Poll: The death penalty, are you for or against?

The death penalty, are you for or against?

  • For

    Votes: 221 42.6%

  • Against

    Votes: 243 46.8%

  • Undecided

    Votes: 55 10.6%
  • Total voters
    519
dirtychinchilla said:
The right given the justice system by whom? You're not understanding my point, but I don't think I can explain it any more clearly. In my eyes, the judge who allows someone to be killed is as bad as the murdered.

There is a difference in my eyes between value of life and input to society. All life has the same value whether that life is spent behind bars or not.

Clearly you and I sit on very different sides of the argument and that is not going to change for either of us, but my main qualm is the hypocrisy.
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Exactly, you can't get a better definition of pre-meditated killing than capital punishment, it's timed to the second.

Capital punishment allows criminals to dictate the morality of our society!
Even America has now started to wake up to the hypocrisy and brutality of executions and very few states now perform them, thankfully!
 
dirtychinchilla said:
The right given the justice system by whom? You're not understanding my point, but I don't think I can explain it any more clearly. In my eyes, the judge who allows someone to be killed is as bad as the murdered.
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I think I get what you're saying, but I don't have an answer for you as i'm not an expert in law. I don't know the ins-and-outs of implementing a law such as that or what it would involve.

Clearly you and I sit on very different sides of the argument and that is not going to change for either of us, but my main qualm is the hypocrisy.
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That's fair enough, you're well entitled to think that. :)
 
Collider said:
Against it, under any and all circumstances.

I'll wander into it, though I doubt I have a popular view.

I don't believe in the state killing people for breaking the law (absurd in a sense as I have served in the military however I make a distinction in the case of the law and how it is applied).

It isn't a deterrent, it has absolutely no impact on crime rates, its often advocated by people who have an unhealthy predilection for suffering, it can be used against the wrong people (and one life incorrectly taken isn't worth it) and its just public fun for all the wrong reasons. It's self indulgent, costly and ultimately pointless.

This is not based on some namby pamby nonsense where I want to go and hug wrong doers and give everyone who has murdered someone a snuggle. I get a bit bored of the idea that if you are opposed to capital punishment you must be some sort of idiot who condones crime. I've seen people who have been killed in very inventive ways and other altogether unlovely things, I've worked with murderers and paedophiles and I still don't believe in it.

Whatever the state is it should be greater than the base sentiments of the people who live in it. If you listened to so called popular opinion you would not only have the death penalty you'd have public lynchings of paediatricians because some people cannot spell.

I actually and honestly believe that the way society treats its criminals / prisoners is a true reflection on that society.

I don't believe in it and I think its a silly thing to want to reintroduce..there isn't a country in the world that has it whose standards we would or should look on with envy, it exists in places where people have essentially as good as lost their marbles when it comes to crime and law enforcement.
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Couldn't have said it better myself.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Dealing with criminals shouldn't be about exacting the most amount of pain possible, that is simply revenge, and vindictive. Killing someone(if it was done somewhat properly) would be far less stressful and horrible than spending 50 years being raped and beaten in prison before dying slowly from something in prison anyway.
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I'd agree that revenge shouldn't be the motivator behind prison sentences. However is rape a common problem in British prisons? You keep referencing it as if it's an expected aspect of prison life, it might be in America although even then there might be an element of dramatisation in films that doesn't reflect the truth.

drunkenmaster said:
Fact is in the overly litigious society, most death row guys spend years, even decades on death row with entire teams of lawyers both defence and prosecution fighting appeal after appeal and that is where all the big costs come from.

The simple costs are, slightly more expensive jail cell for 6 months vs a lifetime in a cheaper jail, its only the legal fee's that turn it into a joke cost wise.
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So what are you advocating here - a reduction in the number of appeals or a denial of prisoners right to appeal?

drunkenmaster said:
Should we do it, yes, does it deter criminals, yes, a proper death setence, one where most people get off eventually isn't a deterant. if it was much more limited for cases where there are confessions, video, caught in the act only where there isn't any question.
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Would you be able to provide any links to the deterrent effect? I'm not asking for an argument of "it stands to reason..." line but any actual evidence that most or even many criminals consider the punishments before committing the crime - especially in the case of murders which are frequently crimes committed on the spur of the moment and without careful weighting of the potential consequences.

Snipped most of the rest as it's a rant about illegal wars.

drunkenmaster said:
A bad sentence against innocent people is an unavoidable circumstance with no end in sight, you're confusing wrongfully found guilty and the method of punishment. A genuinely innocent person will simply not be the man who comes out of a decade in jail if they are found innocent, killing them or leaving them to be brutalised in jail, both are horrifically awful outcomes, neither is better or worse, either way you kill the man that goes into jail, one way the innocent man has some relative peace, the other way another man comes out of jail after years or decades of often horrific treatment a completely different person anyway.

I'd choose to die, innocent and wrongly accused the person I am than a beaten, tortured person 10-20 years later unable to live normally anyway. Get rid of the death penalty in the states, innocent people are just going to end up in gen pop being treated much worse and having their lives completely destroyed, just in a different, much more violent, much worse way. The problem is the legal system and its focus, usually politically motivated, causing one person commiting a crime to get one punishment one month and a different punishment 3 months later when the same crime isn't as "popular" in the media. Likewise prosecutions choose who to prosecute, if in the publics eye someone is SEEN as being guilty and the crime is particular in focus in the media, prosecutions are more likely to push for a conviction on bad evidence than at another time when they might think getting a conviction helps no one.

When people's jobs are based on the publics opinion, and therefore who gets prosecuted and why is subject to people getting elected and looking as tough on a changing scale you're in trouble. None of that has anything to do with the death penalty.
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What you appear to be saying is that with Americas prison system the way it is then it's better to be executed than spend time in jail. It's dubious but let's proceed with that as a premise - that's not really an argument for keeping the death penalty as much as it's an argument for reform of their prison system on the basis that it's inhumane and ineffective. I don't think that's what you intended the argument to be but it's something you can support using exactly the same points.

Not incidentally but as the death penalty exists in the States any prisoners would be in death row and in solitary confinement so no raping or beatings unless they're into self harm. If they're put in general population as an innocent person because there is no death penalty then it's a possibility they will suffer abuse but also a possiblity is that of release if further evidence comes to light which exonerates them, once someone is dead the release and/or pardon is somewhat of a nominal event only. It must be absolutely terrible to be locked up and be innocent of the crimes you are accused and there's no real way of making it right but at the point where death is the preferable option then something has gone very wrong indeed with the system.
 
Tute said:
Camera footage for starters.
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Right because CCTV is infallible is it? Most of it is shot from a distance and in low definition.

Even with a good image you can't rule out false identification.

Camera footage is great supporting evidence, but I would never advocate it deciding whether someone lives or dies.
 
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FabienO said:
Not for the punishment, but for the deterrent. Innocent people get life in jail too.
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Yeah because it was a massive deterant for Timothy McVeigh wasn't it? Care to look at the countries who still have the death penalty and compare their homicide rate on average to ours?

Didn't think so.

The logical fallacy with the determent argument is it relies on the criminal having a fear of death and/or time to think of the consequences. Two factors that are rarely present in murders. You have to pretty irrational to commit pre-meditated murder and ones on the spur of the moment lack the foresight of any consequences.
 
estebanrey said:
Right because CCTV is infallible is it? Most of it is shot from a distance and in low definition.

Even with a good image you can't rule out false identification.

Camera footage is great supporting evidence, but I would never advocate it deciding whether someone lives or dies.
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It was purely used as an example to disprove your "nobody can be 100% sure" rubbish. To be fair, if you believe that then the discussion is pretty much ended anyway.
 
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