DC What If? The Death Penalty was done en masse to Gotham Supervillains?

[CarlManvers2019]

Instead of, you know, being sent to Arkham Asylum wherein they kill guards and escape and cause problems and kill people before going back in and repeat

How long till they all get resurrected or somehow the universe or Gotham somehow replaces them with new and worse supervillains?

Also, what would Batman and other superheroes do when they see the executions that usually are because it turns out they each killed lots of people and did other stuff?

 

[PsihoKekec]

Gotham doesn't need Batman, it needs Punisher.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Gotham doesn't need Batman, it needs Punisher.

How about a regular deathrow? Odds are, guys from Arkham will complain about how unjust and terrible their treatment of the “criminally insane” is

 

[Chaos Marine]

You know, I'd be kinda interested in knowing how Batman would feel or react if he knew that bringing in the criminals would result in their executions. On one hand, it's not him killing them but on the other, would he see it as him relenting or being weak in his principals of never murdering someone? He may not be killing them personally but their deaths would be on his hands. Do cops or detectives who don't support or agree with capital punishment feel guilty if the person they bring in gets executed? It would make for a really interesting story I think.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

You know, I'd be kinda interested in knowing how Batman would feel or react if he knew that bringing in the criminals would result in their executions. On one hand, it's not him killing them but on the other, would he see it as him relenting or being weak in his principals of never murdering someone? He may not be killing them personally but their deaths would be on his hands.

Obviously, not every single criminal gets the bullet, there are degrees

You’re not gonna receive the death penalty for a single murder

You’re gonna receive it when it is sorta clear that you’re of the “Too Dangerous To Let Live” type like The Joker and the other gotham supervillains who include crime bosses with continuing operations almost pretty quickly after release

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

You know, I'd be kinda interested in knowing how Batman would feel or react if he knew that bringing in the criminals would result in their executions. On one hand, it's not him killing them but on the other, would he see it as him relenting or being weak in his principals of never murdering someone? He may not be killing them personally but their deaths would be on his hands. Do cops or detectives who don't support or agree with capital punishment feel guilty if the person they bring in gets executed? It would make for a really interesting story I think.

I mean, he can continue to abstract that out to infinity, sure.

Batman's no-killing rule was never about him not wanting criminals to die, it was a voluntary check on his authority, he was an unelected, unaccountable force dealing out vigilante justice like the hand of god, and he restrained himself from taking life as a boundary to his mandate, not because he cares if criminals get shot.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

not because he cares if criminals get shot.

What does he do when he knows if he turns the Joker in, they will shoot him again and again till he’s dead for sure?

 

[Lanmandragon]

The joker goes to hell somehow takes over. Then returns far more dangerous with the powers of Satan on top of his own.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

The joker goes to hell somehow takes over. Then returns far more dangerous with the powers of Satan on top of his own.

Then Doomguy somehow makes an appearance and shoots him

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

What does he do when he knows if he turns the Joker in, they will shoot him again and again till he’s dead for sure?

That really shouldn't be any concern of his, his rule isn't about keeping criminals alive, it's about keeping the decision to kill out of the hands of the man who's above the law in every other way. Its about his relationship to society, not to the criminals; he -has- to let us decide the fate of the accused. He delivers men beyond our justice to -our- justice, whatever it is. Otherwise, he is robbing the people, not just the criminals, of their rights.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

That really shouldn't be any concern of his, his rule isn't about keeping criminals alive, it's about keeping the decision to kill out of the hands of the man who's above the law in every other way. Its about his relationship to society, not to the criminals; he -has- to let us decide the fate of the accused. He delivers men beyond our justice to -our- justice, whatever it is. Otherwise, he is robbing the people, not just the criminals, of their rights.

Doesn't he at times still believe that there is some good and even a horrible guilty self-awareness left?

Also, what happens to Arkham? Does its doctors get fired for possibly being psychos and incompetents

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

Doesn't he at times still believe that there is some good and even a horrible guilty self-awareness left?

Wether he does or he doesn't does not factor into the ethics of his rule. It isn't about the possibility of rehabilitation.

Also, what happens to Arkham? Does its doctors get fired for possibly being psychos and incompetents

Probably becomes an asylum for normal mentally ill people.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Probably becomes an asylum for normal mentally ill people.

What about all the occasional psycho psychologists who bemoan how badly the city is treating these poor victims Batman beats up mid-horrible crime, by sending them over to be shot instead of rehabilitated by them?

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

What about all the occasional psycho psychologists who bemoan how badly the city is treating these poor victims Batman beats up mid-horrible crime, by sending them over to be shot instead of rehabilitated by them?

Well, if the kind of draconian measures described in your OP are taking place, it's exactly as you say, they'll lobby against it, but by definition if the OP is happening, they're not listened to.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Well, if the kind of draconian measures described in your OP are taking place, it's exactly as you say, they'll lobby against it, but by definition if the OP is happening, they're not listened to.

They then get told to #LearnToCode

 

[Cherico]

First we have to aknowlege this one simple fact.

DC earth is not our earth and its defiantly not Marvel earth.

The real internal reason why they don't go around killing super villans is quite simple. DC earth knows for a fact that there are several extra terrestrial civilizations that want to conquer earth. They have visited the planet before they have killed people before. They understand that the forces of hell want to invade they have done it in the past and killed people.

Unlike Marvel there is abosolutely no delusion that their safe. These are cronic problems that are always going to be there and their single best weapons to face these threats are super beings.

Some times they use magic, some times science, some times their aliens, some times their mutated or hybrids or a million other things but this is what is proven to work. Weather they like it or not they depend on these beings for survival so there is a carrot and stick approch.

The justice league gets money from the UN, its heavy hitters are given love and appeciation from the people and for the most part their treated with respect. For villans there is the sucide squad, if you fuck up and get caught you will become a deniable asset for your government, do your duty and you walk away free.


If the government of DC allows the exicution of villans its because of one thing.

Their making an example, some one fucked up big time and now the government is cracking down hard as an example to villans in other cities to toe the line. Batman wouldn't nessarly like this but I give it good odds that he wouldn't interfer. That means roughly speaking between 50 and 60 people die.

In the aftermath of this there are two realistic outcomes.

1- Villans say fuck da man and try to take over (unlikely to work)
2. Villans create a line in the sand, and try to self regulate go over an acceptable line and other villans hunt you down, or they turn you in. This is the more likely option and one I think Lex luthor and Cold would support. As for Gothem they experience a brief amount of low crime after an upswing of violence before new villans who understand the 'rules' take the place of the old ones.

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

First we have to aknowlege this one simple fact.

We dont as far as this scenario goes, see, because DC (and Marvel for that matter) doesn't work as a universe if you try to look at the entire picture. It's not written the way you're describing, the people writing it aren't holding that image in their minds and it certainly doesnt shine through in the narrative. I mean yes, DC earth is different than our earth and marvel, but the suppositions you base on that are not something we really have to grapple with, because the writers constructing the Batman storyline rarely treat it like it exists.


Frankly, 99% of the batman mythos is written in complete isolation of the larger DC universe. No one is thinking "oh, the joker is going free because he was on the suicide squad for a year off camera" 99% of the time, and frankly, that would only raise a thousand more questions than it answered (considering the suicide squad is, most of the time, a stupid and psychotic idea that has no reason to work).


We are talking about a mostly regular man (Batman) fighting mostly regular men (Gotham villains), we are not talking about alien invasions, demonic hordes, or continent cracking WWE wrestlers from the Nth Dimension. We are talking about a man with mutated flipper hands and a gun being executed for murder.