Capital Punishment .. for or against ? Why?

Answer 1

I'm in favor of it because some people are complete evil scum who can never ever be rehabilitated (as if they deserved it), and this is backed up by criminologists and psychologists,
so they need to be wiped off the face of the earth as soon as possible.
ie; Ted Bundy, escaped from jail twice and went on more murderous rampages,
NO ONE protested his demise, that's for sure. Though that peice of sht really fought for his life making our justice system a kangaroo court for over a decade and had to be dragged to his death kicking and screaming, ironically enough.
Child killers, serial killers, particularly horrific crimes which is known beyond a doubt the one accused did it deserves death and that person knows what they deserve and what they did to deserve it,
it's only a shame they can't die like their victims did,
That would be true justice.

Answer 2

Capital Punishment is more productive in certain circumstances, specifically with sex offenders. It has been proven repeatedly that sex offenders ie. rapists, pedophile, serial killers cannot be reformed. All others, including V.A. guy can be.
If there is any chance of reforming people it must be done. I'm not going to clairfy that but I will clarify why non-reformables should be killed.
It costs an avg. of $44 000 a year to keep a person i prison. If he never gets out it's a lot of money wasted over the span of his life. Likely though, he'll get out. If he does he will commit another crime. That crime could have been avoided and the victim may then also be prompted to lash out. now you're paying out $88 000 a year, and so on.

Ok, I'll clarify rehab. There is a prison in Canada called Warkworth. This prison forces it's inmates to graduate highschool and gives them the option for a degree. They have 2 bed shared "apartments" where they get groceries and must learn to cook for themselves. When let out they are helped finding an apt and a job. Sounds rediculous? The recidivism rate (rate at which prisoners return to prison after release) in Warkworth is 2%. In Sing Sing (maybe spelled wrong) where you are provided with a toilet and a large cell mate for lonely nights the rate is 98%. It is more expensive to keep people in warkworth but they won't commit crime again so it will cost less over the spam of thier lives, and they won't cost society but rather contribute to the economy. Unless of course they are sex offenders as mentioned.
This combined with the death penalty is the most effective form of corrections.

Answer 3

If we had more capital punishment in the U.S., there would be a lot less crime. Look at the countries where the people band together and dish out punishment fitting the crime. We could learn from that. And I get tired of hearing about how they keep murderers in prison only so long and let them out so that they can kill more innocents. They keep using tax payer dollars to build more, when a simple solution would be to execute the ones on death row instead of keeping them there forever, and paying more attention to the victim's rights instead of the criminal's.

Answer 4

I am for the death penalty, but there needs to be overwhelming evidence that they actually committed the crime. People that are mostly against the death penalty have not known someone that has been murdered. A friend of my parents had a daughter that was stabbed 32 times by someone that had been stalking her. He only got 25 years in prison. Do you think that is fair when she had a 3 year-old and an 18 month old that had to grow up without their mom?

Answer 5

Against. It is not an effective way to prevent or reduce crime.
Here are answers to some questions that are often asked about the system. All of them are sourced, below.

Isn't the death penalty cheaper than keeping criminals in prison?
The death penalty costs much more than life in prison. Much of the extra costs is due to the complicated nature of both the pre trial investigation and of the trials (involving 2 separate stages, mandated by the Supreme Court) in death penalty cases. There are more cost effective ways to prevent and control crime.

What about the risk of executing innocent people?
Over 120 people on death rows have been released with evidence of their innocence, many having already served over 2 decades on death row.

Doesn't DNA keep new cases like these from happening?
DNA is available in less than 10% of all homicides. It is not a guarantee against the execution of innocent people.

Doesn't the death penalty prevent others from committing murder?
No reputable study shows the death penalty to be a deterrent. Homicide rates are higher in states that have it than in states that do not. Most killers don't think about the consequences anyway. They do not think they will be caught (if they think at all.)

So, what are the alternatives?
Life without parole is now on the books in 48 states. It means what it says. Supermax prisons are terrible places to spend the rest of your life. Life without parole is less expensive than the death penalty.

What about the very worst crimes?
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??

Doesn't the death penalty help families of murder victims?
Not necessarily. Murder victim family members across the country argue that the drawn-out death penalty process is painful for them and that life without parole is an appropriate alternative.

So, why don't we speed up the process?
Many of the 123 innocent people released from death row had already been there for over 2 decades. If the process is speeded up we are sure to execute an innocent person.

But don’t Americans prefer the death penalty as the most serious punishment?
Not any more. People are rethinking their views, given the facts and the records on innocent people sentenced to death. 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 eye for an eye sound bites.

Answer 6

I dunno... I think it should be used in certain cases. I agree that if everyone in the prison system was killed right now, the world would be safer, but it wouldn't mean it's morally right...

I think that rape, being a pedophile, things such as that do deserve capital punishment. But what if you were forced to murder someone? What if someone had held a gun to your head, and told you to shoot someone else? Or rape someone? I mean, how would you like to be killed for that? And I'm sure that the family of that person would be upset.

My cousin's are in jail right now for either murdering, or helping with the murder of two teenagers. I knew them both very well, they were great people. But they fell into the wrong crowd, and became drug dealers, one night, a drug deal went wrong and two people got killed. No one knows who did it, but I know them, and I know that they would not deserve the death penalty.

Answer 7

Speaking as a law abideing citizen, I have, as others hade thought of revenge on someone else but unlike some, never had ideas of just randomly picking out someone to "just kill". Even in the event where a few savages started a fist fight at my sons funeral, the idea of the death penalty was the ONLY thing that prevented their death. Now for a normal person to behave in such a manner as I did, those that can kill for greed, power, position, or just the trill to kill, do not have a place in the same society that we normal people excist. To kill in defense is another whole different matter, but to kill someone for your own personal gain, such as drug involvement and a testimony in court against you may cause you to loose custody of your child because your discision of being with a drug dealer for the money. Now the drug dealers killed my son so as not to get caught and his wife so as not to get caught, those individuals should be killed without mercy. You could be next on their list. Once a human beong begans to murder without thought and in a way that most murders occur, they are pretty much unable to be rehabilitated back into society. If any of you want to feel the psycho tulip garden idea for these savages, it's fine by me. But people that can committ rape and murder against others, especially children, then be cried over by some psycho, maybe the psycho needs to be put somewhere to so to protect us logical people from them to.

Answer 8

For. As far as I'm concerned, if you murder another human being, you're no longer worthy to be considered human.

Some people say the death penalty is primitive. So? Sometimes things that are primitive and instinctual are the best things for us. In caveman society, if one person killed another, surely the killer would be killed. It's human nature to take revenge on those who have wronged. Why should we go against every instinct and our very nature within us just because we're trying to convince ourselves that we live in some "advanced, intellectual, civilized society". Bullshit. It doesn't matter how much more technology we create nor how many more things we as a society learn, WE (the members of that society) are just as primitive and animalistic as always. It's silly to deny it.

Answer 9

I am for it in circumstances of murder, pedophilia and rape. I think your rights as a citizen should end when you infringe upon or deny the rights (such as the right to live) of others.

The money that is being spent trying to rehabilitate pedophiles should be invested into caring for their poor little victims whose innocence has been stolen forever. Prevent these beasts from getting to the children, don't try to "help" the offenders once they have already inflicted their damage.

Answer 10

11 reasons why I'm totally against the death penalty

1. Permitting premeditated murder is totally unacceptable, even if done by the state. Capital punishment lowers the value of human life as seen by the general population and brutalizes society. It reinforces the idea that killing someone is an acceptable way of solving problems.

2. It is based on a need for revenge not justice. Retribution and revenge have no place in the modern justice system.

3. Lack of Deterrence: The death penalty has not been shown to be effective in the reduction of the homicide rate. There are some indications that executions actually increase the murder rate. (sources 1 - 6)

4. Cost: The cost of all the appeals by a convicted murder, plus all the costs associated with an execution more that cover the cost of locking that person up for the rest of their life

5. Human life has intrinsic value, even if a person has murdered another individual. If you kill someone, you've taken away something sacred. That is never right, even if its done by the state.

6. The death penalty is unfair The mentally ill, poor, males, and ethnic minorities are over-represented among those executed. One pilot study of over 2 dozen convicted criminals on death row found that all had been so seriously abused during childhood that they probably all suffered from brain damage. Women convicted of murder are almost never executed; that is a penalty that is almost entirely reserved for men. A 1986 study in Georgia showed that persons who killed "whites were four times more likely to be sentenced to death than convicted killers of non-whites." (sources 7-9)

7. Chance of Error: Many convicted murderers are later found innocent, and have been pardoned. It is impossible to pardon a corpse. In 1987, a study was published by the Stanford Law Review. They found some evidence that suggested that at least 350 people between 1900 and 1985 in America might have been innocent of the crime for which they were convicted, and could have been sentenced to death. 139 "were sentenced to death and as many as 23 were executed." In the UK, groups such as the Guildford 4 were released after 16 years for crimes they were tortured into confessing to. In Illinois, a class of journalism students (not law students - JOURNALISM students) found that 13 out of 25 men on death row were factually innocent of the crimes for which they'd been sentenced - that's half! (source 10).

8. Capital punishment is cruel. If it is considered torture to hang someone by their arms so they suffer pain, what is it if you hang them by the neck to kill them? If it's torture to apply an electrical current to a person to make them confess to something, what is it if you apply a greater current in order to kill them?

9. The family of the prisoner is also punished by having their loved one killed by the state. Yet the family is usually innocent of any crime.

10. The existence of the death penalty means that some jury members are reluctant to convict in murder trials because of the possibility of executing an innocent person. Thus, many killers go free and are never punished.

11. The death penalty is useless: Killing a murderer does not bring his victim back to life. It achieves nothing but the death of still another person.