From: Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Date: Tue Nov 24 1998 - 15:11:58 MST
I submit that the death penalty, if adopted as part of a well-designed
justice system, can be a net positive influence. If, however, it is
misapplied or applied as part of a misguided system, it becomes a strong
negative influence.
In an extropic world the death penalty is, in a sense, an infinite
punishment, since the defendant is robbed of a potentially eternal
existence. Therefore it should never be an option for crimes that do not
involve loss of life. For cases involving clearly accidental death it also
seems inappropriate, even if some lesser crime was being committed at the
time.
Even for actual murder cases, there are often extenuating circumstances.
Many crimes are committed in a fit of passion, or by people who are
incapable of understanding what they are doing. Each case would have to be
examined individually, but in most cases lesser punishments seem more
appropriate.
The cases where the death penalty is truly called for are those that polite
society does not like to acknowledge. To put it bluntly: there are people
out there who are perfectly willing to murder as many people as they need to
in order to achieve their goals. They know exactly what they are doing, and
they don't care. They have made a rational decision that their goal is more
important than any number of human lives, and they are willing to act on
that decision.
These are the people who should be executed. If you catch such a man and
kill him, you are responsible for only one death. If you let him go, there
will be dozens of deaths (in some cases hundreds, or even thousands -
terrorists are a good example of this). Punishing him won't make him stop,
it will simply make him more careful. Life imprisonment is impossible -
we're talking about immortals here, right? Involuntary reprogramming simply
makes you guilty of a different crime, and it leads inexorably to problems
that are far worse than a few mass murderers. Since there don't seem to be
any other alternatives, I think execution is the only viable option.
Billy Brown
bbrown@conemsco.com
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