For or against the death penalty? Why or why not?

I, for one, am against it.

In the documentary, the individual who was responsible for carrying out the executions (in Texas), after having done hundreds, had a change of heart.

Not sure but lean towards against.

1) Always a chance they are innocent. DNA and other scientific means seem to prove innocence every week or so.
2) Life in prison is a worse penalty than “the long nap” for the truly guilty.
3) By killing someone you are wasting labor. Those guys could be picking crops or cleaning graffiti or something.
4) Appeal process is very expensive.

I heard a report recently analyzing various studies on the deterrent effect of the death penalty; the examination turned up serious flaws in all of the major studies. The conclusion was that neither the studies that found a deterrent effect nor those that didn’t find a deterrent effect can really be considered reliable. The analysts concluded that a reliable study could be designed, but that it would be both difficult and take a long time.

I’m very much against it for reasons unrelated to its deterrence value. I think that our justice system exists largely to act as a buffer against our more primitive emotional impulses, and I consider the desire for revenge to be one of these. No matter how you dress it up, the death penalty is just institutionalized revenge.

Take revenge and deterrence off the table, and the death penalty makes no sense whatsoever. It costs much more to prosecute and carry out a death penalty case than a life sentence. The criminal is permanently removed as a danger to society whether you kill him or give him life without parole. And the death penalty can’t be undone in the case of judicial error.

Why is it that society has the right to kill, either in wars or the execution of convicted felons, but individuals do not have the right to kill themselves? The lives of some people have so twisted their moral sense that they are a menace to society. Because they are beyond rehabilitation, it is necessary to isolate them from the public as long as they live. I feel that these individuals should be allowed Socrates’ choice.

Against. I don’t think that if we hold that killing people is wrong, then we (the state) should be in the business of killing.

I’m against it for several reasons. The first is my faith. I believe every person is redeemable.
I also think that it is racist, and classist. (Is that a word?) Those who can afford the best defense rarely get a death scentence.
Many people condemned to death have been proven innocent with DNA evidence. Death is irreversible if you make a mistake.
It is bad for society to put it’s citizens (jurors) in a position of having to decide another human beings life or death.
I’ sure there are many more reasons to abhor the death penalty, these were just the first few off the top of my head.

I don’t trust humans or the justice system to prevent innocent people from being murdered.

I am, for the most part, against it. I just don’t believe that we can always be 100% certain that the right person is being sentenced to death.

Under related videos, watch the second one with the executioner.

I’m against it for reasons already stated above. I also wonder if making the death quiet and private has desensitized it so that people don’t even think of it anymore. out of sight; out of mind. Perhaps we should bring back the guillotine and make it a spectacle so people who favor the death penalty could really satisfy their blood lust. The penal system in the U.S. needs overhauling, as does the justice system.

I am steadfastly against it. Not only because of the inevitable uncertainty of guilt and the resulting fact that innocent people will be wrongly killed, but also, and primarily, because it puts society as a whole on the same level as murderers. “Justice” is no justification for murder for an individual, it is also no justification for a group, and neither does majority vote, nor command by a king or god, make it one.

Here’s a link to the study I mentioned above, “Deterrence and the Death Penalty”.

I agree with many above that it is probably not a deterrent. And even if it was, I would not support it. There are plenty of unjust systems we can develop that would be a deterrent (warrantless wiretapping, torture, etc) that many of us wouldn’t support. Also, we could be putting innocent people to death.

Anyway, I am completely opposed to it.

There are some very thoughtful answers here. That being said I do have wonder if those who are adamently against the death penalty would feel the same if confronted by one of these people in their homes. I’m thinking of the home invasion of the Dr. whose wife & daughters were brutilized & then burned to death by two good old guys.
I do feel that the death penalty should be reserved for the monsters among us & only if there is absolute definative proof. Otherwise the penalty should be permanent solitary, no perks. They are entitled to food, water, personal safety & basic medical care.

@tacres: ” That being said I do have wonder if those who are adamently against the death penalty would feel the same if confronted by one of these people in their homes. I’m thinking of the home invasion of the Dr. whose wife & daughters were brutilized & then burned to death by two good old guys.”

Actually, this is precisely why I am opposed to it. People often say, “what if someone raped and killed your daughter?” How would I feel? I’d want to hire a doctor to help me keep him alive for weeks while I skin him alive and eventually rip him apart with my bare hands. But see – that’s the point. I want laws that do not act like my parental-instinct-I-will-f*ck-you-up mentality. We need a civilizing force and an agreement that we have order in law enforcement. Otherwise, just scrap it altogether and we all load up our guns and play cowboy.

I am a human animal. Protect society from my urges for revenge – don’t play them out for me.

Against.
We have centuries of proof that death penalties are obviously not good deterrents, and there’s always the case of innocence, and the government’s unwillingness to make good with false imprisonments.

Texas is a perfect example of their miscarriages of justice, they’re perfectly content literally burying thier mistakes.

I am against the death penalty because too many people on death row have been proven to be innocent. The wealthiest among us have the advantage in our so-called “Justice System”. Any one who is NOT rich usually falls thru the many cracks that exist in our “Justice System”.

I have no problem with people being killed for crimes, but I don’t think the state is qualified to make any decision concerning justice (they’re apparently unfamiliar with the concept). This is particularly true with the death penalty, which has demonstrably been applied disproportionately against the poor and people of color, as well as dissidents.

“But see – that’s the point. I want laws that do not act like my parental-instinct-I-will-f*ck-you-up mentality..

The system is far from perfect but it was crafted by emotional, infallible humans.For me that is prefferencial to a totally non-emotional process.
It is dialoges like this that keep the process heading towards perfection. Thank goodness we do have a justice system or it would be the wild west. There are enough cowboys walking around.

I use to be strictly for the death penalty.

I have changed my mind. Why?

Today, with the use of DNA, many convicted people have been proven to be innocent.

I would hate to know an innocent person was sentenced to death and the real guilty person was still at-large.

No, I vividly oppose it. For one, the death penalty is not civil, and a civilized society should not use it. There are other reasons why I oppose it as well. Some of my other reasons are the fact that on average it takes about 14 years to execute a person in America, but yet it takes an average of 17 years to exonerate a wrongly convicted inmate. This is scary considering that over 400 death row inmates have been exonerated since it was reinstated in 1977.

I also don’t have much faith in the morality of many of the people involved in our justice system to even be making or enforcing decisions on this magnitude. In a criminal justice system where numbers and conviction ratio percentages are considered more important than actual justice being served, I don’t believe that many of these poorer inmates receive decent counsel to represent them. In such a system, the poor will always receive the brunt of such penalties.

Those who gave @tacres GA, you agree?

Definitely against it. No one deserves to die for anything, it doesn’t matter what they’ve done. And no human has the right or authority to take another living thing’s life. No matter how bad whatever they did was, death is never a solution.

”...crafted by emotional, infallible humans.”
Nobody has the distinction of being infallible. Just sayin’
Against. My thoughts on the penal system in this country are too lengthy to go into here. I’m most of the way through the video, and just popped back over to see how the thread was progressing.
What the imprisoned father said validates my opinion; the boys started with too many strikes against them. This indicates a much larger societal problem, as I’ve stated before. The only way to fix it that I can see is to eliminate the dynamics that are underlying contributing factors to criminal behaviour. Who’s for cleaning up the penal and socio-economic system? Who wants to support mandatory education for those ignorant, undereducated people that grow up to be ignorant, undereducated, god fearing conservatives? Any takers?

I’m against it. We don’t have the death penalty in the UK and the country feels more civilised for it.

For it, but frankly I dislike the current method that they go about it.

It’s obvious that the death penalty is not a deterrent- just watch your local news tonight. And let’s assume that we’re discussing an eyewitness, DNA verified, confessed murderer, then I have no problem with giving them the same death penalty they gave their innocent little victim – usually little kids and women. Hell, nowadays whole families.

It,s a question of safety not vengeance for me. The majority of our population has been detrimentally altered by a small sub group of twisted, egotistical, perverts. Children can’t play outside or walk to school w/o adult. The older folks can’t sit on their front porch and yell at the kids. Women can’t safely walk off that 10 or 20lbs. their doctor ordered for blood pressure w/o being in a group or hanging on to a; Rottweiler.

Even if you won’t admit it here, you know your life and how you conduct it on a daily basis is totally altered from the freedom and fun your parents could have as children playing in the creek down in the little woods.

And we wonder why obesity is rampant, many kids are socially dysfunctional, and the NRA is doing so well. We are scared of being the next victim on the news.
It seems the majority has been trying the justice system (which is screwed) not the disgusting murderer.

Super Maxes on equatorial islands or the death penalty for people that like to torture and chop up your children. The only civilized thing I’d do is let the victim’s
Family pick which one.

I believe in the death penalty for members of the Tea Party. It should act as a deterrent. Why don’t we implement a law and see?~

Kill them all. I used to work in the prison systems. Every single one of them is worthless, with only a few exceptions.

I used to have the reverse view, but you get yourself held hostage by someone you thought was good guy and see how you feel after that.

Nope. No one has the right to decide that. No one. Plus, it just makes the executioner look bad. We kill people for killing people. Huh?

Tea Party more a problem of watching Fox and believing it. So far they haven’t chopped up anyone – just Congress…..and they don’t count cause have no pulse.

Against, it’s a racist practice besides all else that’s wrong with it aka, controlling for all other variables, more men of color get executed than whites.

It just seems so barbaric to me to deliberately take someone’s life. Can you imagine being the one to stick in the needle? On the other hand, why should the rest of society have to support these people for the rest of their lives? So the questions is, what punishment would be fair for violent criminals?

@mowens Were you being intentionally ironic?

“you get yourself held hostage by someone you thought was good guy and see how you feel after that.”

@Simone_De_Beauvoir In the US, more whites have been executed than any other race. What is a red flag is that, based upon information posted on this site, a defendant (it doesn’t state the race %s) is more likely to be executed if the victim is white.

I’m against it, for a couple reasons. For one, they could always be innocent. However, if they are guilty, then that’s kind of just giving them the easy way out, isn’t it? In my opinion, at least, life in prison would be worse than death. It’s also hypocritical. Killing people to show that killing people is wrong? Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

No, because it is pointless.

@ragingloli I understand the point you are trying to make. It would be valid if it were based upon those convicted and qualify for execution. It is not valid based upon population percentages. For one thing, over a dozen US states do not allow execution. That alone will skew the statistics.

Absolutely against.
No institution as corrupt and fallible as the political state should have the power to take an irreversible action like snuffing a life.

I’m for the death penalty for particularly bad murderers such as that evil monster in Norway who methodically gun down 69 people (mostly teenagers). He confessed that he did it and can also be seen on camera slaughtering people. He does not even deserve a trial. He should be simply put up against a wall and shot

Against. I see no reason why a state should ever be allowed to kill its people.

Here’s several reasons why I am against the death penalty, compressed brilliantly into five panels by Keith Knight.

I am against it. The main reason is because of the innocent people who have been executed.
I wish that there was some worse penalty for people like @gondwanalon pointed out, those that we know are guilty of such terrible crimes. For them, being allowed to live with the rest of humanity is way too good for them.

@Pied_Pfeffer Maybe by raw numbers, but how about compared to the percentage of the population? Euro-Americans are still the majority in this country, so it’s not surprising that the bulk numbers would skew towards them. But it’s obvious, even from the link you posted, that the numbers are skewed towards a higher percentage of people of color being either executed or on death row than is representative of the general population.

@incendiary_dan No that really happend to me.

@gondwanalon It’s cases like the Norway killings that make me question just how strong my feelings against the death penalty are!

@mowens That wasn’t the question I asked. Whether or not that happened, the way you worded it was extremely ironic, because the person in prison is basically being held hostage by the state and those people who are complicit in that. I’m guessing that wasn’t your intention, though.

Re: the percentages: the country is 68% Euro-American. It was a higher percentage thirty years ago when many of the statistics @Pied_Pfeffer linked to come from.

@incendiary_dan I must not understand your last statement. The statistics I linked are of death row/executed people from 1976 through April 12, 2012.

I also don’t follow why the percentage of races in the country would be of great importance. What could be a concern is if more people from one race were convicted and given the death penalty more than people of another race. It just seems like we should focus on statistics of those who commit a crime and not on the general population’s.

@Pied_Pfeffer – I think what @incendiary_dan is trying to bring to your attention is the fact that percentages do matter – not the raw numbers.

Let’s try this. Say we’re looking at poverty in the U.S. (Warning: I’m about to make up some pretend stats just for a point.) Let’s say that 40% of African Americans live in poverty vs. 20% of European Americans. It’s quite possible that there would be more European Americans living in poverty. The importance of the percentages, however, show some really important facts about someone’s chances of falling into poverty. In the case I just described, African Americans are twice as likely to be in poverty.

So the raw numbers are fine. We need to know that. But when trying to see where there might be racism in the application of the death penalty, percentages are critical. So, for starters, we’d want to know what percentage of the population is African American, etc.

EDIT: Oh. I’m slow today. I just reread your response and realize that my comment was stupid. You were actually saying that the percentages we should be looking at should be based on the population of criminals. Yes, this should definitely come into play. But even here we need to evaluate conviction rates and race, etc.

@Pied_Pfeffer If 68% of the country is white (probably closer to 75–80% in the late ‘70’s), but roughly 50% of those executed are, then statistically a white person is less likely to be executed than the rest of the population. I can’t give a simpler explanation than that.

@tom_g You were actually saying that the percentages we should be looking at should be based on the population of criminals. Yes, this should definitely come into play. But even here we need to evaluate conviction rates and race, etc.

Yes, and thank you for stating it more clearly than I did.

The death penalty is not nor has it ever been a deterrent. If it was then those countries that use it would have lower crime: they don’t.

I’m against it because we often lock up the wrong guy.