Instigator / Pro
0
1420
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388
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Topic
#3798

Why couldn't murder be justified with capital punishment changing it to perhaps citizens punishment?

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Winner
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1

After 1 vote and with 1 point ahead, the winner is...

RationalMadman
Parameters
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Standard
Number of rounds
5
Time for argument
Two days
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28,000
Voting period
One month
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Contender / Con
1
1702
rating
574
debates
67.86%
won
Description

Regardless of the setup for voting win or lose, The aim of this interaction, Is for those that view it, Learn and or take away anything that will amount to any constructive value ultimately. So that counts as anything that'll cause one to reconsider an idea, Understand a subject better, Help build a greater wealth of knowledge getting closer to truth. When either of us has accomplished that with any individual here, That's who the victor of the debate becomes.

I will elaborate the circumstances regarding to pass a law for citizenship execution.

Questions or comments, please ask away.

Round 1
Pro
#1
Murder by a citizen upon another can be justified making it lawful killing and execution as a penalty or punishment.

Why?

It's the parallel formula of a state administering capital punishment. 

Who is the state other than a state of people in government?

CITIZENS.

Now if it's going to be a parallel situation, the circumstances have to match or run parallel.

So this weeds out individuals who are actually out to kill with no justification. 

Those would be whom you actually would call your murderers, plain and simple.
Con
#2
Murder by a citizen upon another can be justified making it lawful killing and execution as a penalty or punishment.
No, you see we must define murder to understand why this is impossible.

Here is the most widely recognised and official definition of murder, from three different dictionaries as their primary definition:

the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought


in criminal law, the unjustified killing of one person by another, usually distinguished from the crime of manslaughter by the element of malice aforethoughtSee homicide.

Do you see the problem? Pro is suggesting making it legal but if it's legal, it is therefore not murder being justified.

Also, feasibility-wise what is being suggested is to convince an entire nation (or enough within the nation to lead to legal change) that not only that murder is legal but that further murder isn't. Meaning, for Pro's premise to be true (that murder can be made un-murder post hoc), the populace are not then going to begin a purge-like slew of killings that they don't see as murder due to the unspeakable taboo barrier of intentional killing of humans being unacceptable and illegal being broken.

We ought to really consider how this would play out. Pro would need to give us a way that it gets actually justified that pans out sufficiently. I predict the moment it's made legal that shortly after, rebels kill the leaders and push back on the justification and that what's justified is by-definition not murder the moment it is justified and made legal, creating a practical and theoretical paradox and/or dilemma.

==

It's the parallel formula of a state administering capital punishment. 

Who is the state other than a state of people in government?
Capital punishment isn't legal in all countries whereas murder is illegal in all countries that are official nations (only some cannibalistic tribe that is anarchic could be argued to have it legal and to them it's not 'murder' in their unwritten laws so to speak as they see the killed and eaten human as prey).

I challenge Pro to give an example of a place where murder was ever justified...

WHAT IS AMNESTY DOING TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY?

For more than 40 years, Amnesty has been campaigning to abolish the death penalty around the world.

Amnesty monitors its use by all states to expose and hold to account governments that continue to use the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. We publish a report annually, reporting figures and analysing trends for each country. Amnesty’s latest report, Death Sentences and Executions 2021, was released in May 2022.

The organisation’s work to oppose the death penalty takes many forms, including targeted, advocacy and campaign based projects in the Africa, Asia-Pacific, Americas and Europe and Central Asia region; strengthening national and international standards against its use, including by supporting the successful adoption of resolutions on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty by the UN General Assembly; and applying pressure on cases that face imminent execution. We also support actions and work by the abolitionist movement, at national, regional and global level.

When Amnesty started its work in 1977, only 16 countries had totally abolished the death penalty. Today, that number has risen to 108 – more than half the world’s countries. More than two-thirds are abolitionist in law or practice.

How many countries have abolished the death sentence?

Amnesty International reports that as of the end of 2013, more than two-thirds of all countries have abolished death penalty in law or in practice. There are 98 countries which have abolished it for all crimes. Most of these are in Western Europe and the Americas. Seven countries, including Brazil, Chile and Kazakhstan have abolished it for ordinary crimes. In these countries, death penalty can only be given for exceptional crimes such as crime committed under military law or under exceptional circumstances. Another 35 countries are categorized as abolitionist in practice. These retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes, but there have been no executions in the past 10 years. The death sentence is retained by the legal system of 58 countries. More than half of the world's population lives in these countries.



What do opponents of capital punishment say?

They say that it is possible for innocent people to get executed because of unfair and discriminatory application of the death penalty. Studies across the world have shown that in most cases the person sentenced to death is from an economically and socially backward section of society, indicating the inability to hire good lawyers to contest their cases. Many studies have suggested that there is no evidence to show that capital punishment has any effect on murder rates. It is also argued that the sentence is a denial of human rights and sends a wrong message — that killing is acceptable under certain circumstances.

The trend is irrevocably that the only possible direction for a country to do is either to maintain a death penalty with murder being completely outlawed and resented by the society or that people agree with Pro on the parallel and justify outlawing the death penalty.

Pro will be extremely hard pressed to find an exception because it doesn't exist, Pro's hypothetical is untenable in any human society fathomable due to how legalisation and reasoning, emotional and logical, work.
Round 2
Pro
#3
Boy am I going to have a tough time explaining this position and topic.

"No, you see we must define murder to understand why this is impossible.

Here is the most widely recognised and official definition of murder, from three different dictionaries as their primary definition:"

Yes I have my work cut out for me .

There's no misunderstanding of what we call murder.

Let me go in this direction.

Would you call capital punishment murder?

"Do you see the problem? Pro is suggesting making it legal but if it's legal, it is therefore not murder being justified."

I explained this later down the track in the last round but you fell off the train somewhere.

I want to start this out with that direct question above.

Everything you said, wow, I had no inkling this would go over your head or people's heads so easily so fast.

Let's start with this question to get you back on the train. It'll negate all that other stuff you brought up.

Would you call capital punishment murder?

If not, why not?

That's the second question in an effort to make progress.




Con
#4
Would you call capital punishment murder?

If not, why not?
It's legal.

I argue that you can justify to people to make capital punishment illegal and therefore murder but you can't justify making murder legal.
Round 3
Pro
#5
You didn't say whether you would call capital punishment murder or not .

I didn't ask whether it is legal. I asked would you call it murder.

I'm going to summarize basically where I'm coming from in this scenario.

A man goes out and kills another man that murdered his wife.

Now the law does not call that self defense. The widower premeditated and acted on killing somebody.

We'll refer to this as first degree murder. 

But if another citizen who has a job in the state as executioner flips the twitch to execute the wife killer, how could it not be that the widower would use the same justification as appointed by law to the executioner?

If you are familiar with citizen's arrest, that's where I'm going here with citizen execution.
Con
#6
Forfeited
Round 4
Pro
#7
That's right, think about it. Think it over.
Con
#8
Forfeited
Round 5
Pro
#9
And the debate is over.
Con
#10
Forfeited