November 19, 2007
-
Capital Punishment Saves Lives
I was reading an article I found on trunthepaige’s site about capital punishment.
Economists performed a few studies that indicated that capital punishment saves lives. They took a look at 3,054 counties over two decades. They found that for every inmate put to death, 3 to 18 murders were prevented. In other words, capital punishment caused less murders. Capital punishment saved lives.
Here is the link: Link I posted about this same study before but I want to ask a slightly different question this time.
If you were convinced that capital punishment saved lives, would you be in favor of capital punishment?
Comments (115)
FIRST
Yes – and I am in favor of capital punishment
unless brainwashing is an option! lol (kidding)
Daniel (doubledb)
This one is giving me problems, but as of right now i am still not a supporter of capital punishment. Call me indecisive on this one, I might change my mind.
Of course, who wouldn’t be. In terms of a straight-up measurement of costs and benifits, Capital Punishment clearly wins out.
All murders are commited for one of three reasons, according to a Holocaust survivor:
Profit- killers are usually cold and calculating, cannot be deterred
Passion- “guy finds his wife in bed with his best friend”, cannot be deterred
Compulsion- think Jeffery Dahmer, cannot be deterred.
We cannot decide who gets to die. We just can’t. Our system is screwed up to begin with, why give it the power to kill even more people?
Yes I would beca
i tend to question paige’s sources and the way that their information is presented. just saying. most statistics are crap.
that aside, despite my extreme liberalism, i’m in favor of capital punishment already. some people just need to die.
no, because even if it does save lives, the world needs less murderERs… and besides, i would rather see 1000 criminals go free than one innocent be unjustly executed…
because some pople are just to evil or crazy to be allowed in public. Besides, God is in fafor of C.P., you can see that in the old testiment laws. A lot of things would get you stoned to death. Back then, people did it with rocks, now we do it with drugs.
We cannot decide who gets to die.
If the studies and projections are to be believed, we have to. Through action, we execute criminals. Through inaction, we decide to allow additional murders and deaths. It’s a fork in the road, and we have to pick one.
already in favor….
and besides, i would rather see 1000 criminals go free than one innocent be unjustly executed…
Two doors:
Door #1: 1 innocent unjustly executed and 1000 criminals justly executed
Door #2: 1000 criminals let free with 3000 extra deaths.
You’re actually saying you’d favor the first option?!
Koko you alway question my sources and as alway they are always as good as can be found. This one and I have read many others(sarcasm on), came form that bastion of conservative pro death penalty thought. The New York Times (sarcasm off)
I compare a person who murders someone to a rabid dog…they need to be put down…I say if you take someone’s life by planning & following through with your plans to commit murder then you need to pay with your own life…especially if it’s a cold & calculated killing.
There is no excuse in the world for taking another persons life.
Yes. But it sort of depends, still.
this is why i think the “cruel and unusual” punishment in the constitution is so stupid… cut off the murderer’s hands, and forbid him to get prosthetics until he’s proven innocent… thatd solve everything… no more death…
Koko you alway question my sources and as alway they are always as good as can be found. This one and I have read many others(sarcasm on), came form that bastion of conservative pro death penalty thought. The New York Times (sarcasm off)
Ha, good point.
In favor.
i am, anyway. like i said to Paige: if you kill the murderers, they’ll stop killing you.
Carlos Hernandez
“There is no excuse in the world for taking another persons life.”
What bullshit. What alternative do you suggest for the Adolf Hitlers and the Pol Pots of the world. Hug them?
I already am in favor of it.
yes i am.
Already in favor, but I think this cements it.
Of course, it all changes when it’s someone you know. Whether that would make you more in favor, because he’s just a psycho, or less, it’s hard to say.
“All murders are commited for one of three reasons, according to a Holocaust survivor:
Profit- killers are usually cold and calculating, cannot be deterred
Passion- “guy finds his wife in bed with his best friend”, cannot be deterred
Compulsion- think Jeffery Dahmer, cannot be deterred.
We cannot decide who gets to die. We just can’t. Our system is screwed up to begin with, why give it the power to kill even more people?”
so what you are saying is that no murder can be deterred, i just cant buy that. i cant buy it at all.
Yes…but not in all cases. Only extreme ones.
I support Capital punishement anyway, but I suspect this is true
I think criminals should be put to death in humane way without suffering. I’d want for them to be able to see the outside sky, too, a last sunset instead of that shitty green room. Yeah, even if they murdered people.
No.
Why?Because the government should neither condone nor commit murder.
It’s not saving lives, it’s just choosing which ones to end.
I don’t know. It’s never that easy.
> I am pro-CP, as it has been shown to me, by life’s experience, CP does reduce the murder rate by quite a margin, as generally foolish, impulsive actions by normally non-foolish people shy away from murder when it is pointed out, by sensible friends, folk whatever, that there are alternatives to said action. You cannot stop random impulsive, even compulsive (i.e. J. Dahlmer) actions by anyone if we don’t observe, not spy-on, our fellows and fellow-ettes and intervene or council or as necessary report the incident or actions of others…. I didn’t say snitch-off, but to not ignore or blow off, the feelings of others…. I’ve had my fair share of ‘wring your neck’ impulses for, at the time, what seemed like good reason. But, again, it was the intervention of friends and associates that stopped me from some foolish actions.
Peace
I was for it before that study, & I still am………
no. the fact that one thing happens at the same time as another does not mean that the former caused the latter.
Firstly, this is by no means a rock hard conclusive study. Though I’m inclined to think it might be true, a comparison of homocide rates against executions sounds incredibly faulty to me because of all the factors involved.
But were this absolutely compelling evidence, I would still be against the death penalty. I have heard many stories of people who were on death row yet were innocent, and have heard many mentions of people executing the innocent. Once you kill someone, there is no going back.
Let me say this and be clear – Executing the innocent is the abominable thing a society could ever let happen. That is the purest form of injustice, if one were to ask me.
Those who say, “Well, only kill the ones we’re sure are guilty” – to those I say, there is no way to ever 100% tell if someone is. A confession may be forced, or the real killer could be someone who looks exactly like him yet lives two blocks away, the person could have been framed…there are so many possibilities.
So, put em in jail for life. If the prisons are overcrowding, repeal the puritanical marijuana laws and now they’re mostly empty.
-David
I’ve decided, no. I agree with Direshark, and this made me sick: http://www.ccadp.org/botchedx.htm
I would be in favor of capital punishment based on this research, given it could be or has been replicated (like all good research should be). I would also be in favor for research on why it deters murderers… is it because they are dead? or because others are now afraid of killing someone for the sake of preservation of their own life? Of course, it very well could be a combination of these.
RYC: I am most definitely going to England for the summer program.
College, on the other hand, we’ll see
Ellie Nessler was a murderer… I think she ought to be given an award… Dorathea Montalvo-Puente was a murderer… I think they out to fry her… Charles Manson? I’d hate to be the one in charge of that decision… but think of all the tax-payer dollars we could have saved if they executed him years ago…
Well, duh. The cost of breaking a law should be floating around in the criminal’s mind before committing the crime.
If they’re willing to risk a paying a fine or going to jail for a few months, they don’t care as much. If they’re going to get a couple dozen lashes, lose their hands, or have their head chopped off, they should probably take a bit more time considering whether the juice is worth the squeeze.
How can they predict how many people would have been murdered had the criminal not been executed? Even if the number of deaths decrease while the number of executions increase, that doesn’t prove anything. It could be modern television or generations getting nicer or air quality for all we know. Do higher ice cream sales indicate more drowning accidents? There’s a correlation there too, you know. You can’t just claim “capital punishment saves lives” when there isn’t any actual proof, just a correlation.
thank you, i appreciate it.
ooo. this was my issue analysis in my ap gov class. honestly, if a murder has a motive to kill, nothing (not even death) will deter him if he is so passionate.
i can’t believe that capital punishment saves lives.
plus, statistics can be skewed to favor one side of the argument. go to another site and you may see a statistic for anti-death penalty.
this is just one of those topics that people hardly ever change their minds about.
what if an innocent man dies under the death penalty?
that’s unforgiveable.
what do we say then?
OOPS- we got the wrong guy? sorry.
Just NO.
gottaget thruthis
How can they predict how many people would have been murdered had the criminal not been executed? Even if the number of deaths decrease while the number of executions increase, that doesn’t prove anything.
Please apply some common sense. Even if just a moment… please.
Do you think that the penalties of actual crimes are in any way a deterreant by the perpetrators of those crimes? Would you say that the severity of a penalty would have some sort of a positive causation of its deterrant effect.
Paige, I was generally talking about your sources and then specifically how the New York Times is especially apt at twisting certain stats, as any newspaper can.
Direshark
Let me say this and be clear – Executing the innocent is the abominable thing a society could ever let happen. That is the purest form of injustice, if one were to ask me.
I don’t buy morality for morality’s sake. To me, the purest and best measurment of a policy is an objective weighing of the goods and the bads of the plan. In the case of capital punishment, I use a gross comparison of lives saved/lost. Just as innocent as the occasional innocents executed are the additional innocents lost without the death penalty. At this point, it is a weighing of numbers.
There is an inherent inefficiency in all real-world policy or tool. Any handgun may lead to accidential deaths while cleaning, any car may accidentially lead to smashing of toddlers. Likewise, there is an inherent margin of error in the justice system. The best we can do is apply minor fixes and tweek it here and there as we can (i.e. DNA evidence).
“So, put em in jail for life. If the prisons are overcrowding, repeal the puritanical marijuana laws and now they’re mostly empty.”
As someone mentioned earlier, part of the “saving lives” part of the death penalty is the inductive effect of the punishment itself. With added disincentive, would-be criminals would respond with adjusted behavior. There is that extra deterrance of capital punishment as opposed to just locking them up.
I’m in favor of it anyway.
I have always been in favor of capital punishment.
Huginn
“I don’t buy morality for morality’s sake. To me, the purest and best measurment of a policy is an objective weighing of the goods and the bads of the plan. In the case of capital punishment, I use a gross comparison of lives saved/lost. Just as innocent as the occasional innocents executed are the additional innocents lost without the death penalty. At this point, it is a weighing of numbers.“
But it is subjective, we cannot consider numbers solely alone. We simply have to consider some things that cannot be weighed…. If we were to go by numbers alone, one policy that might be introduced is Orwelian thought crimes. Hey! Murder rate drops to zero! Because we imprison everyone who might have the potential to kill someone!
The way I see it, the system must be perfect in that it never errs. Our system is imperfect in that it does err. But when the death penaly is brought into the picture, and the system fails, it’s completely unsalvageable. However, this is my opinion.
-David
Kill them all! Okay….maybe not all.
If you want to utilize a weighing of numbers consider that the murder rate in the US is 6 times that of Britian and 5 times that of Australia. Neither of those countries has the death penalty. Texas, a DP state, has twice the murder rate of Wisconsin, a state that doesn’t have the DP. If the death penalty is a deterrent, then why isn’t it working according to the numbers?
According to the article:
“Critics of the studies say they are based on faulty premises, insufficient data and flawed methodologies.”
Personally, I would be inclined to agree with this notion. I don’t feel
that capital punishment in its current form serves as a serious
deterrent to criminals.
I’d like to know just how the hell they straight up predicted the future and then postulated on how it was changed via capital punishment. NEXT.
I’d like to know just how the hell they straight up predicted the future and then postulated on how it was changed via capital punishment.
For a period, the supreme court ruled capital punishment as “cruel and unusual punishment.” Crime data from that period is compared to crime data following the re-institution of the death penalty. To cancel out state-specific effects, comparisons of crime figures were made between different states.
NEXT.
Wow, an appeal to ignorance. Beautiful! Just because you don’t understand doesn’t mean that these expert studies (Yale, UCLA, etc.) go away.
I’m from a death penalty state.
Our murder rate is still higher than non-death penalty states.
CP solves nothing.
I agree with Tallon5. Only extreme cases, and that’s for the US.
No.
*Sigh*
Ok. Just because two events are linked, does not mean that one causes the other. This is an association, not a proven causal relationship.
Yes, it is possible, maybe even likely, that capital punishment was responsible for the fewer murders. OR it could have been another factor. Maybe that county also happened to have better safety awareness. Or who knows what other factors could have been at play.
I also wonder how big a difference simply having those murderers behind bars, off the streets, has as opposed to having to actually kill them.
I’m not sure I support capital punishment or not, I don’t feel decisively one way or another at the moment. It’s just a pet peeve of mine when people jump to conclusions from data that may or may not support those conclusions.
PS- I also have a hard time imagining potential murderers going and doing research on their particular state or county’s death penalty rate before deciding “yeah, I think I’m gonna go off that guy…” Even if you believe the conclusions drawn from this research it says NOTHING about the reason those murders went down– whether it was b/c those murderers were physically unable to commit more murders, or the fear of punishment, etc. You cannot assume these things.
Personally, I still think that investing more into early childhood education (the first 5 years of life, and especially for low socioeconomic groups) would do wonders for reducing the need for prisons and capital punishment (you know, help people grow up to be decent human beings rather than get shat on by society and end up screwed up forever) but that’s just me….
punish the terrorist.
First, capital punishment really goes against the norms of modern Western values. Look to Western Europe and several other nations outside of that geographic and cultural area. The United States is a clinger to an old system in that it still executes its citizens.
Second, doesn’t the Bible purport God to state, “Vengeance is mine”? (Leviticus 19:18). Certainly, I cannot think of Jesus Christ as having been a proponent of capital punishment. Afterall, didn’t he spare Mary Magdalene from those who would stone her? After all, didn’t Jesus Christ come to not supplant the law of the Old Testament but to fulfill it? And how was it that he fulfilled it? According to many verses in the Gospel of Matthew, does not Jesus Christ say that we must Love our Neighbor? And if we are to love our neighbor, what hope is there for love if we kill him for his transgressions? Must we not give them the chance for redemption? After all, isn’t that what Jesus Christ has given us all? – a chance for redemption for our sins? If that is to be cut short, then what for us who have sinned?
Capital punishment, as it seems to me, is in contravention of Divine Will and Natural Law. There is absolutely no moral reasoning that can establish its justification.
There are several reasons why people choose to accept the validity of executing our citizens. I have heard, as one reason for supporting executions, is that the penal system in the United States will create more brutal criminals. There are those who say that our penal system will turn out people who are much more adept at crime than when they entered this system. I say to those people that that means our system is in need of a revamping Any system that turns out criminals who are more criminal or depraved than when they entered the system is a system that is defective and in opposition to Natural Law.
In short, capital punishment serves only the need for retribution but never salvation regardless of the reasons underlying why. I can go into many more issues about this but if you’d like, just ask me. Otherwise, I personally believe, from what I know of Jesus Christ’s teachings, that capital punishment is absolutely immoral regardless if I was informed that it saved lives.
nope. i agree with Direshark and everone else that says no.
to awth44: Jesus disagrees, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” John 8:7 NIV
I already am for it. Whoohoo heartlessness.
these are things I don’t enjoy thinking about!! bleh.
I think that capital punishment is appropriate for serial killers/mass murderers…
and that’s all I’d like to say.
I hope you have a great monday!
*HUGS*
RYC:
And thank you for using a Mini!! I think you’re one of the few that has used one on my site…
*BIG HUGS*
i’ve actually always been for it. i’m just against how many times they’ve used it. there are just SOME people that don’t deserve to live. however, it’s ridiculous how many times they’ve used it.
Having a hard time on this one.
Although there is a man on death row that murdered my Uncle when I was ten years old. He has flaunted it in the faces of my Uncles children who have gone to get some answers over the years. He knew exactly what he was doing and had every intention of seeing it through. He pleads that he was out of his mind when truthfully he was plain cold sober and is just pure twisted. He deserves to recieve the exact method he used when murdering my Uncle in my opinion.
no, and the American Bar Association isn’t either.
There are more than two options here. It’s not favor the death penalty or many more murders will take place.
What happens if we lock the murderers in jail – solitary, if we must. Won’t that save lives just as the death penalty would? And, for those of you who don’t want your tax dollars to go toward prisons, does that mean that you’re willing to allow another human being to die just to save a few pennies each year?
mightymarce
Ok. Just because two events are linked, does not mean that one causes the other. This is an association, not a proven causal relationship.
Excellent. So… on the basis of your docterate degree in economics, you are supplanting the research of at least a dozen independent studies? If I may as, where did you do your gradaute study?
Direshark
But it is subjective, we cannot consider numbers solely alone. We simply have to consider some things that cannot be weighed…. If we were to go by numbers alone, one policy that might be introduced is Orwelian thought crimes…
I spoke of numbers since most other factors seemed held constant. The number compared are the number of potential innocents executed under capital punishment versus the number of lives saved with the death penalty as to without. The sheer numbers of innocent lives save outnumber those innocents exected under capital punishment. Additionally, the sheer number advantage would seem to outweigh what moral negatives that comes with executing an innocent person.
(Many innocent victims saved) > (Moral outrage) + (A few innocents lost).
Czolya
I can go into many more issues about this but if you’d like, just ask me. Otherwise, I personally believe, from what I know of Jesus Christ’s teachings, that capital punishment is absolutely immoral regardless if I was informed that it saved lives.
Your stance seems to be this: The mere immorality of the action of capital punishment (based on Biblical precepts) outweighs any possible real world benifit.
As a test of your stance, I present an extreme hypothetical scenario: You have 5 minutes in a room with baby Adolf Hitler. You have one gun with a single bullet. Following the 5 minutes you would be transported to present time. Would the immoral act of killing Adolf Hitler before he rose to power be outweighed by the millions of lives saved through the averting of the Holocaust?
I don’t think taking lives to save lives is the solution. To me, there has to be a better.. more humane way.
Yes, I believe in capital punishment regardless of whether it saves lives : if you kill someone, and there is irrefutable DNA evidence to prove it, and you had no good reason for doing so (e.g., they broke into your home, or pulled a gun on you in the street), then you deserve to die.
I’m already in favor of it.
Most definitely for but with that said the system is flawed and needs to be refined as much as possible so that hopefully no innocent lives are taken.
I have been pro death penalty for as long as I can remember, so this study only reinforces what I think to be right.
I am in favor of capital punishment, but only if it is changed. A Chicago University law class took up 25 death row cases and were able to exonerate 13 of the convicts who were waiting their execution. In case you cannot do the math, that is over half. The governor of Illinois, on his last day in office, commuted teh death sentences of all of that states death row inmates to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Many of those exonerated were prosecuted using “jail house stoolies” who testified that teh accused killer confessed to them while sharing a jail cell. These stoolies later recieved lighter sentences for their crimes for “cooperating” with the police. However, many of them were lying. Also, many of those convicted and sentenced to death had inadequate defense. The law students – catch that: students – were able to find evidence and prove their innocence when the defendents own legal defense team did not or would not.
Studies show that it is more likely that a man of color will get the death penalty than a white man for a similar crime.
I think that the best system is what the Bible says: the death penalty should only be instituted when their are two eye witnesses. Pehaps forensic evidence could count as one piece of evidence. I don’t know. But I think the way in which teh death penalty is used should be changed.
Also, I really think more crimes should fall under capital punishment. Currently, acts of passion are seldom tried as capital cases, but I think they should be. If a life is taken, for whatever reason other than self defense, the perpetrator should face a potential death penalty if convicted. This 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree murder and man slaughter stuff makes no sense. Often the victim has suffered even more in a “man slaughter” case than in a murder 1 case. They should all be treated about the same. Perhaps then the “passion” will be tempered by reasoning that “hey, I might be executed if I kill someone”.
God’s way is the best, always has been , always will be. God bless.
huginn – You have 5 minutes in a room with baby Adolf Hitler. You have one gun with a single bullet. Following the 5 minutes you would be transported to present time. Would the immoral act of killing Adolf Hitler before he rose to power be outweighed by the millions of lives saved through the averting of the Holocaust?
That hypothetical will not work because there is no way to know the future or travel in time. You don’t know that a murderer will kill more people (though there is a good chance, it’s not guaranteed).
Do you have a different hypothetical question you could ask us that is more realistic, please?
Stats or not, I am favor of capital punishment.
And of course they don’t list their sources. Or at least all of them. Typical Post Wash.
I am in favor of capital punishment, it would save us a heck of a lot of money housing criminals rotting in jail.
All I can say is, who are we to judge?
huginn – the fact remains that they have essentially proven nothing. I am not obligated to respect bullshit.
I’m in favor….If you kill someone you should forfeit your life!
Read “Adams vs Texas” then answer. To answer your question, no. I would possibly then be in favour of life without parole. Good job security for Prison Officers and supporting services.
I’m in favor of capital punishment.
If it deters more murders, that’s great. However, it’s just icing on the cake. The ultimate purpose of punishment is retribution (“justice”).
Capital punishment is not exercised flawlessly in our country. This reflects the justice system as a whole more than the concept itself.
When the government executes a murderer who has been tried and convicted, it is not exacting revenge, it is maintaining law and order.
I forgot to mention, the nature of this kind of research makes it hard to be objective and conclusive.
Also, regarding “All I can say is, who are we to judge?”, I’d like to point out that this attitude would rule out any punishment for any crime ever. The answer to your question is that the authorities are the authorities to judge.
What I want to know is how do they know that capital punishment reduces murder rates? Maybe the countries that have capital punishment have lower murder rates, but corrolation does not imply causation. You can’t say that any murders were prevented by putting the an inmate to death. First, we have no way of knowing what really would have happened if we had taken another course of action. Second, if the inmate is behind bars anyway, he’s not out there killing people. He’s in prison. So killing someone who’s already locked up is not going to prevent murders.
And if we’re going to talk about capital punishment making the people outside the prison think twice about killing someone, we don’t have a way of proving that.
I don’t know if I disagree or agree with capital punishment, but I think this particular argument is weak.
SunnyMitsu
That hypothetical will not work because there is no way to know the future or travel in time.
Cop-out.
· I am in favor of capital punishment, it would save us a heck of a lot of money housing criminals rotting in jail.
Tavia_n_Jones
Tavia,
That assumption is 100% wrong. Since I just completed a presentation on this topic for Ethics class I can say with absolute surity that your assumption is very incorrect. The average cost of keeping someone in prison for their lifetime is less than a million dollars. When you add up legal fees etc etc for appeals over the course of time for a prisoner on death row the cost exceeds 2 million on average.
I am in favor of the death penalty, however I think the system needs to be revamped. There should be basic requirements for evidence in order for the death penalty to be given out to people. There are needs to be a stardardization that says regardless of your ethic or socioeconomic status you will be given the death penalty in X amount of time for X crime. THAT would be a deterrent.
As the legal system stands right now I think it is total BS to think that capital punishment is a deterrent to crime. If that were the case the prison population would not be increasing, but decreasing. Overall prison populations are going up. The crime rate is going up. Violent crime rates are going up! Where is the deterrent?
I am also distrubed by the fact that the U.S. is one of the few countries left in the world that practices capital punishment. We are in the same league as Iraq and China. Throughout the world people are trying to convince the U.S. to abolish the death penalty.
I am concerned enough after researching my project that the U.S. needs to consider revamping the system or abolish it, although I personally do support it.
For the most part I support capital punishment.
Huginn
“(Many innocent victims saved) > (Moral outrage) + (A few innocents lost).”
Aha! So we must introduce morality for morality’s sake! The problem with your equation of course is that we can’t put a number of “moral outrage” nor can we even say it’s only “a few innocents lost”.
Since we can never be 100% sure of a man’s guilt, as I said in the earlier post, saying “only a few innocents” doesn’t really work. Hell, it’s a possibility, a small one at that but a possibility that every person ever executed in the United States was innocent and did not commit the crime. My point being you cannot factor in a certainty that innocents are a minor loss due to uncertainty.
And since we are talking about their executions, I think this is important. My logic is as follows:
Our system may only execute a person if he is 100% guilty and we are absolutely certain.
We are never absolutely 100% certain.
Therefore…
Executions must never happen.
You are saying that the ends justify the means, and though I do see the ends, I question the means. All I’m saying, is that according to your logic, hypothetically (since we cannot ever be 100% sure of a man’s guilt) that you would (hypothetically) support killing 1000 innocents with a system to save 3000-10000 who would be killed outside the system. Whether or not you do believe in this, I’m simply saying that your belief allows for it to hypothetically happen.
While there is good logic to follow that, the system should not be a murderer by principle. There’s no real statistical or numerical way for me to discuss this, I’m just saying it shouldn’t happen because it’s a system of justice, not a system of life insurance/policing. When it does become a system of the latter, we get Orwelian Thought Crimes.
-David
“That hypothetical will not work because there is no way to know the future or travel in time.”
She is right, that hypothetical is a logical fallacy I think (because it excludes all other possibilities as the future is uncertain), though its specific name eludes me…under that alone I would not do anything to alter the future. Imagine if doing that only delayed the rise of a dictator bent on world domination, and imagine how WWII would have panned out if the USA wasn’t the only nation with nukes…
-David
Nope. Definetely not. I’m still against it.
I’m already in favor of it, but yes.
I can’t be objective about this because the man who murdered our son was sentenced to die in 1994, but his first appeal has yet to be filed. The average length of time it takes the California legal system to execute someone is 22 years. If our society wants to have capital punishment, then it should be carried out within six months.
If they don’t get you, the AIDS or MRSA will.
this is a tricky one…I am in favor of capital punnishment if the crime fits it (which I’m not so sure all of them do), but lets face it..99% of the time they will spend anywhere from 10-30 years in jail before they are put to death…this gives a lot of them every opportunity to escape or go back for 10000 appeals where eventually they will be let go…in that case what does it really save? Not lives, not money, not time, not anything.
I have changed my view on this and I’m not solid on it. Here are my reservations.
First, if we made it that those who face the death penalty instead would have to serve mandatory life in prison instead (as an option to the jury) I would chose this. Becuase not only are you saving potential lives you are also saving tax payer money that goes into the trying to put this person to death (which cost more in court costs then it does just to keep them in prison).
Second, I could never live with myself if there was even a slight chance that person was innocent and was put to death. Case in point the recent 60 Minutes investigation on the Bullet Fragment Evidence which is bunk.
Finally, I do believe people in prison at least have a slight chance to give their lives to the Lord.
So many of these comments are based on utilitarian ethics (which causes the greatest good) which while popular amongst the masses is still riddled with faults. Look it up. There are other ways to decide what is right and wrong. Some people even believe what is right or wrong is merely a socail construct. I won’t belabor this point.
Whether or not you beleive that certain crimes deserve the ultimate punishment, one cannot ignore the staggering number (its systematic failure of the justice system not an anomaly) of citizens…U.S. Americans with rights just like you or I that are condemned to death on little to no evidence. It takes on a new picture when you imagine its your brother or cousin that was mistaken for a murderer.
Also relevant is the quality of representation that death row defendants get. I can recall hearing about a case where the defendent tried to fire his public defender for sleeping during the court precedings. He was denied.
And yes, Virginia, statics are easily manipulated to show evidence for which ever way you are predisposed to swing them. “The death penalty “is applied so rarely that the number of homicides it can plausibly have caused or deterred cannot reliably be disentangled from the large year-to-year changes in the homicide rate caused by other factors…” That is a pretty damning rebuttal.
I also want to know which other countries they reviewed and more about them becuase the U.S. is the last “industrial” country to have the death penalty. Not allowing the death penalty is one of the requirements for entering the european union even.
So given all of the above points (and many more) I do not think the death penalty is an effective way to deter heinous crimes.
ps. Pol pot and Hitler committed suicide.
no.
yes, and i am.
I am in favor of capital punishment, peroid.
Nah.
i’m already for it. i don’t think we use capital punishment enough.
I’m in favor of capital punishment regardless of its deterrence value. I’m in favor of capital punishment because I’m in favor of justice.
Yes
That makes no sense… I have a really hard time believing that stufy.
no
Well, I don’t see how that would be different from life in prison.
I might add those same economists have also done studies showing the huge impact abortion has on lowering the level of crime.
The point is that just because something works doesn’t make it right. We might also harvest orphans for their organs to make up for the shortage of organ donations…but that wouldn’t be right.
Since I believe the death penalty is wrong, it doesn’t matter how much it reduces crime.
I’m always for capital punishment
what about life imprisonment?
i still won’t, who are we to say when someone is to die?
already in favor of capital punishment:)