Should 'Death Penalty' be Abolished? Why / Why not?

For me I am a firm believer in an eye for an eye. If you take a life in cold blood then yours should be taken also. Prison these days is more of a holiday then a punishment, inmates recieve tax-payer funded meals, entertainment, gym facilities, medical and dental, education and accomadation. All the while honest, law abiding citizens have to put up for these animals to survive behind bars. Most of the time these monsters who are sentenced to life behind bars are back on the streets within a decade and statistics suggest that a large number of these former inmates reoffend and end up back in prison anyways. Give em the chair I say....

You have had amany good, and some pretty duff answers to your question, but I believe your question is based upon a number of assumptions which are either fallacious or have no evidential support:

1. Why is the DP 'fairer' than life imprison without the chance of parole? One is instantaneous, the other is a life sentence (quite literally)

2. Internationally - aside from the USA - those countries that routinely execute their citezens are Yemen; China; North Korea; Saudi Arabia and Iran. Are the citizens of those countries freer or more secure as a result of the DP?

3. Only some US States execute criminals. Are those States safer than the majority that don't? Do they have lower crime rates? If not (and they don't) your argument evaporates.

4. What evidence is there that those who murder make a calculated guess at whether or not they will be executed themselves, before doing the crime? None that I'm aware of. they may calculate whether or not they'll be caught, but that's not the same thing.

In short, other than a base desire for revenge (which is sometimes understandable) there is no evidence at all that the DP has any impact AT ALL on crime rates. That - coupled with the very real chance of executing the wrong guy, makes the DP an anachronism in the 21st century.

I don't believe any statistical evidence has been shown that the death penalty deters crime in any appreciable way. One thing to consider is that we, as flawed and imperfect human beings, have a very real limit on knowledge. We can’t really “know” for sure whether someone is guilty even in the face of overwhelming evidence. When someone has been convicted of a crime in a US court, it is a determination of guilt beyond a “reasonable” doubt. What is reasonable is clearly subjective. Regardless, despite this criteria, we still convict innocent people. This is demonstrated often. An example is when someone is exonerated through some sort of scientific evidence which was previously unavailable at the time of conviction such as the analysis of DNA. This shows that despite a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt, they did not actually commit the crime.

Unlike a life sentence which someone can be released from if exonerated, the Death Penalty is forever. So the question is, “Should we accept the fact that we will be killing a small but real percentage of people in order to gain whatever is gained from killing someone for a heinous crime?”

Personally, I don’t think it is justifiable to kill someone as punishment, regardless of whether they are actually guilty. Despite how satisfying it may be to the victim or their families, it is simply vengeance and revenge. But setting that personal view aside, I also don’t think it is acceptable to execute a certain percentage of innocent people. In this, we must attempt to weigh the injustice of each side. Is it more unjust for the victim or victim’s families to not have the satisfaction or peace of mind that comes from executing their assailant? Or is it more unjust for an innocent person to be executed for a crime they did not commit. I think we must imagine ourselves in each situation and then decide. Of course no one can know until this situation is actually put upon them, but I think what is most reasonable is that killing anyone who is innocent is unacceptable and therefore the death penalty should be abolished.

To comment on previous responses:

Asmul8ed’s: It has been shown that due to length of time criminals are incarcerated before they are executed and the added security needed to house these violent offenders (who have nothing more to lose) it actually cost’s the state more to execute someone that to imprison them for life with the general population.

Pen: Regardless of how prison conditions have may have improved, I don’t think anyone who has actually been in prison would ever say it is “more of a holiday.”

It is abolished in Australia, happened I think around 20 years ago in the last state. We have a much lower murder rate than the USA. Apparently in the USA it is 5.8 per 100,000 but only 1.5 in Australia. Of course statistics in this area are hard (is it reported? what counts as homicide? etc) but overall, look at the list of countries which have the death penalty and countries which don't, it is Islamic countries, African countries and the USA which do, and most first world countries (usually with lower crime rates) don't.

I think the death penalty is a bit of a primitive punishment. It just seems hypocritical, state-sanctioned murder. Also, there have been many cases where people were found to be not guilty after they were executed.

And no, murderers don't roam the street when you don't have a death penalty. They receive life in jail.

I live in Texas, and I supported capital punishment for a long time, but the more I learned about it, the more I came to oppose it. In the end, several factors changed my mind:

1. By far the most compelling is this: Sometimes the legal system gets it wrong. In the last 35 years in the U.S., 130 people have been released from death row because they were exonerated by DNA evidence. These are ALL people who were found guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Unfortunately, DNA evidence is not available in most homicide cases. So, as long as the death penalty is in place, you are pretty much GUARANTEED to occasionally execute an innocent person.

Really, that should be reason enough for most people to oppose it. If you need more, read on:

2. Cost: Because of higher pre-trial expenses, longer trials, jury sequestration, extra expenses associated with prosecuting & defending a DP case, and the appeals process (which is necessary - see reason #1), it costs taxpayers MUCH more to execute prisoners than to imprison them for life. This disparity becomes even greater when you consider the time value of money – most of the costs of capital punishment are up-front, occurring before and during the trial itself, whereas most of the costs of life imprisonment are spread over the term of incarceration (usually 30-40 years).

3. The deterrent effect is questionable at best. Violent crime rates are actually HIGHER in death penalty jurisdictions. This may seem counterintuitive, and there are many theories about why this is (Ted Bundy saw it as a challenge, so he chose Florida – the most active execution state at the time – to carry out his final murder spree). It is probably due, at least in part, to the high cost (see #2) - every extra dollar spent on capital punishment is one that's NOT going to police departments, drug treatment programs, education, and other government services that help prevent crime. Personally, I think it also has to do with the hypocrisy of taking a stand against murder…by killing people. The government fosters a culture of violence by saying, ‘do as I say, not as I do.’

4. It is inconsistently and arbitrarily applied. Factors that should be irrelevant (geography, race of the victim, poor representation, etc.) are all too often the determining factors in whether someone gets death versus life in prison.

5. There’s also an argument to be made that death is too good for the worst criminals. Let them wake up and go to bed every day of their lives in a prison cell, and think about the freedom they DON’T have, until they rot of old age. When Ted Bundy was finally arrested in 1978, he told the police officer, “I wish you had killed me.” Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (the architect of the 9/11 attacks) would love nothing better than to be put to death. In his words, "I have been looking to be a martyr [for a] long time."

6. Most governments are supposed to be secular, but for those who invoke Christian law in this debate, you can find arguments both for AND against the death penalty in the Bible. The New Testament (starring Jesus) is primarily ANTI-death penalty. For example, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus praises mercy (Matthew 5:7) and rejects “an eye for an eye” (Matthew 5:38-39). James 4:12 says that GOD is the only one who can take a life in the name of justice. In John 8:7, Jesus himself says, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

Like many here I believe in an eye for an eye, what I am concerned about lately is who's eye are we taking in the name of justice, example; In Dallas, Texas USA (Dallas County) 18 or 19 of 40 convicted life sentences or death row convictions were overturned due to DNA evidence, some spending up to 26 years in prison for crimes they did not commit (That is almost 50% of the convictions).I then have to ask myself how many innocent people have we put to death in the name of justice.

Too many convictions are based on "eye witness accounts" and no hard evidence when our own Justice Dept. says that up to 79% of these accounts are faulty and in the above cases 95% of the eyewitness accounts were erroneous.

I have to ask myself do I want to condemn innocent people to death in my name.

These findings only came out when a new prosecutor was elected in Dallas and he formed a special task force.

In many states the opposite is happening some states like Virginia have tried to put a limit on how far the courts will go back to use DNA, for example if you were convicted of murder 20 years ago and DNA could exonerate you in Virginia you could not use the DNA because the case is more than 2 years old, this tells me that Va. knows it has innocent people in jail and does not want to assume the responsibility.

All the statistics compiled on the differences between locations with the death penalty and those without document a so-called "brutalization effect" of the presence of the death penalty -- they have HIGHER incidences of murders. At any rate, a defendant who is convicted of first degree murder usually DOES end up paying with his/her life in the form of a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. They die in prison, they just do it in their own time.

i really think it should stay but the requirements should be reconsidered.

i think sociopaths should be a definant slaughter they are ppl who have no emotions and are barely human. they feel no remorse for their victims and can never be rejoined with society. why pay to keep them alive when they are a serious danger?

i also think pedophiles should be slaughtered too. anyone who has the urge to tamper with a child is sick and needs to be removed to prevent them from harming others. not to mention if they really wanted to be fair on the ped then death is the better option than the fate they face in jail.

i think then the line gets blurry with certain murders and rapest. i think ppl who intentionally kill or rape should be slaughtered but the line really needs to be cleared up.

some murders are dangerous but others are are accidents.

but only with the training of paul ekman could you really know if their remorse is real or not.

the only issue i have with the death penalty in a negative way is when an innocent person is the victim of justice. only when they determine that there is with out a doubt 100% evidence can they use it. like as i said using microexpressions to determine if they are lyin and if they are the correct person.

there is also the concept of survival of the strongest. if you remove the vial from society and prevent the child molesters from spreading their illness then society recovers.

its a proven fact that pedophiles are victims themselves. only sociopaths are the starters of this disgracful act.

I live in Britain where it is already abolished. I realize many other countries still practice this however, including the USA.

Personally, I have felt for many years that there is a need to bring this method of deterrent back. I feel that any criminal, who had committed the most dreadful of crimes (ones that must be pre decided) and who can 100% be linked to the crime with DNA evidence, then they too should face the penalty. The decision should be taken with two judges of differing view points and a jury.

As for other countries, I feel some methods of administering the penalty are more barbaric than the crime itself in many instances. For example: Stoning. However, whilst we can campaign for changes in these countries, we have no right to force our view points upon them.

Its a very difficult subject, in ways I agree with the death penalty for serious crimes such as murderers. Although there is always the chance of innocent people being convicted. Its bad enough when innocent people have wrongly been in prision for years. There is no compensation for wronly killing someone, but I guess thats why criminals are on death row for so long. I think if the death penalty was in place it would deter alot of people. The prision system in my country (UK) is a joke, there is nothing to deter people committing serious crimes.