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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gordon A. Langston who wrote (81788)	6/14/2000 10:44:00 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 108807

> I say hypothetically we keep them because we have decided we are so fallible that we might have convicted brutal murderers unjustly< I don't understand this. If we are fallible and we convict people unjustly then those people unjustly convicted are NOT brutal murderers. Those people- the innocent people who get caught in the system I do have compassion for, and if they are convicted unjustly they are not brutal murderers. I also, of course, have compassion for the victims. As for the criminals, I find it almost impossible to have any real compassion for them. I want them separated from society. I want to pay for them to be kept in cages for MY benefit, not for theirs. I want to oppose the death penalty for MY piece of mind, so that I never feel I aided in something inhumane. I do NOT oppose the death penalty because of the guilty. I oppose it for my own piece of mind and for the innocent. I am a selfish creature, as all creatures are. But I think I know where my best self interest lies. Maybe not- but at least I've thought about it a lot more than other people.

To: Gordon A. Langston who wrote (81788)	6/14/2000 10:44:00 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 108807

argh- duplicate post

To: Gordon A. Langston who wrote (81788)	6/14/2000 11:46:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 108807

I've made my point clear that if we don't have capital punishment we must satisfy the natural human emotion of revenge What is the purpose of a criminal justice system? Is it satisfaction of the natural desire for revenge or the protection of society from dangerous individuals? After that robbery I would have happily ripped the lungs out of the kids who broke into my house. Society has no obligation to indulge such desires, as I understand now, on sober reflection. Nor is society obligated to provide any reward or compensation for what I endured. Society's obligation is simply to do all it can to apprehend the perpetrators and impose whatever punishment that society as a whole deems appropriate for that crime.