If Two wrongs do not make a Right, then should we outlaw capital punishment?

Question

I'm not anti-capital punishment, but you can't ignore the fact that 'killing' is 'killing' no matter how you slice it (no pun intended, seriously) Even if you try to pull the "justice" card, or the "murder is different than killing" card, Making someone die is STILL making someone die.

ManPigBear:

But 'self defense' is a different story, I dont think that a guy that has already been captured and jailed poses a threat anymore, 'retaliation', or capital punishment is totally different than defending a country in a war.

Answer 1

Yes, I agree. I think we should do away with it.

Answer 2

The death penalty is not an effective way to prevent or reduce crime and it risks executing innocent people. Here are answers to questions about the practical aspects of the death penalty system, with sources listed below.

What about the risk of executing innocent people?
124 people on death rows have been released with evidence of their innocence.

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. To be a deterrent a punishment must be sure and swift. The death penalty is neither. Homicide rates are higher in states and regions that have it than in states that do not.

So, what are the alternatives?
Life without parole is now on the books in 48 states. It means what it says. It is sure and swift and rarely appealed. Life without parole is less expensive than the death penalty.

But isn't the death penalty cheaper than keeping criminals in prison?
The death penalty costs much more than life in prison, largely because of the legal process. Extra costs include those 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 and subsequent appeals. There are more cost effective ways to prevent and control crime.

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?
Over 50 of the innocent people released from death row had already served over a decade. 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.

Answer 3

While I'm on the fence on capital punishment, I don't think it's wrong.

My concern is that it may not be effective in reducing crime. While a person who has been executed is permanently removed from society and any prospects of future offense, the prospect of the death penalty doesn't seem to stop others from committing capital crimes.

I have no heartburn about executing murderers. But it takes too long, the appeals process is too expensive and I'm not sure the other potential murderers are getting the point.

I would favor more use of life without parole as an alternative punishment.

Answer 4

Very good point. There are many, many other problems with the death penalty as well. Among them:

1. By far the most compelling is this: Sometimes our legal system gets it wrong. Look at all the criminals who are being released after years of imprisonment because they were exonerated by DNA evidence. No matter how rare it is, our government should not risk executing one single innocent person.

Really, that should be reason enough for most reasonable people to be anti-DP. If you need more, read on:

2. Because of the extra expense of prosecuting a DP case and the appeals process (which is necessary - see reason #1), it costs taxpayers MUCH more to execute prisoners than to imprison them for life.

3. The deterrent effect is questionable at best. Violent crime rates are actually higher in death penalty states. This may seem counterintuitive, but think about the mixed message it sends: we’re trying to take a stand against murder…by killing people. Like you say in your question, the government becomes the bad parent who says, ‘do as I say, not as I do.’

4. There’s also an argument to be made that death is too good for the worst of our criminals. Let them wake up and go to bed every day of their lives in a prison cell, and think about the freedom they DON’T have, until they rot of old age.

5. The U.S. government is supposed to be secular, but for those who invoke Christian law in this debate, you can find arguments both for AND against the death penalty in the Bible. For example, Matthew 5:38-39 insists that violence shall not beget violence. 1 Peter 3:9 argues AGAINST “eye for an eye”-type justice. Leviticus 19:18 warns against vengeance (which, really, is what the death penalty amounts to). In John 8:7, Jesus himself says, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

Answer 5

I’m from the UK where – unfortunately – it has been outlawed. We have instead designed a legal system that is so generous to the suspect that there is absolutely no possibility of unjustly convicting that one out of fifty thousand defendants who, in spite of overwhelming evidence, is really innocent, and in doing so we have also designed a legal system that is utterly incapable of convicting the other 49999 about whose guilt there is no mistake. For the people on death row in America, they are on it for their actions – they had a choice whereas their victims did not.

A society like the UK that sentences killers to nothing worse than prison - no matter how depraved the killing or how innocent the victim - to me that is a society that doesn't really think murder is so terrible. This fallacy that innocent people are regularly being executed is simply not true and death penalty opponents twist the truth to protect killers and are thus torturing victims' families. The pain of homicide victims' relatives never ends. It chips away at their souls and psyches year after depressing year and the case against capital punishment relies on myth, misinformation, and misplaced emotionalism. It sickens me that death row inmates are lionized by liberals – they are hardly victims are they? It’s even worse when it is painted as a race issue - is there no African-American miscreant whose misdeeds are so vile and contemptible that he cannot become a cause célèbre in black America? I’m sorry but the statistics prove that in the US - males between the ages of 14 and 24, less than 8 percent of the population, commit almost half the nation’s murders; black males of the same age, less than 1 percent of the population, committed some 30 percent of the country’s homicides in the 1990s.

Liberal Europe puts a lot of pressure on the US about state executions which is wrong. You guys should just say let's round up all our folks on death row and ship them overseas. There must be some government somewhere willing to take them. After all, so many of them are willing to preach to us about how those awful Americans still have the death penalty. The thing is you wont find anyone in Europe to take them.

Life sentences too often are mere challenges for prisoners to escape, terrify law-abiding citizens and sometimes kill again which has happened many times. The death penalty's detractors cannot refute this fact: Even the toughest criminals become remarkably docile once separated from society by six feet of soil.

It is up to the law to speak for all grief-stricken survivors confronted with the butchery of someone near and dear. Capital punishment says to them: We, the community, take your loss with the utmost seriousness. I have heard all the arguments against capital punishment including your "killing is killing". Most are easily dismissed. There are hundreds of good arguments for capital punishment in every state that has a death penalty. They kill time in prison cells, waiting for a death that is always more humane than the cruel and unusual ways they murdered innocent men, women and children.

The death penalty functions to preserve just society and it is worth having to kill someone. If someone butchered your loved ones, you wouldn't be asking this question.

Answer 6

Besides that you know, hopefully basic fact that *killing is wrong*, there are so many arguments against capital punishment that the Golden Rule, important as it is, doesn't even factor to those with more superficial goals in mind.

Capital punishment does not deter crime, it does not save money, and it does not keep criminals off of our streets. It is so ridiculously costly to keep an inmate long enough to get tried, and then appeal, and then appeal again and again and *again*, that by the time execution rolls around the state has spent millions re-proving the criminals guilt. And with all those appeals, there are *still* innocents who end up being killed, if he/she doesn't just flat out die of old age or illness in the process!

It doesn't apply justice, there's prison cells they can rot in for forty or fifty years for that. It doesn't make sense to kill someone as punishment for killing. You're absoltuely right- death is death, and we should keep our punishments much more appropriate to the supposedly higher morality of the state.

Answer 7

I am against capital punishment. It's a medieval practice that should have been abolished a long time ago. Most developed countries have already abolished it. What does it say if we punish someone for murdering by murdering them? It doesn't make any sense. Also did you know that it actually wastes more of the tax payers money to sentence someone to death than it does to give them life in prison? It's because the court process in capital punishment cases is very complex, theres a long appeals process, the court expenses can be enormous. Plus people sit on death row for years before they actually get put to death

Answer 8

In a world with limited resources, feeding and housing criminals for life means that we cannot use those resources in other areas. People are starving to death and dying of curable diseases every day. Instead of helping them, we feed the criminals in jail.

Either way, some people are going to die. I'd prefer to help the innocent instead of the repeat offenders.

Everyone who is executed with the death penalty knows about the death penalty before they commit their crimes. They knew about the eventual consequences of their actions. By committing the murders, they caused their own deaths. The fact that the death penalty gets carried out is entirely the fault of the people who die from it.

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People claim that executions are expensive and that they don't deter crime. Both claims are false.

Recent studies have shown that every time the death penalty is carried out in the US, it saves between 3 and 18 lives. No flaws have been found in these studies to date and they were performed by people who actually opposed the death penalty. If the studies are biased, then the real number of lives saved must be higher.

As for the cost, it isn't for the death penalty. Bullets, rope, electricity, and lethal injections all cost far less than feeding and housing people for life. The true cost is for the lawyers and years of appeals. But if we are really putting innocent people behind bars, then these lawyers and appeals should be given to everyone, not just those on death row. The cost of appeals has nothing to do with whether or not the death penalty should be used.

Answer 9

I disagree. I work in the law enforcement field. Prisoners get 3 meals a day, tv, computer and internet priviledges, no bills, they have the opportunity to get an education, etc. Most of them live a better life than the one they lived when they were out of the prison system. It doesn't seem like a fair punishment for murdering and raping children. I think being dragged out into the street and beaten to death would be better than a needle in the arm, but the needle in the arm is at least something.

Answer 10

I am against the death penalty. It is a barbaric practice. If we kill even one innocent person in the name of Justice we as a society have committed a crime against humanity. I can not pretend to understand how somebody who has had their daughter raped and killed or something awful like that, and I can understand their wanting of revenge. But, I do think if we turn and kill somebody for what they might have done beyond a reasonable doubt is not enough to warrant death.

Answer 11

OOOOH! I HATE it when you put it that way! Then again if it was MY family Charles Manson killed - it wouldn't bother me at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm hoping the people in charge of giving them the familiar 'dose' asks for forgiveness because after all 'they're just doing their job'. When people of the world take the law into their own hands and start killing THEN it is against ANY law! But HEY, that's just me!