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Death Penalty in Theory

Do you support the Death Penalty


  • Total voters
    78
I support it in the case of murder which can be proved beyond any doubt whatsoever. The death penalty for someone who intentionally causes the death of another, without cause, is justice.

That's certainly something I agree with. I just question the ability to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of the convicted enough in our system. Even with the extreme nature of death penalty trials with a higher standard for proof and many expert witnesses called, which contributes to its immense cost, there still seem to have been a large number of exonerated death row inmates, even within the last decade. Likely even more should have been, but were executed before being exonerated which usually halts the investigations.
 
Well I think the counter argument would be that the same is done to the executed person's family, but like I said of all those arguments, I find that one the least compelling.

Fair enough, but their torture is that they have a murderer in the family. The murderer is the one that caused that torment.
 
I am absolutely in support of the death penalty and I don't think it gets used nearly enough. I think we ought to eliminate LWOP and put anyone who is never going to get out of prison to death.
 
I am absolutely in support of the death penalty and I don't think it gets used nearly enough. I think we ought to eliminate LWOP and put anyone who is never going to get out of prison to death.

It would certainly deter a lot of crime I am sure.
 
That's certainly something I agree with. I just question the ability to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of the convicted enough in our system. Even with the extreme nature of death penalty trials with a higher standard for proof and many expert witnesses called, which contributes to its immense cost, there still seem to have been a large number of exonerated death row inmates, even within the last decade. Likely even more should have been, but were executed before being exonerated which usually halts the investigations.

Also, even with DNA technology, lab errors happen. The technicians are human beings, and they make mistakes sometimes. Also, there are sometimes more nefarious reasons for mix-ups that occur in a laboratory. I gave two examples in another thread of recent cases where forensic lab technicians were charged with evidence tampering in Massachusetts.
 
:roll: The death penalty IS justice.

Not really. It consumes innocent life, it is not a deterrent, it is super expensive, and it doesn't net society any additional safety for the cost. It's easier and cheaper just to house a prisoner for life and we don't have to open the can of worms associated with the death penalty. There's not much need for it. We'd be better served reforming our prison system in general.
 
Also, even with DNA technology, lab errors happen. The technicians are human beings, and they make mistakes sometimes. Also, there are sometimes more nefarious reasons for mix-ups that occur in a laboratory. I gave two examples in another thread of recent cases where forensic lab technicians were charged with evidence tampering in Massachusetts.

Many of the cases I've read about had to do with law enforcement perjury. Its hard to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt when you consider that some of these people have an incentive to lie in order to get a conviction.
 
I'm for the death penalty in extreme cases, where a person shows absolutely no remorse for his/her crimes, and will continue to be a threat to others as long as they live. I don't view it as a deterrent, I view it as the elimination of a cancer.
 
It would certainly deter a lot of crime I am sure.

It's not meant to be a deterrent, it's called the death PENALTY for a reason. It's supposed to remove people who have committed crimes too heinous for them to continue to breath the same air as decent society from the planet permanently.
 
Many of the cases I've read about had to do with law enforcement perjury. Its hard to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt when you consider that some of these people have an incentive to lie in order to get a conviction.

Definitely something to keep in mind. Also, in one of the cases in MA with the lab technicians, she happened to be a drug addict. The technicians who test the DNA and other evidence are as fallible as any other human. At least if a mistake is discovered, a person can be released from prison and have at least a chance to live a life again, but you can't bring someone back from the dead.
 
It's not meant to be a deterrent, it's called the death PENALTY for a reason. It's supposed to remove people who have committed crimes too heinous for them to continue to breath the same air as decent society from the planet permanently.

I'm just not sure all of you clamoring to be pillars of societal decency and human morality are really the authorities you believe yourselves to be.
 
I'm just not sure all of you clamoring to be pillars of societal decency and human morality are really the authorities you believe yourselves to be.

It never stops you from claiming to be the arbiter of libertarian values though, does it? :roll:
 
It never stops you from claiming to be the arbiter of libertarian values though, does it? :roll:

Never have claimed to be. In fact, I do recall saying often that libertarian philosophy is wide and diverse and others come to various conclusions on their own; that one cannot speak for all.

But hey, if making things up will help your argument here; then by all means have at it.
 
I recognize there are cases where it's appropriate and we can say definitively the guilty party is being punished but I think the risks outweigh the reward.
 
In principle, I oppose the death penalty. Killing to prove that killing is wrong is wrong. I do not think that the government should have the right to take our lives without some immediate threat, and I think that people can be rehabilitated from criminal tendencies. But the strongest argument against it, with cold logic, is that it is NEVER alright to execute an innocent person. And since we cannot guarantee that we are always correct in applying the death penalty, and we cannot un-kill a person, we should not risk it. The wrongfully convicted can be released, and we should make a habit of rechecking the evidence later to make sure we were correct, but we cannot rectify the harm we do to an innocent person when we execute them. I think that there is no documented benefit (I don't think that there are any benefits at all, but even if deterrence is true) to the death penalty that makes up for this risk. It is simply unacceptable to risk killing an innocent person.
 
Not really. It consumes innocent life, it is not a deterrent, it is super expensive, and it doesn't net society any additional safety for the cost. It's easier and cheaper just to house a prisoner for life and we don't have to open the can of worms associated with the death penalty. There's not much need for it. We'd be better served reforming our prison system in general.

You are telling me that it costs LESS to house someone for life than to use the death penalty? I'd love to know how those numbers work out.....
 
It's not meant to be a deterrent, it's called the death PENALTY for a reason. It's supposed to remove people who have committed crimes too heinous for them to continue to breath the same air as decent society from the planet permanently.

Oh I understand that, what I am saying is that if we widely used the death penalty for these crimes, people would probably be less inclined to commit them in the first place.
 
You are telling me that it costs LESS to house someone for life than to use the death penalty? I'd love to know how those numbers work out.....

To execute or not: A question of cost? - US news - Crime & courts | NBC News

Turns out, it is cheaper to imprison killers for life than to execute them, according to a series of recent surveys. Tens of millions of dollars cheaper, politicians are learning, during a tumbling recession when nearly every state faces job cuts and massive deficits.

So an increasing number of them are considering abolishing capital punishment in favor of life imprisonment, not on principle but out of financial necessity.

"It's 10 times more expensive to kill them than to keep them alive," though most Americans believe the opposite, said Donald McCartin, a former California jurist known as "The Hanging Judge of Orange County" for sending nine men to death row.

In California, home to the nation's biggest death row population at 667, it costs an extra $90,000 per inmate to imprison someone sentenced to death — an additional expense that totals more than $63.3 million annually, according to a 2008 study by the state's Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice.

It's been well known for quite some time now that the death penalty is significantly more expensive than LWOP.
 
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