Against. I’m surprised the OP is OK with it, and not OK with abortion.
Well, people will tell you that the death penalty is MORE expensive than life in prison, and it is, because of our ridiculous system of unending appeals. (See Mumia Abu-Jamal.) But eliminate that, and I guarantee it will be quite cheap. That’s why I support hanging, because it doesn’t waste a bullet, it doesn’t waste electricity, and it doesn’t waste fluid (lethal injection.) It doesn’t waste anything. It can be used over and over again.
I’m all for it.
And at the risk of turning this into a “great debate,” I don’t understand why people who “don’t trust the government” when it comes to the death penalty do, by and large, trust the government to run their health care system. But that’s an issue for a different forum, I’m sure…TRM
Also, for all the talk about the tiny number of people who are wrongly executed, people completely ignore all of the completely innocent murder victims who are killed by murderers! It’s true that the death penalty as it is now does not deter murder because criminals KNOW that it’s a joke and ineffective. They know that the appeals process will allow them to live on death row for 30 years, filing nuisance lawsuits, responding to marriage proposals and fan letters, maybe converting to Islam or writing a manifesto or whatever the fuck - they KNOW that “death sentence” does not mean an actual death sentence. That is why the death penalty does not deter murder.
If death sentence meant that you would be hanged within the month, I think the murder rate would go way, way, waaaaay down.
Aha! So killing some people will bring those other people back to life! Why, Argent Towers, you’re brilliant!
Even if we know the person comitted the act, we don’t know 100% that they were completely culpable for it. Actually it’s very common for death row inmates to have mental problems of some kind. And I don’t just mean in the sense that obviously any evil murderer must have something wrong with them.
There’s an HBO documentary called The Execution of Wanda Jean which is about a poor, black, lesbian woman with brain damage and possible mental retardation. The prosecution misrepresented the facts in her case, her representation was very questionable, and her mental disabilities were not sufficiently addressed. The clemency board had never once granted clemency to anyone. They listened (or didn’t really listen) to her case and all voted no without even pretending it consider it for a moment, or confer with each other or anything. The victim’s family didn’t even want her executed!
I’m not sure what was accomplished by executing her.
It isn’t the cost of the execution. It’s the cost of the appeals and maintaining a ‘death row’ separate from the rest of the prison population.
One can hardly be considered wrong for wanting to make sure no person is executed for a crime they did not commit. That is not ignoring the victim of a crime, that is making sure that yet another is not committed. It is one of the tenets on which our justice system is built.
Because it costs twice as much to “fry 'em and move on”.
No, he means that by making the death penalty really f’ing scary (by way of killing more innocent people), it might actually start being a deterrent. Do a little hypothetical math, and you’ll see that if you make it brutal and obtuse enough, the death penalty will start paying for itself in terms of innocent lives saved. Actually, if you killed every single person alive right now, you’ll only have to pay 6~7 billion innocent lives up front for a net return of potentially an infinite number of prevented innocent deaths. So there.
Once you start making that argument, it allows the next guy to make the “if there is 99 percent proof the person did it…” You don’t analyze the perfect scenario (100% proof) - you analyze the system in place. The current system in place is absolute crap.
Against the death penalty, but only because having it keeps us more out of step with much of the rest of the world.
Since it cannot be demonstrated that any innocent person has ever been executed in the the United States since the reinstatement of the death penalty, and since it can be demonstrated with certainty that convicted murderers who were not executed committed further crimes (including murder), I support the death penalty.
Regards,
Shodan
It doesn’t work; you owe child support whether or not it’s actually your child.
Because I care a lot less about the government helping people who “don’t deserve it” than I do about the government killing people who don’t deserve it.
You mean like in the Middle Ages? Not exactly a time known for its peacefulness. Executions don’t deter murder at all. If anything they encourage murder.
Under your proposal I’d expect murder to go way, way, waaay UP; due to revenge killings by people killed by the government. When the groups targeted for the death penalty - blacks, the poor and so on - see themselves being systematically slaughtered while the wealthier and whiter live long lives how do you think they will react? Especially since it’s unlikely that they will think that most of the executed were actually guilty.
I like this statement – I think it best fits the hypocrisy of capital punishment.
Because I consider trusting the government with money isn’t nearly as an important an issue as trusting them with a human life – or judging a person’s guilt or innocence.
History would tell you that’s wrong.
Cite?
As I said, it’s a very, VERY rare circumstance where you have mass murderers like say, Sadam or Hitler or someone like that.
Some of the pro arguments in this thread are frightening. They seem similiar to the ones people use to “avenge” certain wrongs. (A man kills his wife’s rapist, for example). Why is it okay if the government does it?
Life in prison isn’t exactly cushy. As for the mentally retarded knowing “right from wrong”, would you execute a child who knows right from wrong then? Why not?
Quite frankly, do really think spending the rest of your life in prison is somehow a treat?
Do you have any proof whatsoever that there was more CRIME in the Middle Ages (or during the Renaissance, when public execution was also widely practiced in the very same countries that gave us Shakespeare, Tycho, Velasquez, Leonardo, et al) - not warfare, not disease (the biggest killer) but crime? Were the streets of 16th century London or 16th century Genoa or Florence or Barcelona safer for the average person to walk around than the streets of current-day Detroit?
I am for the death penalty. Have you ever seen video of Saddam Hussein being executed by hanging? He was a terrible figure on par with Stalin and Hitler. The Iraq’s ordered it done and I was happy when I saw it just like I was happy when I saw Hitlers death photos. This has nothing to do with Gulf War II. It has a lot of relevance executing perfectly innocent men, women and children and burring them in mass, shallow trenches.
Warning: Not safe for work, poor quality, and don’t watch it if you think you may be disturbed. It is on the mainstream web though.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7532034279766935521
For weak, homosexual serial killers like Jeffery Dahmer, or pedophiles who are weak and can’t fight, it’s basically a death sentence. But for the real hardcore criminals - not the serial killers but the armed robbers, gangbangers, carjackers, etc - prison is not a punishment at all. A real tough gangbanger in prison gets treated like a warrior king. He gets all the “pussy” (raping weaker men) that he wants, he gets drugs, he gets the unbelievably rewarding feeling of power over others; people smuggle stuff in for him; fellow gangbangers befriend him; read a book about the prison system sometimes (Bernard Kerik’s autobiography is excellent.) Prison is only a negative thing for people with no prior exposure or experience with the criminal lifestyle. For those already in the life, it’s no punishment at all. Cop killers especially get superior status among inmates; they’re treated like heroes.
Real hardcore criminals adjust very quickly to living in a prison and it no longer serves any deterrent purpose. Then they con their way into parole, and then commit more crimes.
If prison is not punishment why do so many people try to escape? And why do they fight so hard to stay out at trial? If these guys have such a great time in prison why not just plead guilty, skip the trial and go right to the slammer?
A real good way to describe prison was in a book I read years ago , written by a former prisoner. He wrote “think of all the places you went, all the things you did, all the people you saw, all the fun you had, etc for the past 10 years. I didn’t get to do 1 single thing that you did , I was stuck here in prison”
Of course they would rather be out in the real world, fucking women instead of a man’s ass, and drinking real wine instead of “pruno,” etc. Of course they would rather not be in prison. But once they’re in there, they adjust to it quickly and learn to have a good time, as I said. Look at all the gang activity in prison. Mexican gangs - not Mexican-American gangs but actual gangs from the country of Mexico - have even managed to become active inside the American penal system. It is, as so many other people have called it, truly “crime college.”