On Oct 5, 2012, at 8:09 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> ...Retributionists would argue that the only purpose of punishment
> is retribution to satisfy justice, not to achieve any other
> practical end (such as future crime prevention.)...As to the claim
> of too many innocent victims -
> I do not think we have any reliable numbers is, so we will never know
> for sure. I happen to believe that in most cases the persons
> condemned to die are guilty as charged...
Wojtek doesn't know if there are "too many innocent victims," though he believes that "most" of the victims are not indeed innocent. But since he explicitly admits that *some* (although not "too many") of the victims are indeed innocent, then he and the rest of the "justice"-favoring "retributionists" must be in favor of the death penalty for those who have deliberately taken innocent life--the arresting police, the executioners, the judges, the prosecuting attorneys, and even the jurors (though, I think, in "most" cases the jurors can claim such extenuating circumstances as having been deceived by cops, prosecutors, et. al.).
While I agree that it is regrettable for a Breivik to escape being drawn and quartered and disemboweled, I believe the killing of even one innocent by the "justice" system is too high a price to pay for such fullness of real justice. And so I have a utilitarian "platonic" (ie., by definition unrealizable in the material world) ideal of capital punishment: (a) guilt must be proven beyond any possible doubt, (b) the crime must be motivated by a rational risk/ benefit calculation and therefore subject to dissuasion (mainly profit- motivated crimes like employing hired arsonists or murderers, but also state-administered extrajudicial killings like those in which Obama glories).
Shane Mage "Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64