i could use your help

[Michiru]

well i am doing a persuasion report for my English class at school the topic is : For Death Penalty
and i need to prove that criminals deserve the death penalty for there crimes......

[Donnie]

Murder, at its simplist, is an unfair transaction between two people. The murderer and the victim.

Before the murder, they are equal to each other. However, they each come to the murder transaction with different desires. The victim has no desire to harm the murderer or take anything from him. She simply has a normal desire to remain living and go about her honest business. She has no idea that she is even going to be involved in the transaction. By all rules of civilized society, she is fully entitled to have her simple, benevolent desires fulfilled. She has a right to remain alive.

The murderer comes to the transaction with different desires. He has the same desire to live that the victim has. The victim is no threat to that desire. He knows that and he knows that the victim is not interested in participating in the murder transaction. But the murderer also has another desire; the abnormal desire to murder the victim. That desire is wrong and he is not entitled to have his desire to murder fulfilled.

Then the murder transaction takes place. The murderer, of his own free will, makes the decision to murder. He knows that murder is wrong. He knows that he will deprive another of her right to live, a right that he continues to desire for himself. The murderer also knows that there is a remote possibility that his act may subject him to his own death. Yet he voluntarily takes that risk in order to do a bad thing.

The moment after the murder, the murderer has what he wanted, a victim who is dead, even though he had no right to it. The murder victim does not have what she wanted, her life, even though she had a right to stay alive. She has also been deprived of all other things that she was then entitled to have. At this point the murderer has created a severe imbalance of justice between himself and his victim. That imbalance could not be fully corrected, even if the murderer were to be killed at that moment. But every minute that the murderer lives, the injustice that the murderer initiated grows worse. If the murderer could restore the victim to life, that would stop the imbalance from becoming worse, but it would not make the initial transaction fair or just, it would not restore the balance of justice between the murderer and his victim from that point forward. But the murderer cannot restore the victim to life, so the severe imbalance remains and grows more imbalanced every second that that murderer lives. Without some intervention, the imbalance would continue to increase for the rest of the murderer's life.

But society has an interest in maintaining justice and fairness in every transaction between two humans. Thus when the murder is brought to the attention of society, society has a duty to intervene to attempt to restore justice and fairness to the unfair murder transaction. Until society intervenes, the murderer continues to increase his advantage over his victim. During this period the murderer's advantage increases at a high rate as he enjoys his success in murdering without any counterbalancing transactional costs to him. Eventually the murderer's enjoyment of his crime may be reduced by his arrest and trial. During that period the murderer's advantage over his victim may increase at a slower rate. The murderer may be found guilty and imprisoned. That further slows the increase in the murderer's advantage, but it doesn't reduce his cumulative advantage or stop it from increasing. So, thus far, the intervention by society has done nothing to restore justice or fairness to the unfair transaction that the murderer initiated. Neither has the intervention even stopped the murderer's advantage from increasing. Granted, it has slowed the rate of increase of the murderer's advantage, but justice and fairness has not been restored. However, in the rare case where the murderer is executed, the murderer's advantage over his victim is stopped from increasing. The murderer still retains all the advantages that he had thus far accrued, but his merciful execution ends his increasing advantage.

Thus the primary reason for executing a murderer is to prevent an unjust and unfair act from continuing to become more and more unjust and unfair. He deserves to be executed because he initiated a process of increasing injustice that can only be stopped by his death.

Of course, most murders are more complex and involve additional harm to the victim or victims, injustice to the victim's family and friends. the deprivation of society of a productive member or damage to property. All of the complicating factors simply increase the unfair advantage enjoyed by the murderer and make the injustice more severe.

[Donnie]

Here is another approach:
The reason for having a death penalty today is to provide an approach to justice for the victims of murder. I use the phrase "an approach to justice" because even if a murderer were to be struck dead one second after the murder, that still would not provide justice for the victim and the victim's family. The murderer, even when executed, always comes out ahead. The murderer always gets what he wanted.

THE MURDERER HAD NO RIGHT TO GET WHAT HE WANTED. YET HE GOT WHAT HE WANTED.
The murderer wanted his victim dead and has gotten what he wanted. He has gotten what he wanted, even though he had no right to murder and his action was forbidden.

The murder victim just wanted to live, yet she did not get what she wanted, even though she had a right to live and society had promised her that she would be allowed to live. Usually she was also providing valuable benefits to society as well as not harming anyone.


THE MURDER VICTIM HAD EVERY RIGHT TO GET WHAT SHE WANTED. YET SHE DID NOT GET WHAT SHE WANTED.

WHO IS AHEAD AT THIS POINT, THE MURDERER OR THE VICTIM?

Can the victim ever catch up with her murderer?

Is it just for the murderer to be better off than his victim?

Is it fair for the murderer to be better off than his victim?

Should we care about justice and fairness for the dead innocent victim?

Once the murderer kills his victim, does he become more important than his victim?

The murderer gains an unfair advantage over his victim the moment he begins to kill her. That is true even if he hasn’t already tortured her or raped her. After the victim dies, every second that the murderer lives, his unfair advantage over the victim is increased. That is the situation in a simple murder where the murder was done in a painless way. In such rare cases the murderer is given at least one fair trial, has appeals heard and then is given spiritual counseling and a last meal of his choice before his merciful execution. The victim had none of those things and has been dead for years before the murderer is executed.

But the death penalty does provide the closest available approach to justice. Of course, many cases of capital murder are much worse than that, with the victim or victims being raped (sometimes many times by different rapists) and tortured, sometimes for hours or days, before a painful death. Then the victim's family has to go through a period of not knowing if their loved one is alive or dead. Then the victim's family has to relive the suffering of their loved one several times during the investigation, trial and appeals. If the murderer is not executed, the family members have to go through this for many years as the appeals and parole requests never stop.

WHEN THE MURDERER IS EXECUTED YEARS AFTER THE MURDER, WHO WAS AHEAD AT THAT POINT, THE MURDERER OR THE VICTIM?


Is it good that the murderer’s unfair advantage has stopped increasing?

Bear in mind that, in many cases, the murderer further benefits over the victim by raping or torturing her or both. The cases of Amy Sue Seitz, Anita Cobby, Mary Adlay, Wendy Offredo and Heather Muller are instructive, as only a few of many examples. In those, easily accessed, cases, the murderer can repeatedly relive the pleasure of the rapes or torture. He can sit with other rapists and murderers in prison and they can share their fond memories of the pleasure they drew from their victims’ suffering. They can laugh and joke about how a victim begged not to be raped for the fourth or fifth time. They can swap stories about how their victims begged for their lives as they lay broken and bleeding. In one case a rape-murderer obtained the crime scene photographs of his victim to further increase his relived pleasures. Also in other cases, the murderer kills many victims. So, in such cases, the murderer gains even larger advantages over his victims. In no case does the murderer ever suffer as much as his victims.

There are also two beneficial byproducts from adequate use of the death penalty; deterrence and prevention. When the death penalty is used, as many as 20 potential murderers are deterred from murdering for each additional execution. When a murderer is executed, he cannot kill or maim again. Thousands of innocent victims have been killed by previously convicted murderers who were not executed for their first murder. No innocent victim has ever been killed by an executed murderer.

The DP also provides a benefit for the murderer, the opportunity for redemption. A murderer facing execution is given the benefit of a powerful incentive to review his past actions and seek the redemption of his soul.

There is no rational, honest and civilized opposing argument against the DP. Search hard for one. If you think you have found one, post it for destruction.

[Deleted]

Michiru said:

well i am doing a persuasion report for my English class at school the topic is : For Death Penalty
and i need to prove that criminals deserve the death penalty for there crimes......

Do you believe in your topic?
Then it would be easier to start...

[Carol Jon and Spencer]

This was helpful for us, but know that these are juvenile cases that we're dismissed from death penatly and they show the though they were at a 'young' at physically their mental state were cleary thinking as an adult in how the murders were to happen. Hope this helps:
www.prodeathpenalty.com/Issues/Roper_v_Simmons_Amicus_Brief_states.pdf

[crappieboy]

We were at the USSC the day the Justices handed down the decision on Simmons. Personally I thought it was a sad day indeed, I believe it opened the door for more murder by gangs using underage young members. I can't buy into that crap that a 17/18 year olds mind isn't fully developed, when Uncle Sam doesn't mind if an 18 year old goes to war to murder - then he is an adult with a fully developed mind.

[Donnie]

crappieboy said:

I can't buy into that crap that a 17/18 year olds mind isn't fully developed

The argument is absurd on its face. The "Justices" who accepted it legally certainly knew that it was a false argument. But they had their personal agenda to push.

Operating a moter vehicle or an aircraft is more complex than deciding whether or not to murder somebody.