Posted on 02/11/2010 8:20:05 PM PST by myknowledge
Long ago, executions of convicts were carried out in public view.
Then they were carried out of public sight, in chambers and prisons, with a red lamp glowing to indicate that an execution is taking place.
I have started this thread because I want to ask this question:
Should prisoner executions be televised live?
Yes or No?
Even children who watch prisoner executions become desensitized and will see this as normal.
It could also be used by the state government to condition people that the death penalty is acceptable, normal and endorsed, something that the public can accustom to.
But an argument against that is televised executions are a flagrant violation of the 1st and 8th Amendments.
I think the country is already desensitized to so much crap it wouldn’t really have much of an effect.
RUNNING MAN!!!
I would say no. I don’t really see any upside on the crime prevention/ deterrent front ... and all it will do is foster prurient, reality-tv interest in the crowd. The death penalty is a necessary evil, but I don’t see any reason to make it a spectacle.
SnakeDoc
Why not? We’ve already got fascist green police and totalitarians in charge of everything. Why not turn the whole thing into ‘The Running Man’ to complete our dystopian reality?
This is one of the few periods and places in history where executions aren’t public.
They should be open to the public, but no cameras - just like there should be no cameras in the courtroom.
They should do it like in Japan. When a death order has been issued, the condemned prisoner is informed in the morning of his or her execution. The prisoner’s family and legal representatives are not informed until afterwards.
I think, no. It would just turn into some reality TV mess. A modern version of Roman gladiators or some such...
Perhaps, when feasable, they could be taken to the place of their crime and executed in a like-manner...
In our idiocracy society, it would turn the condemned into ‘rock stars.’
I actually think it is a good idea. Nothing like seeing people hang dead for a while to let it sink it, that dead is dead, not acting, not made up and pretty in the casket.
YES!
No.
Maybe they could make a reality tv show, where they start off with a bunch of death row inmates, and each week, the audience votes and one of them is executed.
Death row inmates are incapable of ever repaying their debts to society especially family members affected.
Quite the opposite happens and they continue to play the system costing us even more.
I’m all for putting executions on pay per view with profits funding our prisons.
Dude...you’re really messed up.
The death penalty may have been a spectacle in the past, but that does not mean that it should be. I’m not sure people need a lesson on death from the government.
There’s really no upside to broadcasting executions.
SnakeDoc
In our idiocracy society, it would turn the condemned into ‘rock stars.’
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I agree and sadly, I think it’s already that way a bit.
I keep wondering what’s missing in our lives that things have come to this.
I suppose some is a shortage of God and faith in our lives and maybe we are bored, we don’t have need to work as hard for survival.
I don’t know...
Potential perps would learn from viewing their eventual mode of punishment - broadcast executions on FOX, a channel that people watch.
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