Death Penalty : Yay or Nay?
BigBlindMax
Banned
in General Chat
About a year ago, I posted a thread about the death penalty. At the time, two former acquaintances of mine were facing the death penalty. At the time, a lot of the replies were pro-death penalty, which kind of surprised me.
I figure it's about time to bring this topic up again, to see if popular opinion has shifted since then.
Should the government have the power to execute criminals? Why or why not?
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No. Criminals should bear his sentence in prison. The people who want to execute the criminals better than them, if they also want to kill like they?
Yes. If one of those Bastards do something worthy of a death sentence, I say let it happen
Enough people innocent get the death penalty for me to say no.
Yes, because if they are sentenced to life in prison why not kill them? It's better for them to be dead instead of rotting on tax payers money and taking up space. Prisons are already over crowded, and what are we doing to fix this problem now? We are using tax payer's money to build more prisons that will inevitability become over crowded like the others. This is counterproductive. We could be using that money for better purposes, such as education and healthcare. If we know in fact that the prisoner actually committed the crime that caused them to get a life sentence, then we should dispose of that individual. Because if he remains alive all we are doing is wasting resources.
I heard they stopped the death penalty because they ended up killing some innocent people who were wrongly accused and once they found out they were actually innocent it was to late
Then ask yourself what is prison for punishment and rehabilitation of criminals for major killing sprees some people are beyond repair so why waste tax payers money for shelter and food for them
Then another thing is the threat of the death penalty will surely make anyone think twice about breaking the law
But what if you kill a wrongly convicted person
I'm on the fence on this issue but if they did only major convictions of killing and child rapists imo
Yay
No. Killing people for killing people is just a revengeful cycle that doesn't fix anything. But what I would do to draw sentence is to ask the victim's and killer's family what they want done and leave it at that.
I don't care, the Legal system is broke. They would only execute the people that probably didn't deserve it, and keep alive the true monsters that do deserve it. If people want to kill people, that is on them.
Perfect example Richard Ramirez died of natural causes in California. If someone didn't deserve to die, i don't know who doesn't.
Capital Punishment is often extremely expensive, more so than life inprisonment. The seperate housing and endless appeals process eats up resources very quickly
I agree completely, but murderers are a drop in the bucket compared to the number of people serving long 10+ year sentences for non-violent crimes. You could do a much better job of reducing the prison population by removing mandatory minimum sentences and the three-strikes law. Of course the greedy fucks who run for-profit prisons would never let that happen, nor would the politicians who rely on their kickbacks.
I remember your first thread. I don't think my opinion hasn't really changed much since then, but I'll reiterate my thoughts anyway.
Should the government have the power to execute criminals? Yeah, sure. If the government has the power to deprive people of liberty and the pursuit of happiness through imprison, I don't see why it shouldn't have the power to deprive them of life through execution.
The government has a responsibility to protect the well-being of its populace. Sometimes that means forcefully removing certain members from that populace who pose a threat to it. And in such cases, it should go about doing so in the most humane, efficient, and cost-effective way. If that means execution, then execution it is. As it stand, though, that's probably not the case. Executions are slow, costly, and the methods used seem far less humane than previously believed (although I think the introduction of nitrogen asphyxiation as an execution method might help with that last point). So until the system is fixed, I think the government should stick with life imprisonment. Although that has its share of problems as well...
If they want a cheap, quick and humane execution, I still think firing squad is the way to go. If all five shots hit the heart, it's basically shredded and blood pressure falls to blackout levels in an instant.
Yeah, but you'd waste a perfectly good heart/other organs. Might as well save a life while causing a death.
I think there'd be pretty wild variance there. Anything from full-on forgiveness to "give me a rusty saw and 5 minutes alone with him."
The death penalty is legal murder, theres no need to kill someone if you don't have to, however criminals need to be punished.
Yeah, but the victim's and killer's family would have to come to an agreement eventually. And until then, the killer would be imprisoned.
As someone else mentioned in the thread, it's actually more expensive to execute someone than to lock them up for life. Mostly because you have to give someone on death row more appeals because they're on a time limit.
Stiffer sentences have been shown to be ineffective. Your life is essentially over when you get a ten year sentence, so anything worse than that doesn't do much in terms of reducing crime. Besides, a lot of people don't think they'll get caught, so stiffer sentences don't really factor into their decision making.
Yes, we should. However, only when we have the person guilty with no possibility of innocence and that commit horrible crimes. Those people are not worth wasting tax dollars on supporting.
No, the death penalty seems too lenient a sentence. If you want true retribution against the person give them life imprisonment/solitary confinement or whatever. Let them rot and then one day they might live to regret what they did and feel genuine remorse. That seems like a much harsher punishment than just killing them.
Nay.
How would that work? Juries and judges are only supposed to render a guilty verdict if the State has established guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." If you go with "beyond an unreasonable doubt" or "beyond imaginary doubt", you would never kill anyone, so you may as well just not have a death penalty in the first place.
There are ways to establish that there is no way of innocence, several ways. Maybe my last comment didn't establish my opinion that well. My largest reason is that it's a waste of money to house inmates who have done horrible crimes for their entire life when we can off them, however we need to know beyond a reasonable doubt that they're guilty. They could have said they're guilty or we have an over established amount of evidence against them, of course the crime must fit the punishment and the death sentence should only be used against the most heinous of crimes.
The shear fact alone that they've allowed innocent people to be put to death makes it a clear nay.
Well, it currently costs more money to execute a criminal than to lock them up for life. Mostly because death row inmates are on a timer, so you have to give them speedier appeals. We have to be 100% sure they're guilty, after all.
After some quick research, you're correct, the appeals do make it cost more.
No, because the number of crimes that have been overturned on new evidence, especially with the advent of DNA, makes it too precarious. If there is a death penalty the crime has to be DNA conclusive beyond doubt.
I dont think a fairly liberal game forum is the best place to see the "popular" opinion.
Anyway, I dont support it, You can never be 100% sure not to mention most cases take so long the individual has been inside for years anyway.
If handled with care, most definitely. You put a rabid dog down. If a person cannot function in society, and their guilt has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, they should be killed. Not out of hatred, or revenge, but because they cannot be allowed in society and they should not be a strain on society.
"Legal murder"
That's a contradiction of terms. Murder is killing outside of the law, a killing inside the law can, therefore, not be murder.
Okay technically it's not murder.
I'd make an exception only in cases where rehabilitation just isn't possible. Other than that, I believe that the death penalty is a pointless and risky waste of human life. Let's compare the United States (a country in which many states still use the death penalty) vs Australia (where the last execution was in 1967). Australia's crime rate is significantly lower, with our last gun massacre occurring in 1996. Non-death penalty states in the U.S tend to have fewer instances of violent crimes than death penalty states. There's just no benefit to the death penalty in a lot of cases.
I'm on the fence about this one, truthfully. Although it might be a comforting (albeit twisted) thought for a grieving parent, grandparent, sibling, etc. to see a member of the criminal's family feel the same terrible loss they felt, and there are some people in this world who no doubt deserve to be wiped off the planet, I don't really believe we have the right to take other people's lives when there's really no need. Execution is a pretty barbaric way of handling criminals, and I think humanity has evolved enough to depend on alternative, more humane methods.
It's really hard for me to say. I'm not going to lie, I have looked at a criminal and thought to myself "they should just kill the bastard". But there's a part of me that believes we are better people than that, and we are smarter than to just act out of blind vengeance. In the end, it doesn't just boil down to the criminal 's life - his or her death will affect entire families, friends, and others who knew them. Mothers and fathers. Best friends. It must be very hard to hear that someone you love has killed another, and no one wants to learn that they are gone. No mother will smile and say "I'm glad they killed my son".
Death penalty is a necessary evil (if they handle it with care).
Sometimes criminals gets out of prison way too soon due to "good behaviour" (LIKE WHAT THE FUCK). People who took lifes, and shattered other ones lifes into pieces. It infuriates me so much, these monsters don't deserve life. But life ain't fair I know...
Only if they are proven 100% guilty. Don't want to execute someone only to find out he was wrongly accused.
There's really no such thing as conclusive beyond doubt, even for DNA evidence. Cops have been found to fabricate evidence, and judges have overturned convictions because the lab tech was found to have completely made up the results. Example. That person was found out after 9 years. I can't for the life of me find the link, but I remember reading about some Canadian medical expert who offered false expert testimony over the course of decades, which led to the release of a few hundred inmates. If the death penalty was in place, I'm sure at least a few innocent people would have been executed.
Oops, I never gave my own opinion on this
The death penalty is a relic of a bygone age. In the past, it saved the state a lot of money, because the turnover rate for death row inmates was so high. When someone was found guilty of capital murder, they would likely be convicted and executed within a year. Therefore, was far more cost effective than keeping them in jail for life. Furthermore, the government and public were rather blasé about the possibility of an innocent man being put to death. The popular attitude was "kill them all, God will know his own."
Now the process of executing someone is much more complicated. Appeals can go on for years; the average time between conviction and execution can range anywhere between 8 years (Texas) to 20+ years (Pennsylvania). The cost in taxpayer dollars and man hours is staggering. The public is also much more conscious of botched and wrongful executions. Both cause great scandal and can cost the state even more money due to lawsuits.
Moral objections aside, the death penalty just doesn't work anymore.
I say yes for the Death Penalty.
Nay
Nay.
I think it should be. I think it's Karma for the people they killed. In fact, kill them the way they killed there victims, that's real justice. But I also believe not all killers are evil and it should be stricter. Someone who kills for vengeance is not nearly as bad as a serial killer who targets people with red hair. Yeah they're both premeditated but I'd sympathize much more with someone who killed out of revenge. Better example, what if someone kills your family? What if you kill them to avenge your family? These two killers are not equal but both will be charged with first degree murder since it's premeditated.
I'm going to get so much hate but I don't care.
Nay.