oh let's see um crimes and circumstances actually i'm i'm against capital punishment um probably not for the reasons that a lot of people are i'm against it because
i really don't think that uh there are any crimes that warrant executing a person and the reason i think that is because i really don't have the
belief that uh any particular person's life is worth so much that you ought to take this other guy's life for it i think you can either you know put him in jail for you know for some
very long period of time or if they're really you know mentally ill then i don't think they can really be held accountable for their actions anyway
um-hum
so uh i just i i'm just basically against it
uh i also i also don't have enough faith in our our criminal justice system to to avoid getting the bloopers in there once in a while
well that's probably a pretty good objection um yeah actually i'm i'm in favor of it um well this ought to be an interesting discussion uh um
i my basic reason is that uh if someone uh willfully takes a life of another individual um i think that they have in most cases forfeited um their
convention by which they agree to abide to when when they enter into society um you know they have there's a a convention that you know you shall not kill other individuals
um and if you can kill with impunity um then that kind of makes you king of the hill in a society that that can't control you
uh and if you've shown that that you have such an utter disregard for other individuals that that you kill uh cold-bloodedly or whatever
then uh it's probably uh a good thing to remove remove you from that society
um and one probably one of the more effective ways of of doing that is through the death penalty uh because it's a highly visible sort of action um
and it also sends a message that you know this this sort of behavior is not tolerable within the society and you will forfeit all your rights
uh if you engage in such activity
uh-huh well is isn't locking somebody up i mean equivalent to that
so
well um yeah in a sense that you know that individual is removed from direct contact with society but that individual then becomes a burden to society a non productive burden
yeah do you i
uh because they'd sit there and i mean their quality of life is horrible uh because they're rotting away in a jail uh and the taxpayers are paying you know for them to sit there and twiddle away and and make license plates or something
yeah
yeah actually see i'm i'm sort of uh there are there are some other things i'm against i'm against also i think i think that jailing people for a really long period of time is is tantamount to sort of cruel and unusual punishment which i'm also against
well yeah
so and so so i'm sort of in this quandary you know i mean either you have either either you execute them
and uh you're done with it or you know you throw them you throw them in jail for some incredibly long period of time
and then i think well i wouldn't you know you you don't want to be cruel to these guys and they say by throwing them in a jail where they're you know they're constantly abused or what other other brother or uh other other cell mates you know
um-hum
so so you kind of get into this hotel phenomenon you know where you
got to set up you know some incredibly safe rubber room but
you know then when you set up the rubber room you know it's so uh it's so antiseptic that it's almost drives the person crazy if he isn't crazy already and so isn't that cruel and unusual punishment
right right
exactly exactly
um on on the other hand i think there a lot of individuals who probably haven't really signed up to the idea of you know our concept i mean most western people's concept of civilization you know
um-hum
and i i mean western in the sense of just you know western philosophy i guess um
okay
but you know i i kind of don't buy into the idea that uh that to have a society you necessarily have to
to you know terminate somebody if they have stepped across that line because i think there are probably a lot of instances where um
you get into a situation where somebody hasn't really signed up to being in that society and i mean they kind of consider it almost they're protecting themselves or something
and if society well for instance if society sort of forces themselves on somebody you know you hear it once in a while you hear about these incidences where uh
how so uh
some guy is you know off there in the wilderness or something you know and and and he just doesn't wanna be part of society
um-hum
and society kind of invades his turf you know makes him wanna or you know makes him makes him sort of abide by their rules when he really wasn't even known to society before and he winds up you know shooting somebody or
you know killing a cop who's trying to get him to you know come in to pay his there's a million there's a million things
you know that i can imagine million scenarios that i can imagine where the guy would be sort of like hey i don't wanna be in this society you know leave me alone you know and he'd fight back and if he killed somebody you know he'd get the death penalty you know
