Forums → WEPR → Should the Boston Bomber get the death penalty or life?
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There is a guy named Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who bombed people in Boston during the Boston Marathon and his brother died so he blamed him. Then he wanted life in prison, but people are saying he should die. What do you think? He also flipped off the camera in jail.
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Kill and Murder are not the same?I kill you, I murder you. For me Kill and murder are the same. You can't change that. After the death is decided if it was intentional, or not. If i intentionally killed you or intentionally murdered you.
@xerox - This is a very important point. Fish actually linked to the thread where I tried to explain the distinction there, but I'll give a brief distinction here.
Murder is a kind of killing - it's wrongful killing. In other words, someone who murders does something immoral. This isn't true of every case of killing. Here are some cases that are (intuitively, at least) killing, but not murder.
Case 1: Two soldiers are fighting for their respective countries in a war. Both are shooting at one another. But soldier A shoots and kills soldier B. While solider A intentionally kills soldier B, this isn't a case of murder.
Case 2: An armed bank robber is fleeing from police and shooting at them. An officer shoots and kills the robber. Again, he doesn't murder the robber.
Case 3: Sue is attacked by a would-be mugger. He pulls a knife to stab her, at which point she pulls out a gun and kills him.
Notice that intentionality doesn't play a part here. In all of these cases, the person doing the killing does so intentionally. You're right that, in the end, the person in dead in both cases of killing and murder. But there's a complicated matter of all-things-considered value. Immoral acts carry with them ethical disvalue. As a result, cases of murder have a lower all-things-considered value than cases of killing. So the end results are actually *not* the same.
What you might mean here is that the death penalty itself is immoral. In that case, you could argue that the execution is an immoral killing and thus murder. But, Ishtaron has kindly shifted that part of the conversation to the appropriate thread.
So again, I urge those of you who disagree with the death penalty (myself included) to put that aside. Put yourself in the role of a juror in this case and just consider whether the death penalty is warranted here.
Ishtaron also makes some very good points about what isn't relevant. Whether he becomes a martyr isn't entirely relevant. Nor is the idea that there could be some sort of hostage swap in the future. There has been some discussion about the fact that sentencing him to death would just keep him in the news longer during the lengthy appeals process whereas a life sentence would basically put him in a hole somewhere never to be heard of again. Given that the families and victims want closure, this might be a relevant point, though I'm not sure.
Point of a Debate is at the end the sides agree on something.No, it isn't. The point of a debate is convincing people other than your opponent that your view is correct, regardless of whether it actually is. This is not a debate.
Your points are old. you think like a normal person.Because New = Better, right?
if you want more meaning, then please share it with someone else, who cares about deep meanings of synonim words.They aren't synonymous. That's kind of the whole and entire point.
I'd suggest approaching this question like a juror. Any juror who espoused some conspiracy theory would be removed. No such theory has been offered by the defence. What matters here are the lack of Tsarnaev's fingerprints on the bomb itself, the purported influence of his brother, and other mitigating factors that might diminish his legal culpability.
This appears to make it simple to me. If he cannot be found guilty without a doubt of having built/planted the bombs, he cannot be executed for it. He certainly deserves a heavy jail penalty for his involvement in the matter.
Honestly I believe he should be punished. The more punishing sentence, though, would be to have him be in prison for life.
If he were to get the death penalty, that just means he doesn't get to live through prison. Dying in prison would definitely be more harsh. He may even get murdered in prison anyway.
I have a new argument for the pro- death penalty side that my dad argued that I could not refute...
Why would I want my tax dollars to go toward keeping that scum alive?
I have a new argument for the pro- death penalty side that my dad argued that I could not refute...You can tell him that the U.S. appeals process for death row wastes even more of his tax dollars.
Why would I want my tax dollars to go toward keeping that scum alive?
This appears to make it simple to me. If he cannot be found guilty without a doubt of having built/planted the bombs, he cannot be executed for it. He certainly deserves a heavy jail penalty for his involvement in the matter.
Feel the same. If even one in 1000 executed people isn't guilty then its wrong. Regardless of the cash.
I've heard that as well. I found this at forbes.com. It also points out that housing a death row inmate is about twice as expensive as housing an inmate who is serving life in prison. I'm sceptical about the article, though, as it talks a lot about the cost of capital trials, which life sentences would also fall under.
But there's a broader point here that you dad's concerns aren't really relevant to the question of whether this individual should get the death penalty or whether the death penalty should be used in the first place. Something costing more isn't a relevant moral concern - at least in this arena.
If he would to get the death penalty, that's probably what he wants so that way he won't have to face jail for the rest of his life.
If he would to get the death penalty, that's probably what he wants so that way he won't have to face jail for the rest of his life.
I can't believe people still say this kind of thing when death row inmates spend decades frantically making every appeal they can just to get their sentence commuted to life in prison.
Just in case no one's heard. They decided to kill him.
That's a pretty definitive answer to the threads title considering how rarely that state doles out death penalties. Apparently 13 people in a state that strongly opposes the use of the death penalty all thought that his actions fit the moral and legal requirements for capital punishment.
If he would to get the death penalty, that's probably what he wants so that way he won't have to face jail for the rest of his life.I have to agree with Ishtaron; that's just nonsense. Life sentence doesn't come complete with padded cell and restraints (unless requested for medical reasons), yet people are still living out life sentences. Also, really, why should we care whether they would prefer one over the other? They aren't going to be rehabilitated in either case.
An eye for an eye is my moto: Death!So, your idea of justice is vengeance through reciprocation? Well, there are a few problems with this:
1 Death is the end result of every human life, so calling for someone's death isn't really productive in itself.
2 An eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth would lead to a world of the blind and toothless.
3 No matter how hard you try, you can only kill a mass murderer once.
The prison system itself should be revamped in my opinion.
But, of course, this would take more money in which no one has to pay for more prisons.
So, my idea would be to seperate the prisoners. Put the small time offenders in one prison. The one with some entertainment, the possibility for education, and work release. Then put the scum of the Earth in another prison where there is no entertainment, education, or work release. In fact, there is no release at all. Surely these would all be serial killers and just the worst of the worst.
The people in the small time offender's prison could have a chance to better themselves and have a second chance at life. The other prisoners should be forced to do hard manual labor for the rest of their lives. There is nothing more punishing than that. Everyday for the rest of their lives they would wake up early in the morning and be put to work 7 days a week every week of the year for 10 hours a day or more. They should do something like cutting the grass around the prison with a cane knife or something that can cut grass but not so much other people. Hopefully the prisoner's could possibly even save the system some money by doing this. I'm sure that local governments could find them other hard work to do.
You can not give someone back their life, but at least people like the boston bomber would be suffering everyday instead of sitting in air conditioning getting free food and sleeping all day.
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