Quote from: Azumarill on May 16, 2015, 05:36:10 PM

I don't necessarily think that a slow natural death in supermax ISO is more humane. I don't think humanity has anything to do with it really. If we throw away his life needlessly, we're not any better than him.

Oh come on, you have to see the ethical difference between murdering several people and maiming and dismembering hundreds, and giving that same person a lethal injection.

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We can make use of him as a warden of the state if we keep him alive. We can literally hijack his entire existence and make him work for the very thing he sought to destroy. Why should we wait 10 years and waste millions of dollars on appeals just to stick a needle in him and watch the life drain out of his eyes? That's pointless. It accomplishes nothing. You have to see that.

I'm definitely not comfortable with an alternative to the death penalty being a form of forced labor. And his life sentence would have been 23 hours per day of solitary confinement, not hard labor (which the military still institutes for courts martial). You can't argue that he'll be working or providing some sort of value to anybody in a life sentence. He's martyred either way; killing him ten years down the line once ISIS is long gone is less damaging than showing to the world that we'll let a guy blow up hundreds of people for Islam and give him a cell for the rest of his life.

These extremists are like hydras though. No matter what we do to punish someone they're going to be seen as martyrs to the fundamentalists. ISIS probably won't be around in 10 years but as long as the Ayatollah's ideology permeates the Middle East there will be no shortage of extremists and sellswords willing to work for them. There is no winning in this situation, so why should we summarily execute him? What does it accomplish? We've already established that it's likely to be far more expensive, so logistically it's the worse option.

Quote from: Azumarill on May 16, 2015, 04:21:50 PM

Quote from: The Lord Ruler on May 16, 2015, 04:06:10 PM

You know you people talk about cost but punishment shouldn't be based on cost.

He forfeited his life to the state when he committed an act of domestic terrorism. Our duty now is not to enact barbaric revenge through punishment, but to use him as best we can. Killing him accomplishes nothing except for sating the public bloodlust.

And how exactly would you "use" him. Keeping locked up accomplishes nothing either.

I had forgotten about ADX Florence's strict isolation policies. Ordinarily, a violent offender would become a ward of the state and perform cheap labor, but in supermax he's isolated for 23 hours a day  In this case, it comes down to a matter of logistics: why should we waste money and resources on an appeals process when locking him up permanently is cheaper? I don't think execution should be the default here. I don't understand why we should consider it at all.

Quote from: Azumarill on May 16, 2015, 06:36:15 PM

Quote from: The Lord Ruler on May 16, 2015, 06:30:40 PM

Quote from: Azumarill on May 16, 2015, 04:21:50 PM

Quote from: The Lord Ruler on May 16, 2015, 04:06:10 PM

You know you people talk about cost but punishment shouldn't be based on cost.

He forfeited his life to the state when he committed an act of domestic terrorism. Our duty now is not to enact barbaric revenge through punishment, but to use him as best we can. Killing him accomplishes nothing except for sating the public bloodlust.

And how exactly would you "use" him. Keeping locked up accomplishes nothing either.

I had forgotten about ADX Florence's strict isolation policies. Ordinarily, a violent offender would become a ward of the state and perform cheap labor, but in supermax he's isolated for 23 hours a day  In this case, it comes down to a matter of logistics: why should we waste money and resources on an appeals process when locking him up permanently is cheaper? I don't think execution should be the default here. I don't understand why we should consider it at all.

I agree it would be better for him to be just locked up but it shouldn't be because it's cheaper. Basing punishment on cost is an absolutely absurd thing to do.

We can't really argue it from a humanitarian perspective because decades long isolation might as well be tantamount to psychological torture. I suppose that given the chance most people would prefer life over death, but this guy is well and truly fucked in the head and thinks death will deliver him