I love Penn & Teller, but sometimes regardless of their efforts to appear non-biased their bias shows through. Regarding the death penalty, first they say that punishment isn't considered for crimes of passion (infidelity for instance). However, when my ex-wife did this to me it was the fear of punishment that guided my behavior - so people do consider the consequences, even when they're "flipping out." Regarding sexual criminals and murderers, of course the death penalty is a deterrent - once their dead they stop killing and molesting people – end of story. They also have some egghead liberal historian stating that the concept of lethal injection is a Nazi concept. What he fails to mention is that the concept of abortion is also a Nazi concept and started with Hitler's Eugenics movement (in fact Planned Parenthood started as an American chapter of the Nazi program) However, the very people against the death penalty seem to be 100% in favor of abortion - gee, that seems pretty hypocritical to me. Lastly, they show a "Bullshit" (no pun intended) statistic that States without the death penalty have a lower rate of murder than those that have it. While on the surface this statistic is true you need to know a little something about statistics to understand it. There is no control in this equation - meaning that the obvious explanation can't be proved. In other words, maybe the states with the significantly higher murder rate imposed the death penalty because of those higher murder rates and the higher rates are not a result of the death penalty, but the death penalty is a result of the higher murder rates. Of course, none of this is valid because in reality there is no State with a true death penalty. Every State has fifteen year provisions for appeal and many never see the gallows (so to speak). Only when a state will impose swift justice and execute 100% of those sentenced to death will we know if the murder rate is affected. One final point, innocent people do die from the death penalty. However, more innocent people die as a result of not having the death penalty (as I said, once you kill a murder he/she stops murdering). It's a trade off, people are going to die either way, we just have to use the way that inflicts the least amount of harm on the least amount of innocent people.
3 Reviews
Death penalty
shiftdp17 May 2020
The Death Penalty
Blueghost17 March 2015
Penn and Teller did an episode on "Anger Management".
The key thing to know about that episode is that what was key is that in the eyes of trained professionals, venting or releasing that anger only reinforces and builds that visceral and violent response a person gets when provoked.
So it is with the death penalty.
It is not a deterrent in a nation at peace domestically, and where the death penalty gets little publicity. FBI statistics bear that out. It is killing another human being, plain and simple.
The counter argument, the non-moral argument, that Penn and Teller put forth for sparing convicted murderers, is that at some time they may talk. Their conscience may get to them. For someone who murdered for profit or passion, that is to satiate an emotional need (stealing money to improve life style for pleasure) that is so. For a sociopath, it is not so.
When a nation is at war, or in a state of conflict or plane of social existence whereby violence is known as a consequence of initiating an act against social codes, then the death penalty, or the preponderance of it, is a deterrent, for it is seen and known to be the ultimate injury of flirting with the possibility of violent retribution.
Executing terrorists in prison will not deter terrorism. Nor will it deter serial killers. Nor organized criminals who killed as part of their business practice. It will deter a segment of population who are willing to take up arms in some cause, criminal or not. But those are extraordinary circumstances.
The "death penalty" works in the animal kingdom. Herds of animals, on some level, know the consequences of letting predatory animals get close to and capturing them. We are still simians, but we do have a higher social order than groups of predator animals out in the wild.
Therefore, it seems to me, that those who need the preponderance of the death penalty, aren't getting the message. And those who want the preponderance of the death penalty, aren't getting their message out.
Me, personally, I still believe in the death penalty as matter of punishing traitors whose acts put the whole of society at risk of death. Beyond that, I'm for life in prison.
Enjoy.
The key thing to know about that episode is that what was key is that in the eyes of trained professionals, venting or releasing that anger only reinforces and builds that visceral and violent response a person gets when provoked.
So it is with the death penalty.
It is not a deterrent in a nation at peace domestically, and where the death penalty gets little publicity. FBI statistics bear that out. It is killing another human being, plain and simple.
The counter argument, the non-moral argument, that Penn and Teller put forth for sparing convicted murderers, is that at some time they may talk. Their conscience may get to them. For someone who murdered for profit or passion, that is to satiate an emotional need (stealing money to improve life style for pleasure) that is so. For a sociopath, it is not so.
When a nation is at war, or in a state of conflict or plane of social existence whereby violence is known as a consequence of initiating an act against social codes, then the death penalty, or the preponderance of it, is a deterrent, for it is seen and known to be the ultimate injury of flirting with the possibility of violent retribution.
Executing terrorists in prison will not deter terrorism. Nor will it deter serial killers. Nor organized criminals who killed as part of their business practice. It will deter a segment of population who are willing to take up arms in some cause, criminal or not. But those are extraordinary circumstances.
The "death penalty" works in the animal kingdom. Herds of animals, on some level, know the consequences of letting predatory animals get close to and capturing them. We are still simians, but we do have a higher social order than groups of predator animals out in the wild.
Therefore, it seems to me, that those who need the preponderance of the death penalty, aren't getting the message. And those who want the preponderance of the death penalty, aren't getting their message out.
Me, personally, I still believe in the death penalty as matter of punishing traitors whose acts put the whole of society at risk of death. Beyond that, I'm for life in prison.
Enjoy.
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