Death Penalty?

I'm really torn when it comes to the death penalty. A part of me thinks it's inhumane but the other thinks that it would save tax payers a bunch of money, especially if the person is sentenced to jail without paroll.

 

Imo it's never acceptable.
If you kill someone in self-defense you shouldn't get punished for it, but legalised killing of people for whatever reason isn't right in my books.
Especially since the justice system is far from perfect and has lead to the execution of innocent people.
Killing someone won't reverse his crimes and vengeance should never be mistaken for justice.
"“To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice.” - Desmond Tutu

---------- Post added 24th Apr 2012 at 10:06 PM ----------

Except most studies have shown the death penalty to be more expensive than jail without paroll.
More-over imo money should never trump morality.

 

I live in a country with no death penalty and that is one of things that I take for granted. Human life should never be taken, no matter what. A life is the right of an individual and only that person is to choose to live it or not. For a country to coldly, through legal formulations, make someone die, in peaceful time, a person utterly defenseless and harmless in jail, that is not just lack of morality, it's failing humanity.

 

i think death penalty is stupid, if anything your giving the criminal the easy way out also, i think its better to just give a life sentence, that way they can suffer through maximum experience, besides someone could actually be innocent and you cant bring back a life either

 

one of my biggest interests i have is the death penalty in america (as weird as it sounds) and i'm guessing the reason why you made this thread is that your state has decided to let voters vote on whether to keep the death penalty on or off the books.

but as for my views on it, i think that the death penalty is wrong and shouldn't be in existence. however, i do feel that if it's going to be on the books, it should be used and if it's not used, it should be done away with. my state outlawed it back in 07 because they weren't going to execute anybody anytime soon. they made this hype about the death penalty being wrong when it was really a move over money since the state had some really big money issues. they were wasting too much money on the 9 death row inmates that were there and to top it off, they had the law in effect since 1982 and nobody was near getting an execution date. there were guys that had been there since the mid to late 80s not even at the end of the appeals process. they probably would have ended up dying from natural causes before they ran out of appeals. i was happy when they did away with it but i'll admit, i was really curious to see what would have happened if an execution was carried out. i would have been excited to see the media coverage and i would have even went down to the state prison, as crazy as that sound to see the action going down. might have even asked to be a state witness but back to my point, there's way too many states that have the death penalty but don't use it such as california and pennslyvania. i find it really messed up that a state like california has 700 inmates in that overcrowded prison and have only executed 12 of them. it's also sad that there were more inmates dead from natural causes than those that were executed too. they might as well outlaw it. life in prison is more logical and seems to be more punishment worthy.

 

I also have mixed feelings about the death penalty. I mean, if you kill a WHOLE lot of people then yeah a death penalty may be the answer. But sometimes it's just a better answer to be in prison...

 

'Killing people is wrong, therefore we are going to kill you.'

I think if you kill somebody internationally you should get locked away for life, no bail. But I'm against the death penalty.

 

It's inhumane, and if a person is really that bad, why sink down to their level?

 

I believe in the death penalty. And I think that rapists (or at the very least serial rapists) should receive it, too. I know that is going to sound harsh to some people, but I feel like if you do that to another human being, you lose all human rights.

 

I'm opposed to it on both philosophical and practical grounds.
Okay, there are some crimes that are so heinous as to be completely unforgivable. But even there, we run into several problems:

- First of all: heinous crimes from one end can, IMO, never justify further heinous crimes, even in retribution.

- There have been, throughout history, numerous cases where innocents got wrongly convicted. Sometimes because investigators messed up, sometimes because they got framed, and sometimes even because the crime was so high-profile that the police or the courts and juries were willing to cut corners in order to at least punish someone in a visible way. I do think it's better to let a hundred guilty men live than to kill one innocent person. Any state that thinks the occasional murder of an innocent is acceptable is not one I'd trust with the death penalty in the first place.

- The death penalty just isn't working as a deterrent. Countries with death penalty are not safer. They don't have a lower rate of criminality (in fact, quite a few have higher crime rates than some countries that don't execute criminals). I personally think that any punishment above the one needed to deter people counts as overly cruel. Punishment has some element of inflicting suffering, but that shouldn't be the point of the punishment. In fact, when someone gets punished, it is already a failure of our legal systems to deter them in the first place.

- The "it's cheaper" argument doesn't hold water. If the state determines to treat killing citizens (even criminal citizens) as a book-keeping exercise, that's one more reason i don't trust them with the death penalty.

- I'd be very weary of having it for anything but mass murder. I'm kind of worried how the death penalty would effect, for example, rape cases (as in super confused's example above). If you get the death penalty for raping AND for killing... then didn't you just make killing the rape victim a more desirable course? After all, if you're getting the death penalty for raping, it pays to leave no witnesses. There needs, IMO, to be an escalation of punishment along with an escalation of crimes. If the two aren't balanced, the punishment risks actually aggravating the crimes.

So: no, I don't see any benefit or use for it. Any benefits it might have are far outweighed by the negatives in my book.

 

I do think that the death penalty is necessary (for repeat offenders of heinous crimes such as murder, rape, assault in the first, child abuse, etc.) but its way too prolonged to be effective. The system needs to be way more streamlined. Like sentenced, goodbyes, boom, done (Except in fancy legal terms).

 

It's necessary. There are some people in society who are such useless dicks that really, they should face the death penalty.

I believe in general though, we need harsher penalties, at least here though. Right now the court system here is piss weak, and people are getting away with 1 - 2 years jail even though they've committed serious crimes. Especially teenagers, it seems like I could go out and hold up a bank, admit to it, proclaim how great it was on national TV and then get 3 months jail and be out on parole within 2 weeks. It's a joke.

 

I think in certain cases it should be used

 

I think out entire approach to criminal justice in the US is fundamentally flawed. There are a variety of reasons to impose penalties on criminals, the main ones in the US (IIRC) are

deterrence - people, being somewhat rational actors, are going to avoid things that might land them in hot water. I think deterrence is effective, but not as effective as most people in our society think it is. The reason I don't kill people isn't because it's illegal, it's because I don't want to kill anyone. Same with rape. For the really heinous crimes, I think someone with the mentality to want to perpetrate them probably isn't going to be too deterred by laws against it.

prevention - this is pretty basic. Someone who is in jail or dead won't commit more crimes. I believe prevention is an important part of criminal justice, but I also think it's overemphasized in our society. We throw people in prison and let them be surrounded by other criminals, which is bound to affect their mentality, then release them. Rehabilitation efforts are fairly minimal in adult corrections facilities. This brings me to

rehabilitation - in my opinion, rehabilitation should be the center of criminal justice. We should be re-educating people on ways to live their lives that won't cause harm to others. A huge proportion of prison inmates are mentally ill. They should be having regular therapeutic sessions to help them recover from their illness. I don't support most drug laws, but if we're going to have them, then prisons need to function as drug rehab clinics. While all of this would be expensive, I think that if done properly it would result in much lower recidivism rates, which might end up making it pay for itself in a few decades. Cost is one big factor in preventing rehabilitation-centered programs, but there's another, stronger one

retribution - this is the idea that people should pay a price for committing crimes. It doesn't matter if the sentence won't deter, prevent, or rehabilitate, some actions deserve punishment. Super confused expressed this very well, "if you do that to another human being, you lose all human rights." I don't, on a fundamental level, agree with this. I don't think retribution is an appropriate reason to punish people. A lot of this has to do with my very odd ideas about free will, but it also has to do with my system of ethics. I believe in minimizing bad things. If punishing someone won't accomplish deterrence, prevention, or rehabilitation, I see no reason to do it.

So, am I opposed to the death penalty? Yes. But my opposition to it is part of a much larger picture.

 

Mogget and Filip already took most of what I was going to say, except they said it better than I would have.

The death penalty needs to be abolished. It doesn't deter crime, and it obviously doesn't rehabilitate the criminal. It isn't much more effective at preventing crime than simply locking a person up, assuming they are held in a sufficiently secure location.

Also, the significance of Filip's point about the execution of innocent people should not be understated. The justice system of the United States (as well as most other countries) is strongly biased against certain groups of people. If you are, say, poor and/or African-American, you are both more likely to get convicted in the first place and more likely to get harsher penalties, including the death penalty, than someone who is rich and white, even when all other circumstances are the same. This obviously makes most things in the justice system suspect, but the death penalty is unique in its inability to be reversed.

 

I am not going to argue against the penalty of death from a sociological, economic perspective, but I will say this: death as a penalty is against the principle of fundamental justice in a nation where the law is treated as an academic, theoretical, subject of study.

Death has such a finality that should a future decision or opinion affect the sentence as a part of a review or refutation from the aforementioned, academic, theoretical point of view by a body with present or future jurisdiction, it can not be undone.

To deny an independent legal system to carry out its faithful review now, and in the future with or without prejudice in any case, whether it be a heinous felony or a civil argument between individuals, with that review as a continuous, residual, and fundamentally protected process is to deny rule of law and democracy.

 

I do not know much about the justice system, and I don't like speaking on matters I have very little education about, however given the limited experience I have in security, let me tell you that there are some people that never learn. Take chronic shop lifters for example. Their lives are revolving door of arrest. They break the law and the second they get the slightest bit of leniency, they do it again. Some serial killers, drug dealers, and rapists suffer the same compulsions. What do we do with them? Why should we have to pay for their incarceration for decades, when perfectly innocent, harmless people are out there starving?

We are taught that murder is wrong, and some view the death penalty as murder. We are taught to value human life, and that each and every one of us is important. However when dealing with the case of multiple murderers, or sex offenders that re-offend the second they are released. What are we supposed to do? Sure some people can learn from their mistakes and be rehabilitated, but what of those who cannot? Why should we go on paying for their mistakes?

An eye for an eye, and the whole world goes blind sounds great as philosophy, but its not like there is any shortage of people in the world. There are 7 billion of us. Is anyone truly going to mourn a murderer? I've had the displeasure of being in a courthouse with people on minor assault/weapons/drug charges, and let me tell you, these people were creepy enough to make my skin crawl. I could not imagine being in the company of someone who had committed a brutal crime.

If given the choice between keeping them in this world, or removing the threat, I'd probably lean towards keeping myself and other safe with more of a guarantee. The universe claims lives in so many ways, do we really need to keep such individuals who take it upon themselves to kill others for their own selfish reasons around?

100 years ago before the advances in forensics, surveillance, and even the Internet (its funny when criminals get caught by the Internet), yeah, people who commit crimes could hide. It seems like that is getting harder to do. I would like to see those who feel they are above the law, pay to the fullest extent of it for their actions.

So I guess I'm in favor of it, at least in the more extreme cases.

 

Life without parole is cheaper than the death penalty? What!!!!???? :eek:

That makes no sense. I'm utterly baffled and would love to know the exact financials.