Points against death penalty?

Question

I have to do a speech about why I'm against the death penalty. I need about four strong points, and facts that support my point Thanks.(:

Answer 1

I was pro-capital punishment for a long time, but I have changed my stance over the years, for several reasons:

1. By far the most compelling is this: Sometimes the legal system gets it wrong. In the last 30 years, over 100 people have been released from death row after years of imprisonment because they were exonerated by DNA evidence. Unfortunately, DNA evidence is not available in most cases. No matter how rare it is, the government should not risk executing one single innocent person.

Really, that should be reason enough for most people. You say you need four, so, read on (I'll even throw in one bonus reason):

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, and there are many theories about why this is (Ted Bundy saw it as a challenge, so he chose Florida – the most active execution state at the time – to carry out his final murder spree). Personally, I think it has to do with the hypocrisy of taking a stand against murder…by killing people. 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. When Ted Bundy was finally arrested in 1978, he told the police officer, “I wish you had killed me.”

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. James 4:12 says that God is the only one who can take a life in the name of 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 2

You don't have to condone brutal crimes or want the criminals who commit them to avoid a harsh punishment to ask whether the death penalty prevents or even reduces crime and whether it risks killing innocent people. Here are some faq's with sources 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 and can’t guarantee we won’t execute 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, mostly because of the legal process, which is supposed to prevent executions of innocent people.

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.

Answer 3

Sorry dude. THERE ARE NONE!! You are better off defending the death penalty. Its such an easy, practical position to take. Here's the deal with the death penalty: -it serves due justice (the punishment fits the crime), and serving due justice is the NO.1 job of a court of law (preventing crime is NOT their job) -it shows that we are tough on crime -it gets bang for the taxpayers buck -criminals given the DP have a 0% recidivism rate -It holds people responcible for the horrible content of their character. This fulfills what MLKJ always wanted: judge not by the color of your skin, but by the content of your character. The characterof these criminals warrants death -It holds the criminal responcible for his actions -appeals and **** aside, it's cheaper then prison -it decreases the prison population, which saves even more taxpayers money -Because the death penalty is the punishment given by a neutrel judge, there is no vengance in it. Therefore, there is no moral objection to be had with the death penalty. -The death penalty defends human rights by establishing a mentality that "we will not tolerate any violation of any innocent person's human right's

Answer 4

I am for the death penalty. The arguments below can be blown away by any death penalty proponent familiar with the issue. In fact more and more states have seen and pondered these arguments, and proceeded to vote the death penalty in. However, these are the ones that are used most often to justify an anti-death penalty stand.

1) May execute the innocent
2) Is racist i.e., proportionally more minorities than whites are executed
3) Does not act as a deterrent to the crimes where the death penalty can be given
4) Can be considered "cruel and unusual" punishment which is directly prohibited by the Constitution of the US.

Answer 5

I am against the death penalty because, for starters our court system is in such disarray it's honestly hard to tell who is really guilty from who is really innocent...

Taken from internet:

Following a study published in the journal Science analyzing reasons for false convictions, columnist Rick Casey proposes this test for Houston police and prosecutors in this morning's Houston Chronicle:



"An analysis was done of 86 criminal convictions that DNA evidence later found to be wrong. Please rank the factors most often found to have contributed to the wrongful convictions:


•Incompetent defense lawyers.
•Police misconduct.
•Eyewitness errors.
•False testimony by forensic scientists.
•Prosecutorial misconduct.
•False confessions.
•Errors in scientific testing.
•False testimony by lay witnesses.
•Dishonest informants.

"If you ranked false confessions last, you are right. But did you guess 17 percent of the cases, nearly one in five, featured false confessions? That percentage tied with false testimony by lay witnesses.

"If you ranked eyewitness errors first, you were also right. Erroneous eyewitness accounts showed up in a stunning 71 percent of these cases. ...

"[F]ully 63 percent of the cases featured errors of forensic science. What's more, in 27 percent of the cases forensic scientists gave false or misleading testimony."

--

So in other words, that is just in one state, imagine how many people end up in prison due to these circumstances nationally...

Do you feel comfortable sending someone to their death unless you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are truly guilty of what you say they are guilty of? I sure don't. But then again some people have no conscience about such matters, some people are fine saying "hey they were found guilty so let em fry, who cares"

The truth is, in the end, killing someone for killing someone else is still killing someone....on a purely human level maybe that makes sense, but an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

What is the answer then? I don't know frankly...keeping them in prison costs us increasingly more money.

I say this...if we MUST execute someone, then it should be done right away, instead of letting them sit on death row for 20 years to where then they arent even the same person psychologically that they were when they committed the crime....think of an 18 year old who gets the death penalty, then when they are 30 or 40 or 50 they finally get executed...please...

Plus, there should be a direct PROOF of that persons guilt that would be impossible to argue against, for instance when the two fellows broke into that doctors home and murdered his family and caught the house on fire, they were caught fleeing the scene in the family car, no question they are guilty.

But in any case, in a logical sense, taking the life of one person is not much different than taking the life of another, it isnt going to bring that person back, and is really only the result of an emotional "revenge" psychology.

Answer 6

I think we should fry them all!

however: 1) some innocent people ultimately will get executed
due to human fallacy, faulty/contaminated evidence, over-exuberant prosecutors, latent discrimination by police, jurors, and prosecutors, poor quality public defence for the poor.

2) It's inhumane and therefore morally wrong. (but not really, they usually deserve it and more!)

that's all i can think of and i only actually believe #1
think of the death penalty as sacrifice of the few for the good of the many. we have sacrificed 3000 innocent American soldiers in Iraq supposed for the the good our nation as a whole. by sacrificing the few who are innocent by mistake, then there is a big deterrent to future criminals to commit heinous crimes thereby saving many more lives/suffering than those lost.

Answer 7

1. It kind of contra ***** itself. Your punishing someone because they killed some one, so you kill them?

2. Not every one is actually guilty. Look at all the people that have got out since DNA was used.

Answer 8

*We are one of the only nations to sill use it.

*It costs WAY WAY WAY more money to kill someone (appeals and stuff) than to keep somewhere in jail for the rest of their life.

*"An eye for an eye" which most people think is wrong.

*Despite the general knowledge of it being painless, it's really not. So it's "cruel and unusual punsihment" which is forbidden in the Bill of Rights.

Answer 9

It is far more expensive, there are many cases when the convicted are truly not guilty, killing is wrong, and.....

Answer 10

For: so we can get rid of idiots like george bush