Are you opposed to the death penalty because you think there is a possiblity an innocent person might be killed or because you think even executing a murderer is wrong?
The former, although I’d put it as “because I am quite certain innocent people have been executed and will on occasion be executed in the future”. And because it’s a pointless, overly expensive indulgence. And because it is enforced in a racist, sexist and classist fashion.
Or?
The second one. I don’t think the state should have that power over even the most heinous of individuals. This is my philosophical reason, my secondary, practical reasons are, innocent people die, and the death penalty (as practiced in the USA) just isn’t cost effective.
I think that a society such as ours does not need to kill people who are in custody. Incarceration of criminals is necessary to protect society. Killing some of them is not.
I think killing people is wrong. In addition, we have in the past, killed innocent people.
Both of those reasons.
I am against it because of all the convicts who’ve been exonerated while on death row and because of the grossly inadequate legal representation afforded to so many defendants who can’t afford private attorney. (Note: I’m not trashing public defenders [though certainly some deserve it] but many of the best ones are overworked and have little or no funding for research.)
Also, I don’t think it’s a deterrent to murder, it’s usually just revenge. Now if they’d implement the death penalty for traffic violations or playing the radio too loud, THEN it would probably stop those crimes, but I seriously doubt many if any people have murdered because “what the hey, this isn’t a death penalty state” and in fact statistically many death penalty states have significantly more murders.
Ethically I have no great problem with the death of proven (and I don’t mean “beyond a reasonable doubt of twelve jurors” but pretty much beyond doubt period) murderers- Timothy McVeigh Tookie Williams, Ted Bundy, etc., but neither do I think their deaths serve any real practical purpose. Obviously if I lost somebody to a violent crime I’d want them to be executed, but then I’d also want them tortured Inquisition style, and nobody really wants to bring that back.
Which is equally true of life imprisonment
Obviously it isn’t pointless.
The economic argument doesn’t make a lick of sense.
It is expensive because opposition groups channel huge amounts of resources into funding appeals and challenges. If the death penalty were removed one of two things could change: The resources dry up, so we have far more innocent people losing their lives than is currently the case, but they lose their lives through being imprisoned forever. Or else the resources are channeled into life sentence cases, making them even *more *expensive than the death penalty, because even people who finally lose will still have to be kept by the state for the rest of their lives.
As are all other penalties.
Do you really think that in states with no death penalty, poor, Black men are sentenced to “life with no possibility of parole” at the same rate as rich white women?
I cannot and will not sanction state sanctioned murder and innocent people do get killed.
It is a no brainer.
Now people will bring up Hitler or child molesters etc, these people should be put in a cell with bugger all facilities to rot for the rest of their miserable lives. And if it shown at a later date that they were innocent, then let them out with a wad of cash and fix the reasons why it happened in the first place.
Now when we start talking about a proper war, there may be some grounds but I still baulk at the concept of state sanctioned murder.
The likelyhood that we have killed innocent people is not acceptable to me.
But…there are some really awful people on death row that I won’t exactly miss them when they are gone. It would be just as well to let them rot in jail as long as no one ever has to hear from them again. That guy who killed Polly Klaas, every appeal puts him back on the news, and we have to see him again. It’s like he has something to live for if he is on death row which is a luxury he doesn’t deserve.
You must admit that killing someone who was innocent is worse than incarcerating someone that was innocent. No?
You are aware that we don’t possess the ability to unkill someone, right? If someone is in for life you can let them out when you find out they’re innocent.
You might win the lamest argument of the day award though. 
I’m anti-death penalty, but those are terrible arguments.
“It’s a no brainer” is no argument at all, so we can just dismiss that.
The state kills innocent people all the time, and there is no way for the police to operate effectively if they have to ensure that no innocent people are killed.
The key, as I noted in my post, is that once someone is in custody, we don’t need to kill them to keep society safe from them. Innocent people are going to be killed in the heat of the moment. No one needs to be killed after careful deliberation.
Do you have an opinion on your own OP?
Neither really. In theory, I’m for the death penalty actually. However, the way the US does it is blatantly racist, classist, way to expensive, takes way to long, has no benefit to society, is very unevenly applied, and in some cases is applied to the wrong sorts of crimes.
I doubt many innocent people are being executed (although it probably has happened), but I’m not comfortable with the fact that a poor or black person will be executed for a crime that the prosecutor doesn’t even try as a capital crime if a white or rich person does it.
I also have great reservations about how the courts have ruled on DNA evidence in cases tried before the technology allowed DNA evidence. If DNA can prove someone innocent (or provide additional confirmation we got the right guy) then it should be allowed, even if it wasn’t submitted in the original trial.
And then there’s situations where a guy kills half a dozen people and gets jail while another kills one person and gets executed just because that one was a cop. I understand the logic behind making cop killing a harsher penalty, but still, murder is murder and should be treated the same in the eyes of the law. Justice is supposed to be blind, not peaking to see who the victim was.
So basically, I’m anti-death penalty because I think the procedures around it are all messed up. Show me a way to enact the death penalty without these huge flaws and I’ll support the death penalty. Until then, it should be banned.
The latter, but I don’t think my subjective opinion regarding the morality of the death penalty is a legitimate basis for outlawing it.
The objections that influence my choices as a voter* are (1) the cost- it’s more expensive to execute somebody than to imprison them; and (2) the disproportionate application to minorities.
*I can’t actually vote, but if I could, I mean.
That’s pretty interesting since the state has the power to kill people without benefit of any kind of trial. Ask the Iraqis.
I presume On Gaudy also believes that the state shouldn’t have the power to engage in wars of conquest.
I’m opposed to the death penalty because I think executing a murderer is wrong.
People seem to think that they if they could just describe a horrible enough crime, say, the rape/dismemberment/cooking and eating of a whole classroom full of first-graders by Fred Phelps wearing a Nazi uniform, I’d say I’d make an exception for that.
No, it would still be wrong.
Here’s the thing: It’s not necessary. There is no set of circumstances in the developed world in which it is absolutely necessary to kill a killer to prevent him or her from killing again.