LogFAQs > #899229481

Sahuagin posted...

murder is unjust killing. the death penalty is just killing. (at least hypothetically. the point is that "legalized murder" is a contradiction. however any particular law that says to kill someone may or may not be moral/ethical.)

And who defines justice? "Legalized murder" is indeed a contradiction, which is the point. The death penalty is only "not murder" because the judiciary body - the same body that is doing the killing - says it's not. "Murder" is defined on the basis of a given society's laws, such that applying a directive that far predates the nuances of said laws has to consider more than just those modern laws.

This is why theology gets complicated. In a broader moral sense, it'd be easiest to define "murder" as "killing when killing is a greater evil than not killing." That gets even more complicated (cue abortion debates), but insofar as the death penalty is concerned, morally justifying the death penalty - which is necessary to exempt it from a label of "murder" - requires you to say that letting the person live would be a greater evil than killing them, and that's only really possible if you're unable to guarantee that society will be protected from them (read: you suck at keeping people in jail).

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Because after the first one they don't bring anything new to the table.

I trust you can back up that claim with statistics demonstrating that nobody has ever successfully appealed the death penalty after losing their first appeal?
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