What is your view on death penalty?

Mr Sceptic

The death penalty is wrong, on a moral and a practical level.

I don't believe I or anyone acting for me has the right to kill other than in self defence. I don't believe the death penalty has any deterrent effect.

I do know that Angela Canning, Sally Clark, the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six were all wrongly convicted of murder and might have hanged wrongly, had the sentence been available.

Brand X

I can't reconcile being for the death penalty yet being against abortion so in order to be consistent, I'm against the death penalty too. Let God figure out who's supposed to die, not humans.

HouAnswerGuy

I never thought it about it much until I was picked to be on a capital murder jury....that was 15 yrs ago and have thought about it everyday since...Something is needed but I am not sure what...if we could be sure only guilty were put to death ok....but one innocent execution is too much.

andy e

I think it's wrong,it's too easy to make mistakes and it how can it then corrected?.

dark girl

I don't agree with it. I don't think anyone has the right to make that decision, no matter what. And what if a mistake is made? I just don't agree with it. Lock someone up and throw away the key - but the death penalty - no. Its old fashioned and barbaric and it gives me the creeps.

tk1471

The death penalty is meant to be a punishment. But the purpose of the punishment is two things: a deterrent to other offenders and a form of justice.

In many respects it is the same as a life sentence since you have your rights taken away from you - much as if you were dead. So as a punishment it holds the same level form of justice as a life sentence.

As a deterrent to others, it is the best however is shown not to be effective. In places where the death penality is inplace, crime has not gone down and in that respect fails and so can never be justified.

For more indepth arguements go to: http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=106

ALLEN B

I'm definitely against. Many have said only if you're certain of guilt etc.
Everyone who has ever been found guilty of a crime in the UK, the jury has always been 100% certain or they wouldn't have been found guilty in the first place.
If you look at the number of people who have been found guilty of murder and are later [sometimes years later] found innocent on appeal, we would have murdered these people.
Some might say that an innocent death can be OK for the greater good, I would say they wouldn't hold that opinion if it was them, or a member of their family in the dock!

plhudson01

don't believe in it

Farron T

Biggest problem with the death penalty:

What if you wrongly convict an innocent person? A pardon isn't going to cut it if you're already dead.

DNA evidence can be false, misleading or planted. People see it on TV and therefore believe it's infalliable - thanks CSI, nice job there. Fact is that mixed DNA samples are unusable (can give false results) for a start and there are many other limitations on the technology. There is also an error rate, the full extent of which is as yet unknown for the technology is new and ever changing. Further often DNA is used to prove more than it actually should even when the evidence is correct - DNA evidence at a crime scene may mean a person was there but didn't commit the crime, it may mean they're being framed by someone who planted the DNA evidence, it may mean that someone in a research lab mislabeled a sample and tested a suspects DNA against another sample of the same suspects DNA thereby getting a false match (this has happened on multiple occassions).

Fingerprinting is subjective and doesn't meet scientific standards for what should be acceptable as evidence in court (many studies have found it way too subjective, disagreements amongst experts, experts going back on their own testamony, etc).

Witnesses are notoriously unreliable and change their story.

Video footage can be misleading or falsified.

Bottom line is that in most cases we can never be totally sure and many convictions are later over turned... lock the person away for life with a serious crime but the death penalty cannot be reversed and so it's a stupid punishment. (quite aside from the moral aspect, it is pretty hypocritical after all)

Pleasant Peter Perkins

Personally?...I am against it.

For others?....I am still against it.

J C

If a democratic country uses the death penalty, this does not set a good precedence to countries like Zimbabwe, Burma, North Korea, etc.

trucker

we should not hang people because our government and law is so corrupt and criminal and caused so much mysery, that they have broken the laws of treason which was a hanging offence we are to be a foreign occupied state in europe, were once we was a free country and that is treason. so how can we hang outher criminals, if we vote for the destruction of our own nation.

acredhead113

According to the Bible if you are a true believer one of the ten commandments says, " Thou shalt not kill!"

Taking any human life is immoral.

God takes care of everyone so if you would trust in him he will take care of those that commit violent crimes!

AFDEE

If you go back through recent history and by recent I talk about the last 100 years the number of people executed is not as high as some people would have you believe although some would argue that 1 is too many.The case brought by the anti hanging lobby focused mainly on the Derek Bentley and Ruth Ellis cases which were always suspect and finally prooved to be wrong.The thing about ANY form of punishment is that the punishment is SUPPOSED to be a deterent.I had a friend who was BIRCHED many years ago and it certainly detered him from further crime and until the day he died he always said he wouldn't want that again it detered him.The idea of a deterent is as it says to DETER so in theory it should never be used.But in severe cases then obviously you have that deterent.In todays modern society with modern thinking what deterent do we have.We label every criminal as someone who is ill and needs help not punishment.If you think back to when you were a child and did something wrong if your parents TOLD you it was wrong more often than not you went straight back and did it again and you got a smack on your leg or hand,most times you didn't do it again you were detered.To give an example when my son who is now 4 years old started to investigate the electric sockets in our house I told him numerous times(and we DID have socket blinds in) he kept on pulling the socket protectors and sockets that were being used out so he got a sharpe smack on his leg (and before the PC brigade step in) it came as a surprise and was really just a tap but he didn't do it again he was detered not dead from electric shock.Obviously the examples I give don't warent the death penalty but are examples of deterent.Each crime is diferent and needs to be looked at diferently and yes some people are ill when they commit a crime and it should be judged on that BUT some criminals are evil and are now using the system for their own purpose and they know that jail time now is 5 star hotel time and not a deterent.So what do we do now???

flutterby

I understand people are looking for justice and retribution particularly when the crime involves children. However,too many people have been wrongfully convicted and released after appeals. It would be tragic if even just one of these people was wrongly executed.

Chuckler

Well it says in The Holy Bible that we should not kill.
Everyone should have a chance to repent. This is what I believe.

Maid Mesmera

I'm against the death penalty because I think it's too merciful. Killing a murderer is like putting them out of their guilt. I think life imprisonment is more severe than the death penalty because it forces murderers to go through the rest of their life thinking about what they've done. I think a constant reminder of a murderer's crime in a living hell is the kind of penalty they truly deserve.

haggis3point5

Think of all the people that have gone to jail just to be proved innocent later. To send someone to the electric chair is just as low as the murderer - BUT if my child was killed by a madman/woman then I'd probably feel different.

luminous-tiger

I dont believe anyone has the right to take a life...simple as that! In days gone by, without DNA many people could have been innocently killed. Apart from that, i think however bad a crime a person has committed, killing them doesnt help anyone , i think they should live to think about what they done for the rest of thier lives!

The death penalty is a difficult question, I think. I used to favor it, but now I oppose it. My reason is that there are too many cases that have been decided incorrectly - DNA technology has made it possible to re-examine older cases, and I have found it alarming how many have been found to be mishandled. What this means is that the state (government) is not infallible in meting out justice. Life in prison is still a punishment, after all, and it allows falsely decided cases to be righted.

More important, even, is that when the state claims the power to execute someone, the state is claiming infallibility - a claim that can rightly only be with the divine. Whether "divine" is God with a white beard or just something higher in spirit, there has to be some ultimate power that is higher than that of the state. This is sort of a political justification for spirituality, maybe, but I can't grant ultimate authority to the state - I think there must be something higher...

... And so I oppose the death penalty because I don't want ultimate authority to reside only with the state.

BUT, sometimes it takes all my will and intellect to oppose the death penalty. For example, Timothy McVeigh was executed for bombing the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in the mid-1990s - and I shed no tears for him, after killing scores of people including children. But in opposing the death penalty, I would have preferred that he just rot in SuperMax (the Federal prison system for the worst of our criminals).

AveGirl

I think if it is going to stick around, it needs to be more consistent.

If one person gets the death penalty for one murder, but someone else does not get it for several murders, that is too inconsistent.

If a person murders one person, they should never get the death penalty. This would be in order to rule out if the person is proved innocent later on. It is possible to prove a person innocent later on for one murder, less likely to happen with several murders.

I think the answer would be to make it a federal action, not a state action. Because different states vary so much and the killer may live in a lessor penalty state, but his crimes could be in a death penalty state. Then he would not get the death penalty because of where he lived.

bobonumpty

no ....let them suffer in jail the longer the better ....god knows its no picnic

mytoxickisseskillinuslowly

im only for it if they have no doubt that the person being prosecuted definatley commited the hanus crime. if there are any doubts than no im not for it. but then again,being in jail is probly worse than death to some ppl.thats somthing to think about..

Jackie

This is what I think: The death penalty is doing a favor to criminals by putting them out of their misery. They should spend their lives in jail because it's a better punishment.

aresee

Unfortunately because there have been miscarriages of justice in the past, innocent people have been executed, and compensation years later doesn't bring those people back. However, although I feel that life is sacred, I also believe that it is not right that child and serial killers should be locked up for just a few years and then have the right to come out and start life afresh. So, yes, death penalty in certain cases.

Kawaii

Life in prison is cheaper for the state. I don't support the death penalty.

concreterabbit

You have not mentioned death penalty against what? against keeping few grams of drugs or killing innocent human or animal or fall in love with the girl. anyways, yes, there should be the death penalty for a murderer provided that decision has been made considering all factors, apparent and hidden or the background of the crime and crimanal. The reasons behind comiting such crime should be investigated.

Vogon Poet

I am in favour of self determination. People should be free to choose if they wish to see the death penalty in their own country.

Visitors to that country do so understanding that should they violate laws in another country they are at the mercy of a different legal system with different penalties.

I do however hold the opinion that not all nations operate a fair and just legal system, and those failing to do so, use the death sentence as a means to terrorise and remove any elements of society or political opponents that prove troublesome to a dictator or despot.

Personally I do believe in the death penalty but only for certain crimes, and in my mind they would have to have been proved beyond a shadow of doubt.

In America oddly enough if I understand it correctly they accept that it is possible to execute an innocent person, as the constitution only requires that a person can only be deprived of life, liberty or property after due process.

Enter Your Message or Comment

User Name:
User Email:
Post a comment: