Do you agree that the death penalty for serious crimes needs to be reinstated everywhere?

And in Canada you have far less violent crime than we do in the U.S. What on earth do you want the death penalty for? I believe the death penalty should be abolished worldwide.

The death penalty is one of the worst things about the US.

@Snarp – Why would you want it abolished? I think that if you kill someone or commit a serious offense, you have given up your right to live.

@CyanoticWasp – That’s one of the only things I like about it.

@Oxymoron The number one reason is that human beings are flawed. We make mistakes and are incapable of designing a perfect system. That means that we can never be 100% certain that anyone is guilty. Since there’s no coming back from death, I don’t believe we should take someone’s life when we cannot know for certain that they are guilty. I no longer know the numbers and don’t feel like looking them up, but prisoners are being released in the U.S. on a regular basis because DNA has shown them to be innocent. Some of them are on death row. There is no reason to believe that any more innocent people are on death row now than in the past, so that means that we have executed innocent people, and since DNA is not conclusive in all cases, we will do so again. That’s not acceptable to me.

I personally don’t think it fixes anything. We’ll always have crime everywhere, no matter how harsh the punishment, and in a free thinking society like we have in America or Canada, if it was reinstalled everywhere just like that, people might get extremely upset and start a revolution or something, through interpreting the issue as tyrannical.

Fixing things like crimes needs to be done at the root of society, rather than cutting the leaves and never getting to the problem and just trying to run people with fear.

Now I’m not putting my personal emotive perception into it; as far as I’m concerned, pedophiles and murderers need to be dealt with and I don’t care much what happens to them. But that’s why you don’t want people like me running anything. We need answers and progress, and other than giving the mob it’s bloody piece of meat by instilling some kinda feeling of compassion, security and guidance, no matter how illusory it seems, the death penalty doesn’t really seem to fix anything.
I mean, if the death penalty is so good, why do people keep committing crimes?

Of course, it’s just a guess really, I’m not a social scientist, and who knows really, How different it would be if eyes were met for eyes everywhere? My guess though is that we’d be regressing back to something akin to the dark ages, which was a great period of stagnation for humanity.

No. The death penalty is morally justified, but since the state and justice system are fallible, and since the penalty is irreversible , it should not be used. On that day that all evidence in capital crimes is absolutely irrefutable, I might change my mind.

@Snarp – The margin of error with all of the technology and advances in DNA profiling is so small that it doesn’t matter. I know if my Mom was killed by someone, I would want them dead and I wouldn’t rest until they were. At least ninety percent of the people killed deserve it, so it’s not such a bad thing.

Deciding that someone deserves to die is not much different than killing someone. In both cases the life of another individual is not considered.

No one has the right to decide that someone else deserves to die. Period.

@Oxymoron… “at least 90% ... so it’s not such a bad thing”? What if your mom were one of the 10%?

I’m guessing that you’re quite young yet, nowhere near having kids of your own, and haven’t put a lot of focused thought into this.

Even if we can be dead solid 100% certain that the person we’re doing this to is guilty as charged, it’s still a penalty that no one else has a right to impose “in my name”. Not that I’m god; but I am society, and the society that I belong to shouldn’t be killing people in cold blood, period.

I do not believe in the death penalty. I do not think that the state should be in the position of killing.

So say this guy who’s done this terrible thing is locked up in maximum security prison. At this point, what on earth is accomplished by squirting some poison in his arm? Do you really imagine that some wrong would be righted by doing this?

The death penalty is an expression of one of the basest features of our ape nature: we hate what this guy did, so we’re going to kill him. No matter how you dress it up, capital punishment is a bunch of apes whacking another one to death because they’re pissed off at him. I think we can be better than that now. Let’s move on.

I have mixed feelings about it and that’s probably the best way to describe it rather than delve into a long diatribe which could result in a heated debate. That probably won’t happen though because I’m a good conversationalist. Anyway, the death penalty can be a highly contentious issue and it’s certainly not a foolproof method of punishment by any degree.

No. If the death penalty worked the US wouldn’t have such high rates of crime. What it does do is encourage criminals to actually kill their victims so they can not be identified. I fail to see how killing someone for killing someone is justified in any way.

I would like to think that I am better than the person who kills someone.
It’s sort of like a parent slapping their kid and yelling “Don’t Hit!”

Absolutely Not

I support the death penalty for particular offenders I feel are a menace to society because they can’t be rehabilitated and some feel they are just fine the way they are.
Child molesters
Violent rapists
Torturers/violent murderers

@CyanoticWasp – I would want my Mom to be killed if she took the life of someone else that was innocent. I just think that people need to take real responsibility for their actions.

@CyanoticWasp I agree you you on this one.

@Oxymoron, you sidestepped my question. What I asked was, “What if your mom was one of the 10% of the ‘Oops, sorry. Guess she wasn’t really guilty after all’… after the fact of her execution?”

@Oxymoron how can they take responsibility if you have killed them? And if you kill them for killing someone, will someone kill you?

In Europe, there is nothing even close to the death penalty. I really encourage the governments to keep it that way.

@Oxymoron – No. I utterly disagree with you that I should give up my right to live because someone who happens to look like me committed a violent crime.