some due to mental illness. There are other cats far worse than the aforementioned, but many of these cute cats were executed by drunkard daddy. But before being executed, drunkard daddy produced compelling reasons, which crying son was truly against, and in the end categorized cutie cat’s crime as heinous, then got executed.

[mikellogz]

We will proceed to Round Two at this point... JL, you can pronto dispatch your stance…

[reanjohn]

JL is late on his reply, Reanjohn wins the round.

[pooch]

oo nga..tapos na ang debateng ito at panalo via default na lang eh no?

Ano sa tingin ninyo? isasara ko na ba ang thread na ito?

Pooch