Is the death penalty wrong?

[sagegirl]

I am a hardliner on crime and punishment.
My solution to the death penalty is this......give someone a life sentence, their time is served in isolation with no frillls and I do mean no frills, if they complain (or not) offer them a pill with their gruel EVERYDAY.....if they take it, they will peacefully fall off to sleep and die. If they forego it, they can continue to live in a no frills enviornment, meant as punishment, for the rest of their life. This gives them the choice to continue to live (and be punished for their crime )or to put an end to their misery.

I also think that plea bargaining, mandanatory sentencing, and some "victimless crimes" (drugs and prostitution,) or unenforceable crimes, (for instance some copyright laws like for copying music on the internet), and the commuting of sentences for lack of space, are bogging down or degrading our criminal justice system. I think the laws we put on the books should be carefully considered and seriously prosecuted and appropriate sentences and fines doled out and served. We really shouldn't have to deal with repeat offenders.

 

[Shattered]

they can continue to live in a no frills enviornment, meant as punishment, for the rest of their life.

Meanwhile, innocent, hard-working people are forced to pay housing, food, and clothing for these people. Don't you think that money could be better spent elsewhere, on something more worthwhile?

 

[sagegirl]

Meanwhile, innocent, hard-working people are forced to pay housing, food, and clothing for these people. Don't you think that money could be better spent elsewhere, on something more worthwhile?

I do, but the cost of executing someone (attorneys and trials) is tremendous also......so this is way of getting the state out of the execution business, and for those criminal who are satisified with a life sentence we should be darn well sure they are not enjoying themselves.

No exceptional medical benefits either.....there are lots of ways to reduce the cost of keeping them alive.

 

[ajwps]

pale Rider, if you study a little bit some panal laws doctrines, you will see that everywhere and at all the ages, some people break the rules. Even in very hard society. Like in war times : the repression is stronger, but people continues to break the penal laws. For myself I'm against the death penalty.

That's fair Monsieur,

I'm not christian, but a think that a christian should think to that : For the Christians, God makes the Human being. And God is superior. So, only Him can take out this life. So only Him can pronounce the death penalty. SO, in the society, 2 ways : no death penatly because God can not speak. death penatly because God speak by the way of somebody.
God speak by the way of Church, or by the way of His representant, his lieutnant : it is the system of a theocracy, like in France before.

Excusez-moi, so you speak and reason for G-d the Creator? You find it hard to take a life? What if you are attacked by a man with a gun who is about to shoot you to death.

Is it against your belief to take this man's life to protect your own?

If a man steals a child, tortures her, violates her and then painfully kills the child are you willing to forgive them even it is your own child? Bête noire?

Killing a person is a hard thing, it is not like when you 're at fight, with adrenaline....it is an execution. France abolished the Death Penalty in 1981 (but the last use of it was older), I'm happy of it.

Because France abolished capital punishment in 1981, is that to be taken as a sign that all the world should follow the French laws? As Christians and Jews believe that if you take another's life, you automatically choose to give up all rights to your own life. "A life for a life." This is the laws of the Creator who gave mankind life.

Read some books of Beccaria or Bentham, 2 famous penalist of the end of the XVIIIth c. you will maybe change of point of view.

What makes the books of Beccaria or Bentham have any more of ultimate truths than those truths that which requires the penalty of death for crimes abhorant and vilest to the human soul?

For you, the penalty 's aim is : repression ; prevention ; utility for the society, or the 3 ?

No the object is most often can lead to the end or closure of pain and anguish for those whose family members have been murdered most horribly.

Au revoir

 

[ajwps]

I do, but the cost of executing someone (attorneys and trials) is tremendous also......so this is way of getting the state out of the execution business, and for those criminal who are satisified with a life sentence we should be darn well sure they are not enjoying themselves.

No exceptional medical benefits either.....there are lots of ways to reduce the cost of keeping them alive.

Those horrific criminals who await their death penalty are able to breathe, eat their favorite jelly and walk on the face of the earth while they have violently taken the innocents life and civil rights away.

Once a murderere is executed, he is left to explain his actions to another court of law.

 

[dilloduck]

That's fair Monsieur,



Excusez-moi, so you speak and reason for G-d the Creator? You find it hard to take a life? What if you are attacked by a man with a gun who is about to shoot you to death.

Is it against your belief to take this man's life to protect your own?

If a man steals a child, tortures her, violates her and then painfully kills the child are you willing to forgive them even it is your own child? Bête noire?



Because France abolished capital punishment in 1981, is that to be taken as a sign that all the world should follow the French laws? As Christians and Jews believe that if you take another's life, you automatically choose to give up all rights to your own life. "A life for a life." This is the laws of the Creator who gave mankind life.



What makes the books of Beccaria or Bentham have any more of ultimate truths than those truths that which requires the penalty of death for crimes abhorant and vilest to the human soul?



No the object is most often can lead to the end or closure of pain and anguish for those whose family members have been murdered most horribly.

Au revoir

Please don't give people a false impression of Christianity. Many Christians do not believe in your "life for a life" philosophy.

 

[deaddude]

I can not support the taking of another’s life in any fashion other than self defense.

 

[freeandfun1]

I can not support the taking of another’s life in any fashion other than self defense.

you're dead, your opinion doesn't count.....

 

[deaddude]

Actually I thought that my death might give my vote, if anything, more credence in a poll concerning the death penalty.

 

[padisha emperor]

ajwps, when i told you to read some books of Beccaria and Bentham, or some things about them, I never menat that these books have the absolute truth...

but the reading of thses books will make wider - larger ? - your mind, or at least you will see the point of view of 2 great penalists against the death penalty.
To give an example, it is beccaria who develop the idea of the legality principe : no repression, no sanction, no condamnation, without a law who say that it is illegal : "NULLA PENA NULLA CRIMEN SINE LEGE" (latin)

read this, you will learn interesting things.


For your "life for a life "idea, boy, go back to the IInd century. it will be paradize for you. (don't say to strong that you're christian you will be eat by lions....)
Society have change my dear. the laws too.the way of think too.


for me, only the LEGITIME DEFENSE justify the death of somebody else.
But no with an execution.
If the murderer is caught, he will go in jail, for tyhe rest of his life. And I'm not sure that 60 in jail in a small cell in a high security quaretr is far far better than death....

And when i said that France abolished death penalty, it was not to say that the world should follow us..... only a constatation.

But the most part of the european countries abolished it........it is a sign...

 

[rtwngAvngr]

ajwps, when i told you to read some books of Beccaria and Bentham, or some things about them, I never menat that these books have the absolute truth...

but the reading of thses books will make wider - larger ? - your mind, or at least you will see the point of view of 2 great penalists against the death penalty.
To give an example, it is beccaria who develop the idea of the legality principe : no repression, no sanction, no condamnation, without a law who say that it is illegal : "NULLA PENA NULLA CRIMEN SINE LEGE" (latin)

read this, you will learn interesting things.


For your "life for a life "idea, boy, go back to the IInd century. it will be paradize for you. (don't say to strong that you're christian you will be eat by lions....)
Society have change my dear. the laws too.the way of think too.


for me, only the LEGITIME DEFENSE justify the death of somebody else.
But no with an execution.
If the murderer is caught, he will go in jail, for tyhe rest of his life. And I'm not sure that 60 in jail in a small cell in a high security quaretr is far far better than death....

And when i said that France abolished death penalty, it was not to say that the world should follow us..... only a constatation.

But the most part of the european countries abolished it........it is a sign...

Nope. Some people are irredeemable scumbags who should die. I think the endless years of appeals should done away with as well. He should just be taken behind the jail and shot right after sentencing.

 

[no1tovote4]

I don't think the death penalty is much of a punishment. Put them in an eight by eight room, give them the Holy Book of their choice and let them stay there 24/7 (maybe an hour a week in an excercise cage) until they leave in a box built just for them.

 

[cptpwichita]

Romans chapter 13 so clearly from a biblical standpoint human government has authority from god to execute criminals.

Personally I think we should use murderers as Donors.Heart,kidney,liver,eyes,every ounce of blood,every strand of hair,so life comes out of death.

 

[padisha emperor]

Sure, a small cell while several decades is hell.

 

[Bullypulpit]

I see it differently. Why not ship all the death row criminals up to Alaska or some other wasteland to populate work camps. They won't get paid. They will live in spartan conditions. No cable TV here. No need to kill 'em and waste a source of cheap labor.

Hmmmm...Sounds like Hitler's or Stalin's ultimate solutions. Herr Goebbels or Lavrenti Beria would have hired you in a heartbeat.

 

[Bullypulpit]

Romans chapter 13 so clearly from a biblical standpoint human government has authority from god to execute criminals.

Personally I think we should use murderers as Donors.Heart,kidney,liver,eyes,every ounce of blood,every strand of hair,so life comes out of death.

Which god?

 

[hylandrdet]

The problem does not lie within the penalty itself, it lies within the system. When a person is convicted of a crime by virture of circumstanial evidence, that person will serve his/hers sentence under the concept that the jury had all but did a coin toss in order to decide their innocence or guilt.

Scott Peterson is the primary example; all of the evidence presented were circumstantial; in my opinion, he looks like the duck and he sounds like the duck...

In the end, he was convicted because the jury made an educated "guess".

I had the opportunity to interview some inmates who are serving life behind bars. Most of them agreed to stay behind bars because they were suffering from institutionalization; in a word, they were robots.

They wake up in the morning, the cage opens, they eat, walk around, eat, lift weights, walk around, do some work, eat, walk around, be sent back to their cage, then do it all over again...For the next 25 years to life! That's a fate worse than death.

If I had any objections to the death penalty, it'd lied within the fact that a "life" sentence is more sadistic in nature; it lives up to my mother's fear of "Living in HELL, then dying and going to HELL".

From these interviews, I'd came to a conclusion that regardless of what sentence you give an inmate, if that sentence means that he will serve the rest of his life behind bars, he's STILL a dead man walking. Therefore, there is NO merciful sentence for an innocent person who was wrongfully convicted.

To sum it all up, the problem lies within the political pressure being applied to the prosecution, judge and jury, to convict anything that moves, based on circumstantial evidence, which means that there is a good chance you CAN be convicted of a crime you didn't commit.

Fix those problems, and no one will object to any sentence a convicted crimminal receives; for that person will receive a fair trial, a fair conviction and a fair sentence.

The death penalty is nothing more than a messenger... Stop killing the messenger.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

The problem does not lie within the penalty itself, it lies within the system. When a person is convicted of a crime by virture of circumstanial evidence, that person will serve his/hers sentence under the concept that the jury had all but did a coin toss in order to decide their innocence or guilt.

Scott Peterson is the primary example; all of the evidence presented were circumstantial; in my opinion, he looks like the duck and he sounds like the duck...

In the end, he was convicted because the jury made an educated "guess".

I had the opportunity to interview some inmates who are serving life behind bars. Most of them agreed to stay behind bars because they were suffering from institutionalization; in a word, they were robots.

They wake up in the morning, the cage opens, they eat, walk around, eat, lift weights, walk around, do some work, eat, walk around, be sent back to their cage, then do it all over again...For the next 25 years to life! That's a fate worse than death.

If I had any objections to the death penalty, it'd lied within the fact that a "life" sentence is more sadistic in nature; it lives up to my mother's fear of "Living in HELL, then dying and going to HELL".

From these interviews, I'd came to a conclusion that regardless of what sentence you give an inmate, if that sentence means that he will serve the rest of his life behind bars, he's STILL a dead man walking. Therefore, there is NO merciful sentence for an innocent person who was wrongfully convicted.

To sum it all up, the problem lies within the political pressure being applied to the prosecution, judge and jury, to convict anything that moves, based on circumstantial evidence, which means that there is a good chance you CAN be convicted of a crime you didn't commit.

Fix those problems, and no one will object to any sentence a convicted crimminal receives; for that person will receive a fair trial, a fair conviction and a fair sentence.

The death penalty is nothing more than a messenger... Stop killing the messenger.

The death penalty is the messenger? That's fairly absurd.

 

[manu1959]

Is the death penalty wrong?

nope

 

[MissileMan]

Today's justice system has been corrupted to the point of insanity by trial attorneys. Justice should be a search for truth. If the accused is guilty, then the truth is just that. Defense attorneys no longer search for the truth. They go into court and spout whatever nonsense they can think of in order to get their client acquitted, even if their client is guilty. They are aided in this insanity by our current jury system. A lot of jurors aren't smart enough to see through the BS the defense attorneys throw up on the wall, or smart enough to properly judge the difference between reasonable and unreasonable doubt.

They need to enpanel a jury of judges instead of laymen. That kind of jury would be able to reasonably discern the truth from BS. There would then be enough confidence in a verdict to enforce the death penalty.

I would make a couple other changes to the death penalty system: First, you get 2 appeals. If you lose your second appeal, you would be executed immediately. Second, that execution (preferably hanging, but firing squad would be a suitable alternative) would take place in the public square outside the courtroom where you lost your appeal. It would also be televised. The death penalty might actually become a deterrent if applied in that manner.