Poll: Death penalty discussion

[Arawn.Chernobog]

Nope

I vote Yay on "Slave Labor for Convicts" instead.

HOORAY FOR WORK KAMPS!

 

[Stu the Pirate]

i support the death penalty. Utilitarian ethics makes the justification pretty straight forward, a murderer has clearly demonstrated blatant disregard for the well being of others and it is probable that he/she will continue to be a detriment to society.

I'm not very well versed on utilitarian ethics, but doesn't saying "and it is probable that he/she will continue to be a detriment to society" disregard any potential rehabilitation?

 

[mattttherman3]

Better suggestion, put em on a remote island right, one for men, one for women on opposite sides of the planet. No supplies, no nothing, and if they have seen bear grills or survivor man, firing squad.

 

[smurf_you]

It is incredibly hypocritical to give the death penalty for, say, murder. That's basically saying "Don't kill people...or we'll kill you".

No more hypocritical than imprisoning someone for kidnap, or fining a petty thief.

Yes but neither or those two things result in death.

The whole 'eye for an eye' thing never made sense to me anyway, shouldn't we be killing the guy who injects the drug? He just killed a man. What about the guy after that etc. etc.

 

[spectrenihlus]

Yay if everyone who receives the death penalty are killed cheaply and after being 95 percent certain that they are guilty. However seeing as how this doesn't happen and it is way more expensive to keep a death row then simply put them in for life I have to say no but I am for the idea.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

Short answer: Yes.

I don't feel like typing the long answer.

 

[Nouw]

It is incredibly hypocritical to give the death penalty for, say, murder. That's basically saying "Don't kill people...or we'll kill you"

Well before that split-second before they die, they should think back and say 'This feels terrible, I was wrong.' The don't kill people thing is there because they're innocent whereas the person getting the punishment is guilty of a crime.

Just putting it out there that a considerable amount of people get raped in prisons (from what I heard) and well they could be in there for rape! My 2 cents, willing to be enlightened >.>

Yay, because I read too much Starship Troopers.

The Death Penalty should be used again! Why? Read the book >.>
I guess it's between I don't know, 20-30 years within 4 walls or no more life?

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Squarely against the death penalty. I'm not going to debate morality on the subject, or ethics for my reason. I'll just say that as civilisation grows and develops across the world, the logical step is not merely tolerance but acceptance.

There will be criminals, and by all means any and all resources should be expended where possible to root them out and deliver justice, but thsi acceptance of criminality should also extend to creating a brighter future whereby human life (all human life) should be protected, regardless if the individual occupying a sentient existence is rotten to the core.

And eventually, as civilisation progresses (hopefully) this too will be extended to 'war' whereby lethal force in wars is treated as a big 'no no' on both sides of the conflict, and instead only the use of completely nonlethal force and weaponry are used with all lethal equivalents mutually being illegalised by both sides.

Whilst these wishes may be naive in nature, I'm sure Humanity in 600 years may have developed socially that these tenets are treated as rock solid laws of waging war. Especially when we comparatively look at the treatment of prisoners 600 years in the past, and look towards today.

Particularly so, given that logically there's no reason to dismiss the possibility of 'soft kill' weaponry such as tasers and stun grenades becoming more prevalent and are likely to increase in effectiveness as the centuries roll by.

Perhaps they'll even become cheaper then current ballistic weaponry given the redacted need for gunpowder, brass and lead?

But naive wishes aside, as I said ... civilisation's core principal of progress if there is one is an increased acceptance that human life is sacred, even if the criminally inclined individual does not consider it so themselves.

 

[AngelOfBlueRoses]

Morally: No. No one has the right to kill someone, even if you kill a killer. Besides, I'd rather someone rot in jail for the rest of their life. Not to mention wrongful executions. Up to 39 people, according to the Innocence Project, have been declared to be executed after they were already killed and up to 15 people on death row have been exonerated, too.

Financially: Still no! It's actually more expensive to execute someone than it is to imprison them for life. I can even provide sources!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29552692/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=42

"The costs come in basically three ways. First, the actual trial is more expensive. It is more expensive because of a lot of factors. One is that the defense gets at least two attorneys and state laws have guidelines on how much experience these attorneys must have - more experienced attorney's get paid more. Another factor for trials are the security - death penalty cases get more security, and another factor is the length of the trial - death penalty cases tend to be longer. Second, the appeals process. People sentenced to death get a huge number of appeals. Each of those appeals require more attorneys - the experienced attorneys. Security remains a factor and that costs a lot to bring death row inmates to Court and ensure they don't escape. Finally, death row is a much more secure setting than general prisons. The inmates are housed individually, costing more and they are usually staffed at higher levels.

So, in other words, the trial costs more, the appeals cost more, and it costs more to house them.

Add to it the fact that most death row inmates wait 9-12 years to be executed, you end up spending lots more to house them."
^-someone who worked 10 years corrections / probation experience ... 2 years working on death row in AZ -- http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090307224849AA5J1he

http://www.fnsa.org/v1n1/dieter1.html

http://law.jrank.org/pages/5002/Capital-Punishment-COSTS-CAPITAL-PUNISHMENT.html

 

[Wapox]

Seriously... what's worse? Your life stopping and you feel nothing after that, or you're constantly punished for as long as the law dictates? You kill someone you'll be punished every second of every day for 20 years... is that not a worse punishment than allowing you to stop feeling possible regret?

And btw... Paying a fine is the same as a thief paying back the theft...

 

[Rofl-Mayo]

Yes, if we threaten criminals with death they are less likely to commit crime, and those who are stupid enough to commit a crime will inevitably pay for it. Another reason we should go through with the Death Penalty is that criminals won't be in prison for as long as they usually are so prisons would be cheaper.

Short: Yes, it reduces crime rate our taxes.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

No, it's murder. I don't think you can justify it with 'an eye for an eye'.

 

[sdfasdfhfgfgjtyisdgdfdfj]

In a legal system where false verdicts are a possibility (especially with witness testimonies having such a great importance in american court) I'd say no.

Even if that weren't the case, I still say no. If you take a human's life, are you better then the person you have killed? I think not.

 

[Therumancer]

Tl;dr: School project, also opinions on death penalty in general.

I was originally going to put this on the politics/religion board, but then I had a think and realised I don't particularly care about purely religious or political views on the death penalty, and that I'm looking for a more individual answer.

This is for a school project, hence the poll, however it's a subject I'm interested in and I'd like to get some good discussion/debate going.

The question: What do you, personally, think about the death penalty. Are you for it or against it?


My personal views: I don't think there are many cases where it can be justified. It is incredibly hypocritical to give the death penalty for, say, murder. That's basically saying "Don't kill people...or we'll kill you". It also leaves no room for rehabilitation. If you kill the offender, then it'll never really fix the problem they obviously had, especially in the case of serial offenders.

My personal opinion is that we're far too lax with the death penelty as it is. The idea of the death penelty is to act as a deterrant, so people won't perform certain actions for fear of being killed themselves. A big part of our problem being that even in places where the Death Penelty is practiced (in the USA) there are so many legal hurdles that people can basically delay the execution for years, or even decades. It's hard to be afraid of "The Death Penelty" as we practice it right now, which is in part why I think it hasn't been acting as the deterrant it should be.

I'm one of those people who look at our protection against "Cruel and Unusual Punishment" as having gone overboard. I think we need to dial back a lot of things that have come from that and get more in line with what the guys who made that protection intended, as interpeted through the examples they left behind. The basic idea was not that you can't be cruel to a prisoner or make special allowances for special cases, but rather to prevent law enforcement officials from dreaming up new and horrible ways to kill and torture people like The Inqusition did in Europe. The idea being to be standardized, as opposed to having a situation where in one place a guy might be hung, but two towns over the Mayor might be a hobbyist and place those to be executed into his "horrible flaying machine". Examples that our founding fathers used were things like "pressing" which is when a board is placed over a bound prisoner and more stones/weight are placed on over a period of time to slowly crush the person to death, this was used in Salem, Massachusetts during the witch trials famously, but was a standardized and approved method of interrogation and execution. Another example is of course Tar and Feathering, and then of course there is death through exposure on things like the stocks in extreme cases. None of these things were considered "cruel and unusual" by the people who made the laws, even though they are basically methods of killing people in incredibly painful and unpleasant ways.

I think that the current focus on Rehebilitation is counter-productive largely because it's far too easy for people to fake it while in prison, which is why it rarely takes. I think that punishment itself should act as a form of Rehebilitation when the death penelty itself is not in force. In cases where someone has done something truely heinous, and the death penelty is invoked, I think it should be carried out immediatly, not mulled over for 10 years before someone finally decides to give the guy a painless sleepy shot. You want the guy thinking of raping, torturing, and murdering that 15 year old girl to think "OMG, I do this and it doesn't go well, that will be me", as opposed to "Well I do this it will be a lot of fun, worst that will happen is I'll go to prison, pretend I found god, tell the liberals what they want to hear, and I'll probably get a fairly early release as a first time offender. If they do kill me, it's not likely to happen until I'm an old man anyway".

 

[Macgyvercas]

I believe that if a person is proven beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty of first degree murder or any sexual crime against a child, the death penalty should be used. And the method used should be firing squad.

 

[GreyKnight3445]

I think that we need to harden up when it comes to prison in general. what we need to do is to start having prisoners do hard labor or some way for them to earn their keep, otherwise we`re just giving them free shelter, food, and access to the gym. And as for the death penalty. what we need to do is to line them up in a row, blind fold them, and execute them with a firing squad in front of the other prisoners and than toss them into a mass grave.
Inhumane? Bullshit, we`re talking about people who have murdered, raped, robbed, and committed other horrible atrocities against their fellow human. not only that, but with such a "horrid" punishment system it would deter crime.
ok rant done.
what do you think?

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

If you can get absolute proof that a convict is an incorrigibly tainted human being, than it may be the best option. But i guess that is hypothetical and thus....not helping :/

 

[dfphetteplace]

Yes.

Because death is cheaper on the taxpayer than imprisonment.

The cost to prosecute someone to the point where the death penalty is an option and to win that case is several times the cost it would be to keep someone imprisoned for 100 years.

 

[Caspertjuhh]

no, because it is impossible to draw the line correctly. And if an innocent is killed, its just really fucked up.

 

[Jedoro]

-I support it as long as the criminal investigation process gets an overhaul

-Only for repeat offenders, first-timers get rehab

-Executions, which are the day after the trial to allow for last wishes, should be by the military, i.e. someone whose job is to kick down doors and shoot people, to give them the practice

-Take half the funding that went to imprisonment and appeals for these people and give it to police so they can investigate better. The other half is removed by lowering taxes