The Death Penalty

This is always an interesting argument. Where do you guys stand on this issue? For it? Against it? What?

OK, why do I always have to throw off the curve? Intellectually I can say I am not a proponent of the death penalty. Emotionally I can say that I am firmly in favor of it in some cases. Too many people are wrongly convicted and sentenced, and others who have done almost identical crimes get off much easier. Personally even if rehabilitation is impossible, death is far too lenient a punishment.

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"You have to believe in God before you can say there are things that man was not meant to know. I don't think there's anything man wasn't meant to know. There are just some stupid things that people shouldn't do." -David Cronenberg

For it, I reckon the punishment should fit the crime, If you stab someone, you get stabbed, if you shoot someone, you get shot, as for rape and paedophillia, cut their meat and 2 veg off! That's a fair way of doing it i think!

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Against it.

Morally, I object to humanity's right to decide -- no matter the circumstances -- who lives and who dies. Beyond that, I've never understood how the death penalty is really a form of punishment. I'd rather see murderers rot in a cell than get a painless ticket to oblivion.

Totally against it.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

Some people deserve to die, but it's wrong to kill them.

On some level there will always be that side of humanity that craves retribution over isolation. I agree with sleezy that incarceration for life is a far worse option than death and as so as a punishment is much more effective and just, Killing someone who already has a death wish is NOT punishment and the death penalty for someone who isn't afraid to die is no deterrent.

I do understand the nature of an eye for an eye, but the simple fact that eliminating someone who has killed someone you love in most cases does nothing to alleviate the pain and loss, nullifies the process.

plus there are far too many cases of the death penalty's application that are suspect.

Like I said before, emotionally I understand it. And in some cases, in a perfect world, I could tolerate the occasional application of it. But our system of justice is far too flawed to support it.

I am for it, but let me say that I am not "for" wanton electric shocks or lethal injections. I reserve my yes vote for those who are truly evil and those who have been without a doubt 100 percent proven guilty. In the long run I think it is up to the victim/victim's families to decide. If we do not stand in someone's shoes then I say we are not educated enough to decide, and lordy, who wants to stand in the shoes of one who has the right to decide this? Not I, not I.

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

That's tricky, though. 'Evil' is an abstract concept. Regardless of what you may or may not believe about human nature, there's a fairly large area to fill with what is considered 'evil' or 'worthy of capital punishment.' Who gets to decide what crimes fill that space, and to what end?

I disagree. I don't think the issue has to do with who can make the more educated decision, but rather, who can make the more rational decision. You don't just put a loaded gun in the hands of someone who has just had a loved one murdered. Emotions like that throw reason out the window, and we don't need people being sentenced to death at the hands of those who, out of personal feelings, would demand it. Vengeance is not justice.

All fair, but I say I disagree with you too...., if someone murdered and raped a child of mine and I knew without a doubt that they were guilty then nothing in the world would stop me from seeking justice, nothing. Sorry if I sound glib, but there is too much "evil", and I think we all know what I mean by the definiton of that word: What I mean is someone who kills or profanely desecrates the civil rights of another by "raping" or "killing" them. And sometimes vengence and justice are the same thing; like I said I do not say this is the always the best course, but I think in some cases it is.

I do not say this for the Hell of it. My daughter was raped many years back, she was very young and the rapist was her youth pastor. Without going into detail about what he did to her and how it screwed up her life and how I know without a doubt that he did it to other young girls, I do know that I was so close to driving over to his house and putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger to make him pay for what he did that I threw up and cursed myself and then called the police on myself. I told them what I had planned and why, because even though I knew he deserved it, I knew that vengence would not serve me well. I went through the legal channels and I am still trying to get this man to pay for what he did. My daughter has seen fit to deny everything she accussed him of (although she tells me in confidence that it is true and I believe her, and doctors have told me the same). So I respect her wishes and it burns a hole in my heart, but I bear it. But if she asked me to kill him for what he did, I would, I would, and I feel sick about it, I really do. I do not think I am evil for saying so, but thats just me.

I understand the aversion to the death penalty, I really do, but sometimes, just sometimes, evil should be extinguished and punished, at least I think so.

I completely understand where you're coming from, and why you felt the way you did about what happened. You're right, people do horrible things for horrible reasons. I wouldn't deny that some things are just inherently evil, but I find that attempting to define those things can -- and inevitably will -- become a slippery slope, particularly when personal feelings become involved.

I just feel like wanting someone dead for any reason is wrong.

7thson, thank you for sharing that very terrible and emotional thing. I would have felt the same way, and probably have done the same thing.

Its tough to make a judgement when you haven't walked in the shoes of someone touched so profoundly by tragedy, and yes, evil. Although I do agree that evil is a nebulous concept at best, I also believe in its rational existence.

I'm all for the death penalty when the crime fits that punishment. If you take someone's life or some equally deplorable act then "off with your head". Especially when the taxpayers have to pay their hard-earned wages for the prisoner's upkeep. It seems heartless to be concerned about money when we're talking about a person's life. But maybe sentence the person to death and while the legal process gets done with appeals and so forth, steps could be taken to rehabilitate the prisoner. If sufficient progress was seen in the time frame then the execution order could be amended to just a severe jail time with supervised community service/work programmes so that at least the prisoner is being productive while being locked up(I'm not in the justice field so I don't know if these things already exist, just what I see from movies)
As has been stated before though our justice system is lacking and sometimes innocent men are locked up so my solution is hardly foolproof but it would see that justice was done when the guilty party was proven without doubt. The time between sentencing and death could be enough to exhaust all possibility of the wrong person being convicted.
My reasoning behind this is that if a punishment is too lenient a person could reoffend because they scoff at how relaxed it is. We don't know who is more likely to reoffend or be completely rehabilitated but why take chances if an innocent person's life is at stake.

Now, see if anyone can make sense of that drivel cos I lost myself along the way lol

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Father of Apollo....Mount Olympus. Don’t f$%£ with me or I’ll shove a lightning bolt up your a$$ - Zeus - Samuel L Jackson, Die Hard With A Vengeance

For me it's about drawing the line between right and wrong. It is wrong to kill and therefore the death penalty is wrong. Then we have the matter of "eye for an eye" and to place oneself in the shoes of the victim or the victim's family. I don't believe that it is the job of justice to do that. The justice authorities are law professionals who, when justice works, decide what is right and what is wrong. Then, they decide the proper punishment. I don't think it should be up to the victim's family to decide how, for instance, the killer should be killed. I'm sure we all can understand the emotions they feel and the anger and the desire they feel to revenge, but I want the legal system to be as cold and as practical and based on objectivity and facts as much as possible. If the emotional side of it was to be the most important side of it, then a lot of guilty men would never be put in prison. Because there are killers and murderers that, I'm sure we can agree on, certainly had their reasons to do what they've done. But the legal system should and is supposed to tell right from wrong, not deciding what is the most fair thing to do. That is completely different. For me, as bystander, I think the most important thing is that the perpetrator gets a fair trial and a proper punishment. And I think the death penalty is an inhumane punishment.

Many "anti-death-penaltists" present "they might be innocent" as their number one argument for their belief. I think that argument is not unimportant but at the same time in a way irrelevant. I think it's irrelevant because that even if our goal is to not make any mistakes we will have to be aware and accept that mistakes will always be made. Justice might be objective and cold, but it's still run by human beings. At the same time, if we think the death penalty is wrong because it might be causing the death of an innocent then I think we should consider the possibility if the punishment might be so wrong in itself when there is no way to make up for mistakes made. A prisoner wrongfully put away for ten years will never get those years back, but he can be economically and legally compensated and he will at least be alive. And free. How do you compensate for taking a life? If you ask the victim's family and they say "kill the judge", what do we do then?

Mostly against it, primarily for two reasons:

1. The system is imperfect. Pidzilla is right in that we have to assume mistakes will be made, but I don't see anything wrong with tempering some irreversible punishments to compensate for that.
   
2. A life of imprisoment (without a possibility of parole, sans new, crucial evidence) seems to me ultimately similar to the death penalty, anyway, in that the person's life is essentially wiped out.

That said, I am not firm in this belief. I don't believe people who say that killing someone who has murdered one of your loved ones does not alleviate their pain. How can we know such a thing? Perhaps it does bring them a sense of peace and justice. Even if it does not, perhaps it simply spares them from having to indirectly finance, via their small share of the taxes involved, the imprisonment of the person who has caused them so much heartache.

Either way, I do not find the death penalty barbaric. Unnecessary, maybe, but I think anyone who thinks this issue is so clear-cut is fooling themselves. Frankly, I don't even think we can know whether being among a victim's family helps -- or hurts -- one's perspective.

You know, I've always found it interesting that liberals are generally pro-choice and anti-death penalty.

Then is it equally interesting that conservatives are generally anti-abortion and pro-death penalty.

It's all in the timing.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Both are interesting, though there are certainly more instances of the former, if only because there's far, far more crossover on the issue of abortion in the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.

Also, the fact that the other side tends to hold a similar contradiction doesn't let either off the hook, to my mind.

No, because from a conservative perspective you say "They've done something to deserve death" While abortion prevents someone from living without having done anything to have their life taken away.

Liberals think that the death penalty is wrong and that no one should be sentenced to death, yet they think taking someone's life at such an early stage is acceptable.

I just find it interesting.

Well, yeah, if you take the stance that life begins at conception then I suppose it's a contradiction. But as most abortion rights supporters do not look at the issue that way (at least not in simple black and white terms), then it isn't a contradiction at all. If you allow the opposition to make the rules and dictate terms, then not so surprisingly it turns their way and appears contradictory.

But if it interests you, it interests you. Rock on.