fandomhigh | Polar Opposites, Tuesday

"All right, we've been practicing a bit these past few weeks," Alistair announced, "But now it's time to bring in the serious topics. Now, none of you are allowed to throttle anyone else about your opinion, even if you might be tempted..." Morrigan.

Morrigan didn't throttle! ...but the spell for frogging anyone who got physical or rude about the debate was waiting on the tip of her tongue.

"Capital Punishment," she said instead. "Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for a crime. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. Execution of criminals and political opponents has been used by nearly all societies—both to punish crime and to suppress political dissent. In most places that practise capital punishment it is reserved for murder, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice. In some countries sexual crimes, such as rape, adultery, incest and sodomy, carry the death penalty, as do religious crimes such as apostasy."

Looking at you, Alistair.

Alistair looked back at her. He was still ticked off about that whole being a woman thing, all right? "I don't think it should be a penalty for apostasy," he said. Mildly. "I'm not denying that there are crimes where the death penalty is the only one that could and should be applied - treason, for one. But I've been told that there are people here who think differently about that. And I'm sure we can all have a reasonable debate about it without anyone getting hurt or being turned into anything."

Morrigan just smiled.

It probably wasn't very reassuring, the way it showed all her teeth.

[OOC: OCD is up, FYI, today's class is debating the death penalty.]

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"I'm not... a proponent of killing people, usually," Alistair said. "I believe that life should be respected, and that with many crimes, it's better to teach them a lesson than to chop anything off."

He looked around the class.

"And then there are the worse cases," he said. "Traitors, who may have cost thousands of people their lives with their actions--" He had no idea how relevant that bit would become for him soon. "--Murderers who won't stop killing. People who have committed terrible crimes and still show no remorse. What good would it be to keep them alive? What kind of example does it set if you can do that kind of thing and still keep on going?"

And so he went on for a while before taking a step back and opening up the floor for the students to pitch in their bit and debate it.

Polar Opposites, Tuesday

Re: Debate: Capital Punishment (Pro)