Thread: death penalty?
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Old 16-02-2008, 19:18   #54
MikeSz
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Re: death penalty?

If the response is an emotional one (and folly the state which rules it's citizens by a charter of emotion), or one of deterrent, consider the words of Cesare Beccaria :

"Ah! those cruel formalities of justice are a cloak of tyranny, they are a secret language, a solemn veil, intended to conceal the sword by which we are sacrificed to the insatiable idol of despotism. Murder, which they represent to us as an horrible crime, we see practiced by them without repugnance or remorse. Let us follow their example. A violent death appeared terrible in their descriptions, but we see that it is the affair of the moment. It will be less terrible to him, who is not expecting it, [since he] escapes almost all the pain"

"Perpetual slavery, then, has in it all that is necessary to deter the most hardened and determined, as much as the punishment of death. I say it has more. There are many who look upon death with intrepidity and firmness; some through fanaticism, and others through vanity, which attends us even to the grave; others from a desperate resolution, either to get rid of their misery or cease to live; but fanaticism and vanity forsake the criminal in slavery, in chains and fetters, in an iron cage; and despair seems rather the beginning than the end of their misery."

In other words, perhaps the fault is not with the sentences that are passed down, rather the range and effectiveness of those punishments available.
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