Vengeful, or what's best for society...

Let's examine that. Buddy gets stabbed multiple times, then raped, then cut up, then his body parts are raped, then eaten, and then mailed to the federal government while the assailant flees to a different continent.

Yep... "Best for Society" is to give him a chance to get out, and to pay to keep his ass alive.

Against. You could debate the cost. Maybe put them on a stranded island with no way of escaping, ie make sure all the trees are gone so they cant make rafts.
too bad they cant make a VR program where they have to see the effect of the crime through the victums eyes and make them live that all day everyday.

fences can be cut, dug under etc. island in shark infested waters sound much better.

If they are truly guilty of murder then I think they should be executed. They should forfeit their life.

Good idea. Let's bring back the firing squad.







Watch the movie. Then we can use that kind of fence.

Here is a link to the Innocence List, a list of people freed or exonerated from death row. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row

There are 140 names on the list. These are 140 people wrongly convicted for crimes and sentenced to death that were found to be innocent. The way prosecutors and politicians go out of their way to block any efforts to have inmates retried or to have new evidence submitted, there has to have been many people executed for crimes that they didn't commit.

I am against the death penalty for a variety of reasons, but the fact that innocent people are convicted of crimes is the major reason everybody should be against it.

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I am a whore. Find something else to fight about. - Nell Gwyn (to her coachman, who was fighting a man for calling her a whore)

I can see both points of view on this matter.

For: If someone were to murder one of your relatives - heaven forbid your parents / brother or sister / even your children, I'd imagine that you'd call for their head as most people would. As the person who took their life didn't give them any choice in the matter. They in the UK what about the human rights, well if you kill ANYONE you've just lost your right as a human being.

Against: If someone was convicted for a murder and they were on death row, it then turned out that they were innocent and it the murder was linked to someone else who admitted to it then I can see why people are against it.

But what everyones got to consider is, you can only put so many people in jail and some of them will NOT be cured or even learn from their mistakes. Some of our goverments are getting quite soft and giving all these prisoners all the comforts of home ie games consoles, complete internet access, tv's etc

This is why most people who comit a crime think its more like a break and a holiday camp. As in the UK most of the time the sentence is not fully carried out and most only serve half of it then get released on 'good behavour'.

Only 140 in the whole country? Wow that's better than I thought. Not bad.

very opposed.

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"Never Give Up".......Sir Winston Churchill

I think we all agree that executing the innocent is clearly unjust and immoral. When you ask about morals, though, you enter a gray area where you have to take the situation into account.

Is killing another person moral? Usually, the answer is no. If I see an evil person about to commit a heinous act, would I be justified in using deadly force to prevent that heinous act? If I saw my wife or daughter about to get raped, should I be morally obliged to let it happen? If my own morals guided me to stop that rape using as much force as was needed, up to and including lethal force, would that lethal response be justified? What if it was a neighbor, or even a complete stranger? I believe that once someone steps into that arena, where they've decided that laws against rape and murder don't pertain, then they should reap whatever response is needful to stop them from committing their evil acts.

One of the biggest problems crime fighters face is recidivism. Criminals get caught and go to prison, only to be released a short time later. They commit more serious crimes, more often; until they get caught and go to prison again. How often does a rapist need to get caught before we realize that he's always going to pose a danger to society? How many murders; how many rapes could have been prevented if society had only recognized the threat posed by a particular person? In most cases, lifetime imprisonment would be a good answer.

In some cases, even lifetime imprisonment doesn't protect society from the ravages of a sociopathic criminal. I recall one man I had dealings with - he was a serial rapist who shot and killed a cab driver to save himself the cost of the fare. Sent to jail, and being tried for murder, this repeat offender spent the days of his incarceration hiding contraband bedsheets, tearing them into strips and braiding the strips into a rope. He then managed to loosen up the window of his cell, tied his rope to his bed, and escaped. Fortunately for society, one knot in his rope proved too weak. It broke, and he fell five stories to his death. If he had made good his escape, how many more women would he have raped? How many more people would he have killed?

The way we use the death penalty is clearly unjust. But the existence of a death penalty isn't. It's just one tool society can use to protect itself from monsters.

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Not really. Unless you have a better system or can reform the one we have, that's the way it is. The death penalty is suppose to deter when it does not. Killing the ones that kill is the way humans react to the crime. It's the only way they/we know how to get the criminal off the street and out of the way. Until taxpayers pony up the amount it takes to keep the worst of society in prison for life, they'll get the needles. We have a guy on death row that murdered a family in 1988. He was finally sentenced in 1991 and his last appeal just ran out. This is fair? This is the way it's supposed to be done? Lawyers, food, housing, etc has been paid for by the taxpayers. What about the family he murdered? Where's their justice? I still think they should bring back the firing squad or hanging. All of these appeals and free rides are long overdue for a reform.

Against. I think that most people would rather see a guilty man walk free then a innocent man be convicted, and because our justice system will never be perfect, we do NOT want to give an innocent man the death penalty. The death penalty goes against all of our basic morals and values as a society. There are many things that are temping about the death penalty, like if it is almost proven certain that they have committed the crime, but because of what I know to be right and wrong, I could not ever be for this capital punishment. I hope we never see this in Canada because I think that it is truly a breach on what we hold as a society to be moral and just.

What if that "almost proven certain" is taken away? What if you have incontrovertible evidence, coupled with unimpeachable witnesses and a full confession of guilt? What if you know with absolute certainty that not only is the person guilty of a heinous crime like murder, but also if you incarcerate him or her, it'll just allow him to continue commit unspeakable acts of horror against his fellow inmates and the officers that are paid to keep him in prison? And that there will always be the chance that future legislators may decide to change the laws and commute his sentence? Or that he may carry out a successful escape, and once again be free to terrorize the citizens?

What then?

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[quote=KinkyLisa4rp]I am definitely for it. There are certain offenses that are so bad, so detrimental to the safety of society, that the offender should never be allowed to live in society again.
I agree with Lisa.

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<Insert witty innuendo here>

Are you saying that it's okay to execute wrongly convicted people? If it's okay for the government to kill people, why are you so upset when criminals do it?

With the system of appeals that we have it actually costs more to execute someone than to keep them in prison for life.

The only possible argument for the death penalty is for it's revenge value. It doesn't serve as a deterrent. We have had various forms of capital punishment down through history and it hasn't stopped people from killing one another. People kill in situations where their emotions are running wild. Most of them don't stop to think what the penalty for killing is.

The death penalty might serve some deterrent in crimes like political corruption. People in a position of public trust who take advantage of their jobs to enrich themselves by selling their vote to the highest bidder or judges and police officers who accept bribes to let crimes go unpunished might be less likely to accept those offices if the penalty for bribes and corruption was death. On the other hand, there's so much money in politics now that it might not.

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I am a whore. Find something else to fight about. - Nell Gwyn (to her coachman, who was fighting a man for calling her a whore)