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Thank you for that link, theyeti. I hope that you get well soon.

Loren Pechtel

Originally posted by Beyelzu
i have been in favor of the dealth penalty for many years. i am currently reevaluating some of my belief systems. what the governor did was wrong because he pardoned people and released them, even if he felt that the death penalty is wrong it still doesnt make sense to release the prisoners.

The prisoners he released were innocent, like so many death row inmates. The big blanket thing he did was commuting sentances from death to life without parole. Life without parole isn't releasing them!

if the death penalty is used it should be done in a timely manner. no more than 2 yrs after sentencing. and the appeals process should be streamlined to allow for this time frame. this should deal with the cruel and unusual wait on death row and the ineffeciency.

The problem is too many are cleared after more than 2 years have passed. The system really drags it's heels on this--things like not allowing DNA testing because someone has exhausted their appeals before DNA testing came along.

Aerion

I think it is interesting that we believe killing someone is the ultimate penalty. Sometimes I wonder if life in prison isn't a greater penalty than death.

simian

One place to start with the costs of the death penalty here or here . I have not kept up on the discussion of costs, but at least since the 1980s it has been pretty obvious that the cost of the death penalty is significantly higher than life imprisionment.

There are several reasons I oppose it:

1) idealism - I think the purpose of prisons should be reform, not punishment.

2) irreversible - if an innocent person is executed, there is no way to unexecute them. While they may use years in the prison system, at least they are alive.

3) fraud - beating (or otherwise torturing somebody) into signing a confession that may or may not be true, relying on "eyewitness" testimony, faked evidence, "if he is not guilty of this, he is guilty of something"

4) bias - race or gender of defendant or perpitrator, rich people can "afford more justice" than the poor. The federal government de-funding legal groups that had too good of a record of getting capital cases overturned (again the exact details escape me, but I think it was in the south).

I can't put my finger on the details, but I vaugely remember a case from the late 80s to early 90s where a lab manager had a reputation for getting the forensic evidence to convict - as it turned out, he manufactured it.

I don't think you can beat an offender to show to the public that beating somebody weaker than you is wrong. Likewise, I don't think that killing offenders can show that killing people is wrong.

Please note this is not a post to show the absolute facts, but merely to state some of the reasons I oppose the death penalty.

Simian

JerryM

On an emotional level, I know that some crimes deserve the death sentence just as a matter of simple justice. What else would be appropriate for, let's say Tim McVeigh, or Ted Bundy, or Hitler, or Himmler? But intellectually, I know the justice system is imperfect. And morally, I think it would be worse for society to execute an innocent person, than to keep a mass murderer imprisoned for life.

Melkor

That's pretty much my stance as well.

There is a big part of me that is so sickened by the kind of carnage wrought by people like Tim McVeigh that the only real punishment he "deserved" was much worse than what he got.

Personally, I think it would have been akin to locking him into a Ryder truck with a 500 pound fertilizer bomb strapped to the outside of it, and telling him that "some time over the next three days, the bomb is going to go off".

HOWEVER...

That would not exactly be the act of a civilized people, would it?

I am of the firm belief that governments should never have the power to take the lives of their citizens, no matter how heinous the crime, unless it is in the act of stopping them during the commission of another crime in which they may harm someone else (i.e., pulling a gun on a cop makes you pretty much fair game, in my book).

To me, there is nothing in "due process" that should ever lead to the state willfully and intentionally putting anyone to death. Period.

It is my opinion that the role of government should be limited to protecting the rights and liberties of its citizens, defending its borders and citizens from foreign threats, and in promoting the well-being of the nation as a whole.

I do not see the Death Penalty as fitting into any part of that role.

There are many who deserve it... but it is most certainly not the job of the government to dish it out.

To agree also with JerryM, it is also a horrific thing to put someone to death that did not in fact commit any crime.

I would think it a far better thing to allow a thousand guilty murderers go free than to put one innocent human being on the lethal injection table. To me, there is no worse crime than a government depriving a citizen of all rights entirely, including the right to live, in particular when that citizen has in fact done nothing wrong.

Rusting Car Bumper

I voted for undecided.

The problem I have is that most information on the topic is emotionally laden one sided crap from either side.

For example, people opposed to the death penatly state supposed cases where innocent people were executed or sentenced to death but later release. This is accompanied by URLs.

My comment about the latter category is that this shows the system "works." The same problem would happen if someone was sentenced for life and released 13 years later. Yes of course you cant bring a dead person back. However, I fail to see any real moral difference between locking up an innocent person for life and executing an innocent person. No doubt if someone was executed who was innocent then there is little doubt that some lifers died in prison who were also innocent.

The problem with claiming some innocent people were executed is not that its not true in principle. The problem is that the bias in this information is often obviouis when one does any level of research. The bias makes for such confusing "evidence" that its hard to know who to believe.

When I point these two things out, I often get a response that "Well the death penalty is just immoral!" If that's the case then launching a discussion about innocents being executed is really secondary.

I do find the case of the West Memphis 3 (or whatever they are called) extremely disturbing because it appears to be a case of a prosecutor rail roading an innocent person. Of course we will need to see where it goes.

DC

Thieving Magpie

Our prison system is based upon rehabilitation, not punishment. If we believe someone can not be rehabilitated quick enough, we may as well kill them and save our money.

And, I'm also in favour of public hangings, as opposed to potentially expensive gas chambers, electric chairs, poison, etc. (Guilloutine is a little too.. uh.. bloody. It is an example of overkill, I think)

August Spies

which is why someone caught with an ounce of cocaine is given as long a prison sentence as someone who murdered with intent to cause serious harm.

really though our system focuses more on punishment than rehabilitation. by far.

beyelzu

i realize that the people he released claimed to have had confessions beaten out of them. but how much factual evidence is there. please note i also know that evidentally the former cheif of police beat confessions out of people. but what evidence for these four. were they convicted only on the evidence of the confessions?




---possible death penalty reform, only allow people to be put to death if they were convicted with physical evidence. allow no one to be put to death if they are convicted on only eye witness or circumstantial evidence.

i do not think that it would be better to let a thousand guilty murderers go free than execute one wrongly accused person. a thousand free murderers will probably mean someone else or several somone elses will die.