Do you believe the Death Penalty is just?
106320
If someone took anothers persons life why shouldnt they be subject to get there life taken away from them....I believe in human rights but dont you think their victims suffered cruel and unusual punishment for doing nothing wrong....I think its a very just thing and then they get to meet their maker ( who ever it is depending on the religion) and get judged for their crime of taking anothers life...I think that some of the methods are cruel like electricution...but to inject someone full of chemicals and allow them to die is a more peaceful way to go considering what they did to their victims.
699052
I dont believe in the death penalty because I dont believe a government should decide when to end a life especially when more often than not, the accused doesnt have enough money to afford any decent defense.  Besides even people who are obviously guilty have the right to life only God may take it when he feels the time is right.  Life in jail is the only solution.  Remember just like in the Animal Kingdom, the strong prey on the weak so someone who leads a criminal life will ultimately offend a bigger fish.
11518
I don't believe in the death penalty; I mean who are we to play God like someone said. But the thing is; he was convicted and there was no doubt that he was guilty. He was also sentenced to death and I think that if we change the laws because one person said sorry; then others would do heinous crimes and be like "I'm sorry" and expect to be let off. \n\nI don't even know much about what's going on in his case but that's what I think.
884151
If the severity of punishment were a real and viable tool, then the death penalty should have worked years ago.  The fact of that matter is, it deters no one.  People still commit murder all of the time. All you can do (after the fact) is lock them up without possibility of parole.
128064
Seems like it to me. I think the death penalty is bad for our culture. It doesn't do anyone good to support the murder of another. My friend who is pro life and pro death penalty says that people who have taken another life should lose theres. where as children who have not been born have not done anything wrong.
208658
The premise that capital punishment offers is all good, however the realities are far removed.  As part of my BA in Law and Criminology we covered a module on the death penalty in the U.S. Several facts about the death penalty and it's application are worrying.\n\nFirstly state representation in death penalty cases are usually substandard (Bright 1994).  As a result the mainly poor, black defendents are required to fight a case put together with the full resources of the state with as little as $3000 to fund their case (Paduano and Smith 1991).  The amount of funding required to fund a full defence is, at the most conservative $100,000, rising to £1,700,000 if you take less conservative estimations (Paduano and Smith 1991).\n\nThere is discrimination in the way that the death penalty is applied to ethnic minorities, with the most likely person to be facing the death penalty a indigent black person who has killed a white victim.\n\nThe cost of inflicting death on a person, when considering the costs of appeals, habeous corpus review and other elements of the case means that it is often cheaper to sentence an offender to life without the possibility of parole.\n\nThere is even research to suggest that rather than deter possible offenders the influence of an execution is the opposite, this is termed 'brutalization'.  Basically when the state executes somebody, the state devalues human life which can lead to other people following the example of the state in so much that for wrongs done against them they see the use of deadly violence as legitimate.\n\nOther objections are to do with the use of a paraletic agent in lethal injection so that the condemned is not able to show any pain and therefore any violation of his constitutional right to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment cannot be seen.\n\nI also take issue with the irreversability of the death penalty, there have been many incidents of innocent people being put to death, so many infact the Illinois Governor George Ryan has put a moratorium on any exectutions in his state.\n\nPublic opinion is a tricky one.  Some poles show that people are in favour of the death penalty and some not.  This depends on the framing of the question, support for the death penalty greatly reduces when the option of life without parole is included.  In order to abolish the death penalty the federal state needs to lead from the front, once the abolition is in place then public opinion will fall into place as has happened in the UK and western europe.\n\nAs you can probably tell I am against the death penalty, mainly for the above reasons but also because no civilized society should have the need to put people to death, especially people under 18 (although the supreme court did ban this a couple of years ago, at last) and mentally under developed people who cannot understand what they are about to recieve (this is also unconstitutional, but still occcurs).\n\nThe sources below are only a brief list, however the Sarat book just below this is quite excellent and will open your eyes, a must read!\n\nFor more information see the excellent book by Austin Sarat,\n(2001) "When The State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition" Princeton: Princeton University Press, and to find out the experiences of a lawyer working in capital cases see Scott Turow (2003) Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyers Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux\n\nIm just going to leave you with this to think about, as Ghandi said An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, enough said really
666671
I certainly think that some people that are in favor of the death penalty are people that would murder as they have no value of life. Yes it is barbaric and wrong to lower your morals to that of the alleged perpetrator.
436225
Personally i believe in capital punishment. I also believe that it is used to liberally in USA. Often times people go to death sentence on circumstantial evidence, or when they are retarded. \nOn the other hand SOME criminals truly deserve to DIE. If you are a BOUND TORTURE KILL serial murderer who has suffocated 10 people for sexual gratification -- you deserve to die. If you are a mastermind of genocide -- you deserve to die. If you are Oklahoma city bomber who has murdered 167 people with a bomb -- you deserve to die. No amount of jail time will atone for crimes like that.\n\nSo Back to your question. If we limit execution to Egregious cases that truly shock the conscience then i believe some form of speedy and public execution might be appropriate. Crucifixion of course is going to far as it is clearly cruel and unusual. On the other hand televising the normal mode of execution like lethal injection might be entirely appropriate.
1151083
i think to make murder punishable by murder is a joke, what is the difference between the criminal and the law if both are commiting murder. also if i were facing life in prison i would much prefer the death penalty and im sure many people on death row see it that way, fortunatly in my country we abolished the death penalty long ago and now killers have to live with their nightmares for the rest of their lives rather than getting an easy way out. we are supposed to be promoting modern liberal western values to the rest of the world but it is not very good when the wests leading nation itself cannot follow these ideals
759325
Not me. The death penalty is the Hammurabi code in action. If you kill a criminal because he kill a innocent them the government is part of the criminal system. Following this theory, for example, is a drunk driver kill a family in a crash accident I believe the penalty will be killing the drunk driver family.Or not?\nThe EU and other civilized countries banned such practices.
13122
Yes, execution is an effective way of keeping people from committing crimes. Also, if you look at it, the 1,000 man was just executed last week I believe. It's not like we are killing people left and right.
244465
This is long, so bear with it...\n\nA few weeks ago, the US reached a bit of a milestone, with an execution in North Carolina 1,000 people have been executed in the US since the re-instatement of the death penalty.  Think about that number, 1,000 people.  It’s a lot, with more to come in the near future.   It is one of the most divisive issues in the US today.  This is not an issue where there is any middle ground, it’s either you are for it or against it. \n\nIn the state of Texas, we execute more people than any other state of the union but even in Texas, the death penalty is hotly debated.  Not all states in the US have the death penalty but those that do have the same issues with it as here in Texas.\n\nLet’s start with a few of them… Firstly, the original reason for the death penalty was it was suppose to be a deterrent for crime.  It’s still touted as such in the states that do have the death penalty.  But, if you look at the statistics in the states that do have it you will see that it is not a deterrent at all.  Crime rates have not drastically dropped since its implementation.  If it were the state of Texas would be the state in the union that has the lowest violent crime rate, it doesn’t.  The only deterrent effect it has is that the person that is put to death will never again break the law.  That doesn’t drop the crime rate or make us any safer.  The realism is most criminals think they will never get caught, that they are too smart.  When criminals are doing whatever they are doing that is going to send them to death row they are not even considering the death penalty while they are performing the crime.  So that throws out the argument of being a deterrent and lowering crime rates.   \n\nSecondly, it was also suppose to lower costs of prisons.  If you execute the criminals they aren’t going to cost as much to feed, house or be taken care of.  Like the crime rate argument, this one is false as well.  In all actuality it takes more money to execute someone then to house them for life.  That has to do with the legal system and the appeals process.  Most of those on death row have court appointed lawyers because they can’t afford to hire one.  So the tax payers of the state end up footing the bill for not only the prosecution and housing the prisoner they end up paying for his legal defense as well.  In Texas, it costs almost three times more to execute someone then it does to house them in the highest security level for life (stats come from www.deathpenaltyinfo.org).  So how is that fulfilling the promise of lower costs?\n\nThirdly, it is considered retribution.  Unlike life imprisonment, where someone can lead a fairly normal life and have some luxuries, the death penalty does not allow that.  For some that are pro-death penalty that is acceptable because it is a true punishment for a crime, not a chance to rehabilitate the criminal.  With varying degrees people do agree with this, citing the ‘eye for an eye’ quote as back up for it.  But others feel that the states don’t have to right to impose retribution on an individual, that as ‘man’ we don’t have that right to take another life.  A lot of the belief systems that argue both for and against this have to do with religious principles.  But should states have that ability and be able to enforce death when they bluntly always say the state is not there to give retribution?  Isn’t death the utmost in retribution rather than punishment?\n\nFourthly, there is recidivism.  That is that some criminals repeat, repeat and repeat crimes no matter how many time they are sent to jail.  This is true.  There is a certain class of criminals that do repeat their crimes over and over, each time getting worse.  There seems to be nothing that can be done with these people that will work to rehabilitate and reform them.  Repeat offenders do seem to dominate the criminal justice system and are a big chunk of those that are incarcerated.  From the peop
1089367
I don't believe in the death penalty. They are just commiting murder, and two worngs never make a right. God decides who should die at what time, so I think you are right, they should put him in jail for life and make him suffer for the pain he has caused people.
898744
Yes, I think it should be abolished. Although our legal system is a relatively good one, I'm sure we have put innocent people to death. Many proponents of the death penalty often say that citizens should not have to shoulder the financial burden of feeding  and housing a criminal for the rest of his life, but the truth is that putting someone to death is even more expensive than keeping him alive.
800723
I don't personally agree with the death penalty in most cases. In\nSaddam's case, I think for all the deaths that he is personally\nresponsible, it might be justified.  The trial was held in an Iraqi\ncourt, and we have to respect the judgment handed down by\nthe judge, who was doing was based on Iraqi law. You may or may not like the sentencing, but we have to live with it. The free world, outside of the USA, doesn't have the death penalty. Please\nremember that Saddam gassed people to death, and used biological warfare against his own people. I don't like the guy, or\nwhat he did, but I thought the US-led invasion of Iraq was wrong,\nfor one simple premise. You don't meddle in the internal affairs\nof a country, unless you are invited to do so by the majority of\nIraqi citizens. Even though the Shi'ites and Kurds are happy \nSaddam is no longer in power, I doubt most of them are happy to\nsee the presence of US and other foreign troops there, since they\nprobably wanted help to oust Saddam themselves in terms of\nmilitary aid and support.
832462
I totally agree. Sometimes i think maybe it would be good to make them sit their whole life and rot . If i had my choice, i would make the person stay alive so every day they can think about the choice they made! The death penalty seems to be a cop out. But others days my opinion changes...
331796
I am for the death penalty.  Except that it has become a non-deterent because people spend years and years on death row.  Not only does that lose the intended impact...but it costs a fortune to keep someone on death row.\n\nI think they should get one appeal.  If they lose that appeal, they should be executed within 30 days.