Why do you accept the death penalty?

Question

My view is this: If you cannot respect others who live on this earth with you, you don't deserve to live here at all.

Answer 1

Here are a few facts (all verifiable and sourced) about the death penalty in the United States. This issue is too important to decide without having them. With a pragmatic viewpoint and common sense you can make up your own mind.

Re: Possibility of executing an innocent person
Over 120 people on death rows have been released with evidence of their innocence, many having already served over 2 decades on death row. If we speed up the process we are bound to execute an innocent person. Once someone is executed the case is closed. If we execute an innocent person the real criminal is still out there and will have successfully avoided being charged.

Re: DNA
DNA is available in less than 10% of murder cases. It’s not a miracle cure for sentencing innocent people to death. It’s human nature to make mistakes.

Re: Deterrence
The death penalty isn’t a deterrent. Murder rates are actually higher in states with the death penalty than in states without it. Moreover, people who kill or commit other serious crimes do not think about the consequences or even that they will be caught (if they think at all.)

Re: cost
The death penalty costs far more than life in prison. The huge extra costs start to mount up even before the trial. There are more cost effective ways to prevent and control crime.

Re: Alternatives
48 states have life without parole on the books. It means what it says, is swift and sure and is rarely appealed. Being locked in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, forever, is certainly no picnic. Life without parole incapacitates a killer (keeps him from re-offending) and costs considerably less than the death penalty.

Re: Who gets the death penalty
The death penalty isn’t reserved for the “worst of the worst,” but rather for defendants with the worst lawyers. When is the last time a wealthy person was sentenced to death, let alone executed??

Re: Victims families
The death penalty is very hard on victims’ families. They must relive their ordeal in the courts and the media. Life without parole is sure, swift and rarely appealed. Some victims families who support the death penalty in principal prefer life without parole because of how the death penalty affects families like theirs.

Opposing the death penalty doesn’t mean you condone brutal crimes or excuse people who commit them. According to a Gallup Poll, in 2006, 47% of all Americans prefer capital punishment while 48% prefer life without parole. Americans are learning the facts and making up their minds using common sense, not revenge or an eye for an eye mentality.

Answer 2

I agree with you whole-heartedly. People who commit mass murder should not be allowed to exist at all. Special programs do not work! We've seen so many murderers walk and then go out to do it again. Along with rapists. Don't deny it, that is foolish.

I get what koi_fish_girl is saying that only God can judge, and that he will. But turning the other cheek while some psycho murders his neighborhood is not the thing to do. Remember an eye for an eye! There's a time for everything and turning the cheek in such a circumstance is not wise. If the death penalty is enforced then there is less crime. Back 100+ years ago it was and crime was a lot less common. They strung people up for murder and rape back in the day ... and there was a whole lot less of it going on because people didn't want to be hung or stoned.

Edit: To the guy below who said it costs more to use the death penalty than life imprisonment: What are you smoking, man? We spend millions in tax payer money to feed, clothe, and keep people locked up happy! Even with activities in prison! Their personal phone calls too! It only costs around ten cents to put a bullet through their brain. Oh, wait, we're giving them a lethal injection...honestly, that's not that humane!

Answer 3

Accept the death penalty for ONLY the most terrible terrible of crimes-those that reach beyond the realm of humanity a example is the one of the most recent where a Pediophile took a 9yr old girl from her home in the dead of night,kept her in his trailer(located not far fro the girl's home) where for days he sexually abused her---found blood stained,semen stained mattress in his room with DNA matching him and also DNA(Blood stains)from the little girl.In order to avoid being caught when police/searchers were looking near the trailer placed the little girls in 2 trash bags-1at the top and 1at the bottom of her and buried her alive on the property.When they dug up the body (he took them to the grave whn found in GA.) two of her finges were sticking through the trash bags.The jury found him guilty -based on overwhelming evidence against him and gave him the death penalty. There are criminals that commit crimes that take them outside of the realm of having the right to live,by their horriffic crime(s) they forfeit their life. This by the way was not his first crime against children ,several before but the first that led to murder. He buried her alive,by his own admission because he could not bring himself to kill.Would sleep well at night knowing that those who were in charge of the Khymer Rouge, Hitler,Idi Amin and other such mass murderers had been executed. Even those who beheaded(not with a quick sword cut but sawed off with a knife)Daniel Pearl(Journalist)or those who murdered in such a gruesome manner the others who were beheaded for them I'd raise no voice to preserve their life.

Answer 4

The death penalty is probably the most shameful domestic policy America employs. It is brutal and unjust. The only benefit is financial, which should never be used as an excuse for killing on the behalf of the government. Feel free to sentence someone to life in prison, but the government has no right to kill its citizens.

Answer 5

Where is it that it says: "Whosoever shall shed man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed"? Oh yeah, the Bible. The Bible supports capital punishment. I support it because it makes sense. You kill someone, you get killed. The punishment fits the crime. Those who commit murder have no respect for human life, so we should have no respect for their lives. On a side note, as a bonus, the death penalty also prevents our prisons from becoming overcrowded. Less of my tax dollars spent on feeding and clothing murderers.

Answer 6

I believe that to let people off the hook by just killing them is flawed at its base. If you kill or rape or whatever you get life with no release ever. That is fair you live with your crimes forever....

Plus the system is so flawed from top to bottom that the percentage of innocent death row inmates is so astounding it would blow our minds.

Illinois had so many problems that put a stay on all executions until each case could be reviewed.

Answer 7

I supported capital punishment for a protracted time, yet I easily have replaced my stance over the years, for quite a few motives: a million. via some distance the main compelling is this: sometimes the criminal gadget gets it incorrect. interior the final 30 years, over one hundred human beings have been released from dying row after years of imprisonment because of the fact they have been exonerated via DNA data. regrettably, DNA data isn't available in maximum circumstances. no count how uncommon that is, the government shouldn't threat executing one single harmless individual. relatively, that could desire to be reason sufficient for many human beings. in case you prefer extra, examine on: 2. because of the extra fee of prosecuting a DP case and the appeals technique (it fairly is mandatory - see reason #a million), it costs taxpayers plenty extra to execute prisoners than to imprison them for existence. 3. The deterrent result's questionable at ultimate. Violent crime rates are easily larger in dying penalty states. this might look counterintuitive, and there are a number of theories approximately why that's (Ted Bundy observed it as a project, so he chosen Florida – the main lively execution state on the time – to accomplish his very final homicide spree). individually, i think of it has to do with the hypocrisy of taking a stand against homicide…via killing human beings. the government will become the undesirable determine who says, ‘do as I say, not as I do.’ 4. There’s additionally a controversy to be made that dying is purely too solid for the worst of our criminals. enable them to awaken and flow to mattress every day of their lives in a penitentiary cellular, and think of concerning to the liberty they DON’T have, till they rot of previous age. while Ted Bundy replaced into finally arrested in 1978, he instructed the police officer, “I wish you had killed me.” 5. maximum governments are meant to be secular, yet for people who invoke Christian regulation in this debate, you will come across arguments the two for AND against the dying penalty interior the Bible. working example, Matthew 5:38-39 insists that violence shall not beget violence. James 4:12 says that God is the only one that could take a existence interior the call of justice. Leviticus 19:18 warns against vengeance (which, relatively, is what the dying penalty quantities to). In John 8:7, Jesus himself says, "permit he who's without sin solid the 1st stone."

Answer 8

Far as I am concerned, if you kill, your life is forfeit. End of story. Why should a murderer have rights that he/she removed from another person? Makes no sense. If they cannot respect another's life, they do not deserve to keep theirs.

The Warlock

Answer 9

Some should be left alive. These psychos could be used to execute the other psychos the same way their victims died...

And put it on pay per view to pay for the cost of their final meals.

Answer 10

I do not accept the death penalty because it is the ULTIMATE in hypocrisy....

You simply cannot say "We think that the most important and inviolable thing on the planet is a person's life......so, as a result of what you have done.....we are going to take your life away"

It makes absolutely no sense.....The state simply cannot be in the business of determining which of its citizens shall live and which shall die.....

The taking of a life is the taking of a life...we all know it is wrong to take a life......

This is about vengence.........a side of ourselves that we should not indulge.....