I’m against the death penalty. If you think about it, it puts you on the exact same level as the murderer. Hiding behind the excuse that it’s “justice” doesn’t hold up at all, because no one should have that kind of control over another. If you’re going to commit murder it doesn’t matter to you at that point if the sentence is 80 years in jail or death, because you would be at that point committed to it. I think I can also dig up some statistics in Switzerland and Canada about the rate of sever crimes actually rising with the implementation of the death penalty…
I don’t like a system where it’s possible for innocent people to be killed. Either way, I think that prisoners should be utilized more effectivly, like rooting through trash dumps for reusable material.
Originally posted by Epicgamer
I don’t like a system where it’s possible for innocent people to be killed. Either way, I think that prisoners should be utilized more effectivly, like rooting through trash dumps for reusable material.
That is my thought as well.
Originally posted by Cless Alvein
I’m against the death penalty. If you think about it, it puts you on the exact same level as the murderer.
Yes, I agree. Even if certain criminals “deserve” death, however one measures that, we do not “deserve” to inflict it on them.
Originally posted by LunarCry
And our crime rates are escalating, because there is no deterrent for terrible crimes…With today’s advances in technology, definite evidence can be accumulated.
The death penalty isn’t a deterrent. People either commit crimes in a state of anger or desperation, meaning that they don’t stop to think about the consequences (whatever they might be), or they plan them out carefully, meaning that they are counting on not being caught (again, regardless of the penalties that go with getting caught). If anything, people who commit capital crimes will be less inclined to surrender to authorities, leading (especially where guns are readily available) to more dead police. And the assertion that definite evidence “can” be accumulated, even if true, doesn’t mean that it <i>is being</i> accumulated or properly proven by the system; most death sentences in America are based on circumstantial evidence.
I don’t agree with it either. I think that most death penalty cases are because we need to make the white affluent middle-class somehow feel safer or more vindicated.
BUT, there are a lot of norms in our society, and even laws, that exist because the majority of people can’t control their emotions or their prejudices. To force them to do so would be tyrannical. All we can do is gradual brain-washing through ‘education’ and popular culture, to the point where there is enough of a political consensus to completely outlaw the death penalty. That sounds cynical, but its pretty true from what I see. For instance, because of changes in popular culture and education, people are now much more accepting of gays. But this acceptance took 50+ years and is still far from over; it’ll take even more time before the majority of people will accept gay marriage.
Listen to Cless and Sepiroth Katana.
Death is not necessarily a scare. Only moreso when the alternative is to spend years upon years within a cramped room with little to nothing to do. Not only that, but a corpse feels no remorse. And unless you entwine religion into it all, there is no suffering in death at all.
If anyone killed someone close to me. I wouldn’t want to see him dead; I would want to see him stripped of his freedom, his dignity, and all the things loved to him. Let him be living dead. That would be suffering.
I don’t see why we have to sink to the level of a criminal to deliver effective punishments. Also, its much worse for someone to languish in a cell alone than for them to get pricked with a needle and die.
Death is pretty merciful when you think about it. In some places where you have true life sentences (not like our shitey “life sentences” that last 12 years) it’s worse to rot in a cell till you die than to be killed straight away.
EDIT: Damn Cyber kinda said it 
I used to be all in favor of the death penalty (you know, go ahead and fry the bastards, that sort of thing). After I grew up a lot more and learned about the unfair ways our legal system seems to work at times, my conscience just couldn’t handle that. I’d rather pay to have guilty people rot in jail (and when I say rot, I mean it as much as I can up to the whole stinking up the place thing) than to risk executing one person that is innocent. I also have issues with the way that criminals are handled - a lot of them seem to have underlying issues that make them dangerous to society (drug use, mental illness), but the prison system doesn’t seem to address those issues adequately. I’m not completely against it, but it’s safe for me to say that currently I have very deep reservations about it.
There’s a situation that occurred in my state not very long ago. Clicka. It was interesting how the theories kept changing as more information surfaced. This guy could have been sentenced to death here, and I’m actually surprised that he wasn’t.