Mark Chitty
New member
Murder defined...The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice.
An individual is found guilty of murder by a jury of his peers and is sentenced to death. This person is then allowed years of appeals prior to execution of the jury's and judge's orders and you equate this with "The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice".
You must have a cynical disdain for our judicial system and laws to hold this position.
The person who is charged with murder also ends up with homicide on their death certificate when they are executed. Homicide and murder are pretty interchangeable, but do speak to intent. So yes, the legal system does differentiate between the intent, but not the act itself. If taking someones life is wrong, then punishing it by taking someones life should be equally wrong. To differentiate between lawful and unlawful killing gives a small group the power to decide it's okay to kill this person, but not okay to kill that person. Nobody should be granted that kind of authority and history should serve as a lesson that "lawful killing" doesn't make it right or just. The obvious and overzealous comparison would be that it was lawful to kill Jews in Nazi Germany. But a more apt and applicable comparison would be the law that made it "lawful" to kill Mormons in the state of Missouri.
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I have a cynical disdain for anyone who thinks they can appropriately decide who deserves to have their life taken and more than ample justification for that position. The point of my argument, however, was that it is a complicated subject and neither side is necessarily wrong but simply prioritize one of two different factors that both hold good intention but find themselves in opposition in this particular topic.