Are you for or against the death penalty

[donna p]

Like I said no criminal justice system is perfect.......You live with it.......

[dearforex]

How do we punish a pregnant woman convicted of murder...?

Derek

:idea: :xchicken:

Walk into the light...

[User#725]

* emphasis added

Very droll.

[bdkkevin02]

The death penalty:
[LIST]
costs much more that lifetime prison sentence
is morally wrong
supports the idea of revenge
gives suicidal people a free chance to end their lives
is mortifying to the victim

[ѕтє�нαиιє]

I am a case by case pro, Some people simply need to be put to death for the crimes they have commited so that others are protected.

My only issue with the death penalty is the case of innocence, however there has been no innocent put to death in the united states since 1976, there has been claims but these have all been dismissed.

[sporty princess]

I wanted to share the following piece from my friend Lola Tiger,

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, this is the LEX TALIONIS and in
a few worRAB this is what Death Penalty is for.

In 1998 my cousin Patrizia, the one I grew up with, was murdered. She
was young --just 23, she was pretty and intelligent, she also was an
established model. Nevertheless, her boyfriend killed her. He did not use a
gun, he did not use a lethal injection, and he neither electrocuted her. He
cut her into several pieces. Her dreams, her career, her family, HER
LIFE....everything was destroyed the day that she died in such way. I have to
admit that that day I wished him not only to be killed but also to be
tortured in the same way she was. I wanted him to suffer as much as she
did and as much, as my family and I were suffering.

I have to admit that I wished the death penalty had existed in my country to
punish that rotten-face-####-Judas. However, that desire...that feeling- did
not last for too long. First, because the real facts about Death Penalty
show it -from every single point of view-, as an ineffective, dangerous and
extremely expensive method of punishment. And next because it does not
fit at all within the principles of the civilized society those who believe in
human rights including myself, are willing to live in.


Contrary to popular belief, the death penalty IS NOT an effective form of crime control.


Many experts through their studies on the controlling effect of capital
punishment in America, have proven the lack of relationship between the
threat of the death penalty and the occurrence of violent crime. A good
example of this, is the study carried by expert Isaac Ehrlich. The study
spans 25 years, and shows that, in the first year the study was conducted,
there were more than 8,000 murders and 65 executions. However, in the
last year of the study, there were more than 22,000 murders committed
and 1 execution performed. The absence of control is clearly shown. But
why does this happen?

Well, the death penalty fails as a restraint mainly for the following reason:

A punishment can be an effective restraint only if it is promptly employed.
Capital punishment cannot be administered to meet this condition
especially because of the considerable time between the imposition of the
death sentence and the actual execution. Which of course, is unavoidable since
the consequent high risk, of convicting the wrong person and
executing the innocent, would highly increase.


The United States Supreme Court ruled in Herrera V. Collins that it is
Constitutional to execute an innocent person, as long as they had a
fair trial. Frightening, isn't it? Should people confer the Government the
power to kill?

Roger Keith Coleman, Jesse Tafero, Clarence
Brandley Would definitely say NO Because they are
some of the innocent people that have been executed in the
USA within the last ten years. And I agree with them!

The judicial system cannot guarantee that justice will ever miscarry. And
several factors help to explain why: overzealous prosecution, mistaken or
false testimony, faulty police work, coerced confessions, inept defense
counsel, community pressure for a conviction, and economical status of
the convicted, among others. Whenever justice miscarries one innocent person is
executed and this happens too often. According to the 1999
Stanford University survey, at least 75 Americans have been wrongly
executed in the 20th century.

The death penalty is irrevocable. In case of a mistake, the executed
prisoner cannot be given another chance. A prisoner discovered to be
blameless can be freed; but neither release nor compensation is possible
for a corpse.


Furthermore, The Belief That Execution Costs Less Than Imprisonment Is False.

Capital murder trials are longer than non-death penalty murder trials. More
briefs are filed, and more judicial procedure is required. This is all prior to
and during the trial, where the most expense is incurred, and does not
take into account the appeal process, which can last decades. On average,
it costs six times as much to kill one person as it costs to
incarcerate that person for life (3.2 million versus $600,000 in Florida).

Definitely, Death penalty is escaping the decisive cost-benefit analysis.
Rather than being posed as a single, but costly, alternative in a spectrum
of approaches to crime, the death penalty operates at the extremes of
political rhetoric. Candidates use the death penalty as an easy solution to
crime, which allows them to distinguish themselves by the toughness of
their position rather than its effectiveness.

Yet as future taxpayers, maybe some of you would not mind about this
fact or even about paying the extra amount just so, you know for sure that
there is one less murderer on our planet.

According to this, let me tell you that if you think so, you should also
consider the fact that, for each murderer executed there is a whole
state replacing him.

I am not violating the fundamental principle that criminals should be
punished according to their just desserts that is "making the punishment fit the
crime." If this rule means punishments are unjust unless they are like the
crime itself, then the principle is unacceptable: It would require us to rape
rapists, torture torturers, and inflict other horrible and degrading
punishments on offenders. It would require us to betray traitors and kill
multiple murderers again and again ... punishments that are, of course,
impossible to inflict. Since we cannot reasonably aim to punish all crimes
according to this principle, it is arbitrary to invoke it as a requirement of justice in
the punishment of murder.

The death penalty demeans the moral order and execution does something
almost worse than lowering the state to the moral level of the criminal: it
raises the criminal to moral equality with the social order. Indeed, one of
the ironies of capital punishment is that it focuses attention and sympathy
on the criminal.

Criminals no doubt deserve to be punished, and the severity of the
punishment should be appropriate to their culpability and the harm they
have caused the innocent. But severity of punishment has its limits...
imposed by both justice and our common human dignity. Governments
that respect these limits do not use premeditated, violent homicide as an
instrument of social policy. Because that is the easy way. There are
alternatives!!.

One possible solution to the many problems I have being talking about, is
Imprisonment for life with no possibility of parole.

It preserves the society from other attacks, we do not need to play GOD
and can be useful economically speaking.

If the prisoner works at least there will be a possibility on the one hand to
reduce the expenses the incarceration causes and on the other to create a
fund for the victims of violent crime and their survivors.

This would allow for a restitution fund for social, psychological and
religious help for victims and survivor families. A society that respects
life does not deliberately kill human beings. An execution is a violent
public spectacle of official homicide, and one that endorses killing to solve
social problems is the worst possible example to set for the citizenry.
Governments worldwide have often attempted to justify their lethal fury by
extolling the purported benefits that such killing would bring to the rest of
society. The benefits of capital punishment are illusory, but the blooRABhed
and the resulting destruction of community decency are real.


Regardless of what we think about the concept of the death penalty, in
practice it is bad public policy on moral, economic and social grounRAB.


Execution is not a real solution. We can do better. Right? ~ Lola Tiger.