Capital punishment

[DemocratSinceBirth]

I was having a discussion with my girlfriend and I told her if Hitler would have lived I couldn't serve on a jury that wold have sentenced him to death because I oppose the death penalty, a priori. However I certainly can understand the motivation of those who would sentence him to death and would not question them.

Same for terrorists and mass murderers.

[Logical]

1. Nope. Room for mistakes and not civilized. Look at the countries that banned it vs. kept it. I.....

want to be lie the ones that banned it.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. Israel has executed one person in its some seventy year history.

Adolf Eichmann...

I couldn't have put the noose on him but i wouldn't second guess the person who did...

Ditto for the jurors at Nuremberg.

[RoccoR5955]

3. I ask you this:

Why do we kill people who kill people to show people that killing people is wrong?

Isn't it just as wrong to kill someone for killing people?

What makes one less a murderer if one sentences one to death?

[djg21]

6. It depends of the purpose served by the sentence/sanction.

Putting aside the endless debate over whether capital punishment serves as a deterrent (IME criminals commit crimes because they think they won't get caught), and the question of whether some criminals can commit such heinous crimes that they can deserve to be put to death, the death penalty is 100% effective at removing individuals who cannot abide by the law from society, and thereby protecting society from those individuals. There certainly are persons who commit crimes so pernacious and never can live free in society without reoffending, and therefore should be removed permanently from society (and arguably not placed in prison given even the remotest possibility that they escape or be released and commit additional crimes).

Unfortunately, the easy cases are just that . . . easy. Who would ever say that someone like an Eichman, or a confessed serial killer like Ted Bundy, or perhaps a know terrorist like Osama Bin Laden (hypothetically) didn't deserve to be executed. The much harder cases are the ones where questions of guilt can and sometimes do exist. So long as the justice system remains fallible and innocents can be convicted, there is no viable justification for the death penalty IMO.

[RoccoR5955]

8. NOBODY deserves to be executed.

If you are trying to convince people that killing people is wrong.
Plain and simple.
Put them in prison for life without parole, but taking their life is just institutional murder.
Prison takes these people out of society. When you kill one terrorist, you only breed at least two more.
Besides, if you lock them away, you can study them and find out why they murder, and possibly come up with preventative measures, so that this does not occur again . You simply cannot do anything to prevent these killings if you execute people.

[djg21]

10. Reasonable minds may differ.

I have no ideological issue with the thought that some crimes are just so heinous and deplorable that the perpetrators should give up the right to live amongst us, or even amongst a population of prison inmates. I understand that you do have an issue with the concept, and that is fine. There is nothing requiring that we agree on everything to be on the team.

I'm opposed to capital punishment (1) because it is irreversible and innocents may be subjected to the death penalty, (2) it has been applied disparately based on race, and (3) it has been more likely to be imposed when a criminal defendant lacked means to obtain the best possible legal representation.

[REP]

11. If that were its purpose, you might have have a point

As our criminal justice is now, I cannot support the death penalty in practice but I do in theory. And that theory being that there are penalties and consequences for breaking laws; for some crimes, the penalty and consequence is death. It is not to teach a lesson or any other thing other than a penalty; the price is forfeiture of life. There are some people with whom society is better off without. Imprisoning someone for life is not much better; our prisons are brutal and a quick death is merciful in comparison and if I were vindictive, I'd want to abolish the death penalty merely to assure maximum suffering on the part of those who commit the most vile crimes. Until our criminal justice system is far more just and far less corrupt, a life spent in hellish conditions is preferable to executing the innocent, but only just.

[Uponthegears]

4. Exceptions

should never guide policy. It does nothing other than open the door for abuse.

The death penalty is the perfect example . . . despite 40 years of "tinkering with the machinery of death" to provide safeguards against governmental abuse of the death penalty, the system STILL is disproportionately visited upon people of color, the poor, the powerless, and the subjugated. Of the thousands of men and women on death row, less that 50 are "mass murderers" (in the Bundy sense) or terrorists.

To execute thousands in the name of preserving a system so that we may execute the one or two is not just questionable. It is indefensible.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. I understand all that ...

My point is I wouldn't pull the trigger, put on the noose, or administer the lethal dose but I can see the motivation for people who would, when it comes to terrorists or mass murderers, i.e., the worst of the worst.

[Uponthegears]

7. Absolutely

I can agree that some people might understandably feel capital punishment is appropriate in rare cases.

Anger, the desire for revenge, etc. are normal human emotions. My point is more that an understanding that such feelings are normal is never a justification for supporting a public policy that in reality is simply a tool of oppression and subjugation.

[Dont call me Shirley]

9. Life in prison would be a far worse sentence. And keep them alive as long as possible.