The death penalty or life in prison. With the death sentence you get a huge amount of resources to defend yourself. You're provided with all kinds of free legal advisor's and you have many more chances in court compared to a life sentence.
When sentenced to life without parole you can be stuck in prison for years and years without a second trial even if there is evidence that could prove you innocent.You can be sentenced to life on even a small circumstance. One man was sentenced to life simply for being seen within a block of where a murder had occurred. He spent ten years in prison before being found innocent. For a death penalty case that would never hold up.
So my question is do you think it is worse to throw a person in prison for life without giving them a substantial representation? Or do you think that it is worse to execute some after they have had the best legal console available and have significant evidence against them?
2007-02-09 06:16:15 · 8 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics & Government ➔ Other - Politics & Government
P.S please don't preach ONLY on the evils of the death penalty. Consider it's relevance to the question first.
2007-02-09 06:18:40 · update #1
I think it's more immoral to lock someone away indefinitely with no hope of vindication. Certainly there have been cases where a person has been found to be innocent after execution, but in the U.S., most of these cases have involved minorities and I think (hope) the justice gap has been narrowed in recent years. When a horrendous crime is committed, law enforcement officials are desperate to make someone pay, and there's no question that many, many innocent people have wasted their lives rotting away in prison. With a guaranteed appeal and the independent review it requires, there's less likelihood of someone being railroaded by an overzealous prosecutor and a judge facing re-election in a conservative small town.
2007-02-09 06:34:50 · answer #1 · answered by kena2mi 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
More immoral? That's tough.
I think it's probably more immoral to execute someone, no matter what, just because once you're dead, there's no getting out. At least if you are alive and innocent, there is some chance still that the system might produce justice. We STILL execute people who are later shown to be innocent.
The way the system is run -- so fallibly, unfairly, and often corruptly -- the death penalty is an outrage even if you do agree it's not immoral to execute someone. And the same goes for life in prison, but not so much since at least a lifer has SOME hope.
Really, it depends on the case -- as you say, the system is so mucked up, an innocent person might be better off with a death sentence than a life sentence!
2007-02-09 14:25:02 · answer #2 · answered by zilmag 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Huge resources to defend them - this happens even if they are in prison for life so that is a moot point.
People are assuming that many of the death row prisoners are innocent. Get a life - that's not the case. Prisoners keep claiming they didn't do it and the hard evidence shows they are guilty as sin. I highly doubt any innocent person has ever been executed.
It depends. If a prisoner (e.g., Tookie Williams) is a dangerous person that is still leading the activities of a gang, influencing their activities and has no remorse for his brutal crimes - I think he should be executed - he was. He is still a dangerous person. Others that had really brutal crimes (bashing in the head of a teenager AFTER strangling her) should be executed also - his execution was stopped.
However, the average death row person, leave them in prison to think about their crimes.
2007-02-09 14:25:56 · answer #3 · answered by Dizney 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think a person is entitled to a speedy execution of sentence. If you have been convicted and sentenced to death, then let's carry out the sentence.
To me the imprisonment of a human being in a concrete cell for the remainder of his/her life seems a far more inhumane way to treat someone.
Atticus Finch didn't hesitate to put down the rabid dog and we must understand that there are people in our society who will forever be predators upon the rest of us. We must accept the responsibility to remove them from the rest of the population and ensure that they pose no future threat to any man, woman, or child.
My other thought with regard to the death penalty is that if you could prevent a rape, murder, or other horrific act by killing the perpetrator, why then do we hem and haw at putting them to death after the commission of their heinous crime??
2007-02-09 17:04:54 · answer #4 · answered by KERMIT M 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Interesting question. But, I still believe life without parole is more moral(as well as more cost effective). Though the prisoner does get less legal help, you still have a chance of being exonerated. Some states like the fast track to execution, where the innocent are bound to die "accidentally". There are legal groups that help those wrongly convicted-and law libraries at the prisons.
2007-02-09 14:24:35 · answer #5 · answered by Middleclassandnotquiet 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
There's a reason there's more legal support for a death row inmate, I mean after all we're talking about a person's life here.
However a person has every right to get the best and the most available resources to him when he is arrested, death row or not.
2007-02-09 14:42:01 · answer #6 · answered by silhouette 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It seems to me they give the guy on death row many chances to prove the jury wrong that put in on the row. In my opinion the great crime is against the citizens who have to pay for it all.
2007-02-09 14:21:35 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Neither is immoral if the law was followed in the sentencing.
2007-02-09 14:21:53 · answer #8 · answered by scruffycat 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋