Should capital punishment still be carried out?

I'm against capital punishment, for many reasons:

- Mistakes happen. Since 1973 in the U.S., over 140 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. These are ALL people who had been found guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt." A life sentence is reversible. An execution is not.

- Cost - because of the legal apparatus designed to minimize wrongful executions (and the enormous expense of maintaining death row facilities), it costs taxpayers MUCH more to execute someone than to imprison them for life.

- It is not a deterrent - violent crime rates are consistently HIGHER in death penalty jurisdictions.

- It is inconsistently and arbitrarily applied.

- Because the U.S. is one of the last remaining nations with capital punishment, many other countries refuse to extradite known criminals who should be standing trial here.

- It fosters a culture of violence by asserting that killing is an acceptable solution to a problem.

- Jesus was against it (see Matthew 5:7 & 5:38-39, James 4:12, Romans 12:17-21, John 8:7, and James 1:20).

- Life without parole (LWOP) is on the books in most states now (all except Alaska), and it means what it says. People who get this sentence are taken off the streets. For good.

- As Voltaire once wrote, "let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson."

- Whether you’re a hardened criminal or a government representing the people, killing an unarmed human being is wrong. Period. “He did it first” is not a valid reason.

Speaking as British, we abolished it nearly 50 years ago for very good reasons, many of which are in previous answers. But to summarise

- the criminal justice system is not perfect and it happens far too often that the wrong person is executed

- it doesn't deter crime: we have a lower murder rate than the USA, largely because we have an almost total ban on guns (now that's another debate I will quite happily enter but it wasn't the question. Suffice it to say that US states that use the death penalty have a higher murder rate than the ones that don't, basically because they are also the ones with more lax gun laws).

I would also say, as Brandon Di Rocco says, that if you believe in the concept of capital punishment, DO IT! The fact that the USA allows endless appeals against the death sentence, resulting in the major cause of death on death row actually being natural causes and making it more expensive than life imprisonment, is another argument against the mental torture of waiting but it's an entirely different debate.

But let's explore it - when the UK had capital punishment, the execution was always scheduled for three weeks after sentencing, traditionally to allow the murderer three clear Sundays to make peace with God. Three further weeks at most were allowed to exhaust all appeals. Execution would then take place by "long drop" hanging, probably the most humane method ever invented. The prisoner was marched from the condemned cell to the gallows chamber next door, hooded, pinioned on arms and legs, the noose placed around his neck and the trap sprung. It would typically take ten seconds to do this. The idea of the "long drop" was that the executioner would calculate the length of rope according to the prisoner's weight, such that when he falls through the trap, once the rope reaches full stretch it applies such a force that it breaks his neck and he dies in seconds. Washington state still has this method available as an alternative to lethal injection.

There were a few executions in the UK of US troops who had committed murder during World War II. They took place using the British method but American protocol. Albert Pierrepoint, the executioner who did most of them, hated it because American protocol requires reading out all the charges again and asking the prisoner for his last words. Pierrepoint wasn't used to that and I agree with him: it only prolongs the agony.

The upshot is that when we had capital punishment, we USED it, and didn't faff about. It made the debate focus properly on whether it is ever right to commit judicial murder and whether it actually does deter crime.

I just throw all that out because it illustrates the issues.

The death penalty is not an option. If a person is accused of murder in the USA and happens to cross the border into Canada, the Canadians will not extradite him back to the USA if he faces the death penalty. Even the British stated that if they caught Bin Laden, They would not hand him over to the Americans, if he faced the death penalty.

For the worst crimes, life without parole is better, for many reasons. I’m against capital punishment not because of sympathy for criminals but because it doesn’t reduce crime, prolongs the anguish of families of murder victims, costs a whole lot more than life in prison, and, worst of all, risks executions of innocent people.

The worst thing about it. Errors:

The system can make tragic mistakes. As of now, 142 wrongly convicted people on death row have been exonerated. We’ll never know for sure how many people have been executed for crimes they didn’t commit. DNA is rarely available in homicides, often irrelevant and can’t guarantee we won’t execute innocent people.

Keeping killers off the streets for good:

Life without parole, on the books in most states, also prevents reoffending. It means what it says, and spending the rest of your life locked up, knowing you’ll never be free, is no picnic. Two big advantages:

-an innocent person serving life can be released from prison

-life without parole costs less than capital punishment

Costs, a big surprise to many people:

Study after study has found that capital punishment is much more expensive than life in prison. The process is much more complex than for any other kind of criminal case. The largest costs come at the pre-trial and trial stages. These apply whether or not the defendant is convicted, let alone sentenced to death.

Crime reduction (deterrence):

Homicide rates for states that use capital punishment are consistently higher than for those that don’t. The most recent FBI data confirms this. For people without a conscience, fear of being caught is the best deterrent. Capital punishment is no more effective in deterring others than life sentences.

Who gets it:

Capital punishment magnifies social and economic inequalities. It isn't reserved for the worst crimes, but for defendants with the worst lawyers. It doesn't apply to people with money. Practically everyone sentenced to death had to rely on an overworked public defender.

Victims:

People assume that families of murder victims want capital punishment to be imposed. It isn't necessarily so. Some are against it on moral grounds. But even families who have supported it in principle have testified to the protracted and unavoidable damage that capital punishment process does to families like theirs and that life without parole is an appropriate alternative.

Capital punishment comes down to retribution or revenge- the only plausible reasons to support it.

The death penalty continues to be an important deterrent for crime. The laws need to be fixed up to save money and speed the process up a bit.

If you were a murder would you rather spend 40 years in prison, getting assaulted on a daily basis, hanging around with crazy people, smelling stinky things, hearing noise all the time and eating terrible food or just fast forward to the end?

i believe that if they are convicted of their crimes and sentenced to death the sentence should be carried out, example if a person was convicted and sentenced to death on the first of january the sentence would be carried out by the end of the month, i also believe we should take a lesson from Russia on our prison system, it's either a vacation or a gladiator camp, meaning basically daycare and the person sent to jail was "ok whatever im not gonna stop because its not to bad" or it makes them worse, where as people sent to Russian Gulags who actually leave them will kill themselves before they go back if you serve 2 years in a Russian prison and leave you change your ways because you never want to go back. Prison should be that, something that you will do all in your power to never go to or return to not something that's hmm whatever

No, because it will not bring back the deceased and the person judged as guilty has on occasion been found innocent years later.

The Death Penalty: Justice & Saving More Innocents

Dudley Sharp

The death penalty has a foundation in justice and it spares more innocent lives.

Anti death penalty arguments are either false or the pro death penalty arguments are stronger.

The majority populations of all countries, likely, support the death penalty for some crimes (1).

Why? Justice.

THE DEATH PENALTY: SAVING MORE INNOCENT LIVES

1) The Death Penalty: Saving More Innocent Lives

http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2012/03/death-penalt...

2) Innocents More At Risk Without Death Penalty

http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2012/03/innocents-mo...

3) OF COURSE THE DEATH PENALTY DETERS: A review of the debate

http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/03/of-course-de...

MORAL FOUNDATIONS: DEATH PENALTY

1) Immanuel Kant: "If an offender has committed murder, he must die. In this case, no possible substitute can satisfy justice. For there is no parallel between death and even the most miserable life, so that there is no equality of crime and retribution unless the perpetrator is judicially put to death.". "A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else's life is simply immoral."

2) Pope Pius XII; "When it is a question of the execution of a man condemned to death it is then reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned of the benefit of life, in expiation of his fault, when already, by his fault, he has dispossessed himself of the right to live." 9/14/52.

3) John Murray: "Nothing shows the moral bankruptcy of a people or of a generation more than disregard for the sanctity of human life." "... it is this same atrophy of moral fiber that appears in the plea for the abolition of the death penalty." "It is the sanctity of life that validates the death penalty for the crime of murder. It is the sense of this sanctity that constrains the demand for the infliction of this penalty. The deeper our regard for life the firmer will be our hold upon the penal sanction which the violation of that sanctity merit." (Page 122 of Principles of Conduct).

4) John Locke: "A criminal who, having renounced reason... hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or tyger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security." And upon this is grounded the great law of Nature, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." Second Treatise of Civil Government.

5) Jean-Jacques Rousseau: "In killing the criminal, we destroy not so much a citizen as an enemy. The trial and judgments are proofs that he has broken the Social Contract, and so is no longer a member of the State." (The Social Contract).

6) Saint (& Pope) Pius V: "The just use of (executions), far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this (Fifth) Commandment which prohibits murder." "The Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent" (1566).

3200 additional pro death penalty quotes

http(COLON)//prodpquotes.info/

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REBUTTAL: Common Anti Death Penalty Claims

Saving Costs with The Death Penalty

http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/02/death-penalt...

RACE & THE DEATH PENALY: A REBUTTAL TO THE RACISM CLAIMS

http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/search?q=racism

"Killing Equals Killing: The Amoral Confusion of Death Penalty Opponents"

http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/02/01/murder-and...

"The Death Penalty: Neither Hatred nor Revenge"

http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/07/20/the-death-...

"Moral/ethical Death Penalty Support: Christian and secular Scholars"

http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2009/07/death-penalt...

"The Death Penalty: Not a Human Rights Violation"

http://homicidesurvivors.com/2006/03/20/the-death-...

1) US Death Penalty Support at 80%; World Support Remains High

95% of murder victim's families support death penalty

from

Murder Victims' Families for Death Penalty Repeal: More Hurt For Victims:

http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2012/04/victims-fami...

Much more, upon request. sharpjfa@aol.com

if capital punishment was in every state and actually USED it ....there would much less murders and rapist and such ... and it would save tax payers trillions of dollars ......mabe more

They should just be executed.