You can take a look at the positions of most of the world's major religions at www.religioustolerance.org Scroll down to hot topics and click on death penalty. In the meantime, people have been rethinking their views on the death penalty in the last few years in the light of what they have found out about how it actually functions. You don't have to condone brutal crimes or want the criminals who commit them to avoid a harsh punishment to ask whether the death penalty prevents or even reduces crime and whether it risks killing innocent people. 124 people on death rows have been released with proof that they were wrongfully convicted. DNA is available in less than 10% of all homicides and isn’t a guarantee we won’t execute innocent people. The death penalty doesn't prevent others from committing murder. No reputable study shows the death penalty to be a deterrent. To be a deterrent a punishment must be sure and swift. The death penalty is neither. Homicide rates are higher in states and regions that have it than in states that don’t. We have a good alternative. Life without parole is now on the books in 48 states. It means what it says. It is sure and swift and rarely appealed. Life without parole is less expensive than the death penalty. The death penalty costs much more than life in prison, mostly because of the legal process which is supposed to prevent executions of innocent people. The death penalty isn't reserved for the worst crimes, but for defendants with the worst lawyers. It doesn't apply to people with money. When is the last time a wealthy person was on death row, let alone executed? The death penalty doesn't necessarily help families of murder victims. Murder victim family members across the country argue that the drawn-out death penalty process is painful for them and that life without parole is an appropriate alternative. Problems with speeding up the process. Over 50 of the innocent people released from death row had already served over a decade. If the process is speeded up we are sure to execute an innocent person.

Who believes in capital punishment - and what is your religion?

Just wondering.

Anonymous2007-11-12T22:46:26Z

Favorite Answer

I am an Atheist / Buddhist, and I'm opposed.
I'm not even allowed to kill bugs. =/

I don't understand why we kill people, who kill people, to show people that killing people is wrong. At least that's how the bumper sticker goes.

I think the death penalty is the epitome of hypocrisy.

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Chantal G2007-11-13T05:58:34Z

I don't like capital punishment, but I believe that, sometimes, it is the only way to deal with habitually violent criminals. It is the only way to guarantee that such people will never rape, torture, or murder another human being, ever again.

The drawbacks, aside from the obvioous one of taking a human life, are

1. In the US, the appeals process is extremely long and drawn-out, because we want to make very certain that we don't kill an innocent person. We in theory want to give a person every possible chance to live. Annoying as it is, it has also saved some innocent lives.

2. Because of the extensive appeals process, it is sometimes considered more expensive to sentence a person to death than to simply sentence the person to life in prison without parole.

3. There is considerable debate about whether certain methods of execution are unduly cruel. Now, even lethal injection is being scrutinized for this. If you look back through history, lethal injection is about the most humane method of execution yet devised--compared to decapitation, drawing and quartering, burning at the stake, firing squad, electrocution, gas chamber, and so on.

4. Having a death penalty does not necessarily discourage the commission of capital crimes. I am told there are studies which demonstrate this. However, I also can tell you that criminals from other states go out their way to not commit those kinds of crimes in Texas, which allows the death penalty.

Despite these disadvantages, I still support capital punishment because I think there are some crimes which are so evil that a person ought to have to atone for them with his or her life. I am not trying to be melodramatic by using the term 'evil;' that is simply how horrible I consider those crimes to be.

I'm Catholic.

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tentofield2007-11-12T22:54:18Z

No civilised country executes its citizens. Australia became civilised in 1985 when Western Australia abolished capital punishment. The UK had to wait until 1998 when it was finally abolished. The USA is still a barbaric nation. It is even more barbaric than most nations that maintain capital punishment in that children, the mentally ill and the mentally subnormal are executed in the USA. That puts the USA in a club with Nigeria and Iran.

No Christian can support capital punishment, it is completely against the teachings of Christ. (Not the teachings of the Old testament but the teachings of Christ which is what Christians are supposed to believe.)

There is no justification for capital punishment in any circumstances. It diminishes everyone involved.

I'm an atheist.

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?2007-11-12T22:48:46Z

I support Capital Punishment. If I can kill someone on the battlefield (who's only fault is being the enemy), then I can back the idea that killing a person who raped and/or murdered people (mostly likely in a horrific way) is the right way to go.
I'm Inclusive Monotheistic, but never really saw the connection between religion and capital punishment. Some say you should never kill another person (thus are against it). Those some have never been to war and stared down the barrel of another person's rifle.
Sometimes killing is just a necessary evil.

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Anonymous2016-10-16T12:19:50Z

Am a Hindu which propogates Ahimsa as certainly one of its tenets. nevertheless i think and believe that Capital punishment is a shouldn't in elementary terms as a deterring element yet in addition as punishment. for people who say that if a individual is alive there are nevertheless probabilities of saving him or his soul adn make him turnaround, i might ask one element.... IS the existence of one individual who's shown to have killed and is possibly to repeat, is greater useful than the lies of the different individual who's harmless and is below danger from this murderer? NO this is not. Capital punishment and punishments on the lines of an eye fixed for an eye fixed must be there. i know many people shall disagree with this and locate me an extremist or something, yet such type of punishments must be there especially as a deterrent. a individual rapes a woman, yet is served sentence or finally enable circulate. he can not ever adventure the trauma he led to the female. So the only way he can comprehend it is that if he is going by using teh same element himself. make constructive he is going by using it and adventure it first hand the way it feels to be violated. That would be a deterrent.

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Who believes in capital punishment - and what is your religion?

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