Considering that death penalty is considered a punishment so great that lots of states banned it, I guess people think that death already punished the person so badly that their sins can be considered absolved. So whether or not people sanitize dead people's image correlates to their opinion on death itself.
Capital punishment is immoral not because death is sufficient to absolve guilt but because we lack sufficient certainty of guilt. Death is just death, it doesn't absolve guilt.
That's an interesting perspective to take. Those countries in Europe who have prohibited capital punishment have done so because we believe it is immoral even in the case of absolute certainty of guilt. Take Anders Breivik for example: there is no doubt whatsoever of his guilt - he is a mass murderer. Nevertheless, according to modern European concepts of morality he should be treated well even in prison, and the Norwegians take that to a level that many other countries would find absurd.
When we decline to execute a heinous offender, and decline to treat them as inhuman - even when they have offended inhumanly - it demonstrates the moral difference between us and them.
Does Anders truly "win" by being simply in confinement forever, rather than being dead? What does he gain? His life? What life? Playing PS1 games forever, seeing the same four walls forever, acceptable but certainly not impressive meals forever. There is not a single thing anyone can do to him or anyone else to undo what he did, and causing him suffering certainly doesn't bring back any children. More importantly, killing him does not make any of the damage he caused go away.
Americans love to piss and moan about all the freedoms we supposedly have, but are conspicuously unsatisfied with merely removing said freedoms as punishment for crimes.
Maybe they don't think "freedom" is that important or meaningful
There is continued harm though. Every day he is treated well, every day he gets food and shelter and care is food and shelter and care paid for by you, that could have been spent on others.
"Those countries in Europe" is perhaps a bit of an understatement. Any justice system that practices capital punishment is considered so dysfunctional that any plans on joining the European Union is out of the question. This is also why the system is rigged as to make it impossible to extradite someone if there is even the slightest possibility of a death penalty.
Breivik is also a single person; do you really want to change (or even burn down) the entire system just for one person?
In principle I have no trouble just executing Breivik; his guilt is established beyond doubt, he committed an act of exceptional evil, and he more or less declares to want to do it again (well technically he says he wants to be a "non-violent Nazi" or some such, but that's a contradiction in terms: "oh that Holocaust thing was just brilliant, more of that!" is violent rhetoric).
But Breivik-type case are rare. So rare it's not really worth changing the system over it. There's principle of a thing and the practicalities of it: in principle the death penalty is fine, but practically organizing that in a legal system with zero false positives is very difficult, so it's not really worth it.
Aside from the US, you can also look at post-second world war in Europe, which saw some executions that were rather over the top in hindsight.
If you spend some time in the Nordics, you'd find that most don't think "death penalty is fine in principle" as it goes against many of the principles people there try to live by.
He's not treated well. Maybe compared other (inhuman) places, but he feels his treatment is so vindictive that he has tried getting the human rights court involved.
His protests as well as the treatment often perceived as "absurdly comfortable" all hinge on one fact: he is kept in permanent solitary confinement. Which is otherwise considered an additional (and harsh) punishment for regular prisoners. And it's the reason why he has his private gym and entertainment facilities, because those would normale be available as shared facilities to regular prisoners.
Mentioning someone's crimes isn't a punishment, especially when they're not around to hear them. Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that people can still have criminal records after they've finished serving a prison sentence?
Isn't mentioning it considered bad when someone has served their punishment? It's part of right-to-be-forgotten after all.
When the crime is still recorded and even announced, it's considered part of the punishment because jail is deemed not enough. It's how we get sexual offender registry.
Death penalty is supported because we think it sends the person to eternal torment in hell, not because we think it purifies them. It’s literally the opposite to what you are claiming
Among support for the death penalty in the United States, is the fact that some criminals, particularly the serial killer type, have committed crimes so heinous that there is no chance of parole or rehabilitation to return to normal life. When one is burdened with 60 consecutive life sentences, it effectively requires that the state pay to sustain the criminal's life until it comes to an end. If the death penalty were enacted instead, we could both reduce the cost the state (which, in turn, is the tax payers), and reduce the suffering the criminal must endure for his crimes.
If you'd like to take the afterlife into account, the "sends the person to eternal torment in hell" sounds like a particular theology not backed up by the Bible, the typical standard in American thinking. That verges way too much on passing ultimate judgment, which is itself reserved for God alone. Perhaps some people believe it. I don't (and I am religious).
> Death penalty is supported because we think it sends the person to eternal torment in hell, not because we think it purifies them.
It is also supported because it can be used as a self-defence mechanism.
We take it for granted that when we lock up 'really' dangerous people they will be safely away from society, but that kind of infrastructure is a fairly recent phenomena in human history. Prison breaks/escapes still happen:
Not only from a building-prisoners perspective, but also from an excess-resources point of view: through most of human history, suggesting using society's surplus—which probably wasn't there—to feed someone 'evil' while everyone else had to work away would have seemed very unfair.
If a single individual has the right to self-defence against an attacker, and a ("small") group of individuals have the same right (e.g., a bunch of folks worshipping in a temple, mosque, church), then wouldn't a "large" group of individuals (e.g., society) have a right to protect themselves from an attacker?
With regards to "hell": someone, while waiting on death row, many repent of their actions and try to find redemption, but still be executed from a legal point of view:
We, who? The practical reason to support it is that it guarantees there is no chance for them to murder more people, or as a (misguided?) deterrent for others not to murder.
At least where I was taught, death penalty reduces someone's punishment in the afterlife. So in a way capital punishment is a "mercy" because without it they'll be punished even more in hell.
Does it matter if the offender believes in tales of hell and heaven? Or is it just important for the people remaining in society how they think the penalty affects the offender?
