The death penalty?

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Ok, so if testimonies are worth nothing, then he shouldn't have been convicted period.

And about Davis, I didn't know him. I never played racketball with nor did I do a BBQ with him. He might very well have been a barbaric monster who killed a policeman. He might have been a barbaric monster who didn't kill policeman. All I have to go on are testimonies of people who knew him. I really want to believe you guys that he was a bad guy, but if "testimonies are crap" and "criminals can behave like normal people" is all I have to go on, I'm gonna stick with what people know.

 

I'm against the death penalty. I don't care if the evidence is overwhelming, the human mind is such a vulnerable and easily-deceived machine that it is simply impossible to be objective about the evidence. A favorite phenomenon is called tunnel vision and it has been plaguing the Dutch courts for the last few decades. Good thing we don't have the death penalty then, ten years in jail are enough to ruin your life.

Furthermore, when you enable the death penalty, you make it a political tool. Do you honestly think that the judges and juries are immune to corruption, outside pressure, blackmail and cannot be concerned about their public image? When the political climate becomes too harsh for your tastes, how are you going to prevent political enemies and petty criminals from being executed?

Heard the round of applause when someone mentioned that Perry was responsible for the execution of 234 people? At least one of them was innocent, but no matter, the crowd was pleased with their justice. One innocent against 233 criminals? Sure, that's a good score. This life is just an antechamber anyway and God can easily separate the faithful from the non-fa... oh wait.
It just amazes me, the utter stupidity of these tea baggers. They'll be damned if they let the government make decisions about their healthcare, but to make decisions about their lives? Sure! *applause*

 

The only problem with that, is two words immediately spring to mind: Casey Anthony. Here the jurors were objective about the evidence, but given how people reacted to the verdict, a different group of jurors may have produced a much different result.

 

Yeah, I heard these applauses in the debate. It was ridiculous... :/

And I also find it bizarre that when someone is sentenced for death, if the family of the victim doesn't want the guitly person to be killed, it doesn't make a difference. Like in the James Byrd case :

And the killer was still executed...

 

Yeah, but usually, when there's a fatal accident, steps are taken to reduce or remove the threat of the accident repeating itself. Banning the death penalty is a step to remove the threat to killing an innocent person.

 

I've been doing some reading on the Davis case, and the evidence was considered several times, each judge reaching the same conclusion.

The recanted testimonies were disregarded as not credible, it was probable that mounting media attention and the throngs of celebs and human rights groups put pressure on those who gave the testiminonies and simply they were stating that many years after the crime they could no longer identify the killer or had doubt as to the killer's identity, and as such their original statements were more credible

I feel that paying for dangerous criminals to live is not in the interest of the tax payer, in thses cases their living expenses shouldnt be covered by the tax payer, but a seperate tax sould be levied on those who are against the death penalty, let them pay for these scum to live.

 

There is also the risk versus reward. A car accident is possible, but the risk is small and compared to all the advantages that being able to drive anywhere brings. The death penalty, vs life in prison, doesn't bring any reward. And try saying to the family of the innocent person killed "yeah, sorry we made a mistake. But that's okay, it's a risk we're willing to take".

 

That is debatable on many levels.

Not directed at anyone on the boards: I always find it amazing people seem to be more on the side of saving a "good looking" person from death row -- the better looking the more people seem to flock to the cause. That Texas woman executed about twelve years ago is a classic example -- she was good looking and she had become a Christian. Everyone should forgive her of the acts she committed many years before, after all she was reformed.

I've often felt death row (after a set amount of time) should be paid for with charity dollars. If people want a death row inmate to live -- donate the money. No donations ... well ... I'm not going to cry over it. I also believe there should be a priority in the appeals process for death row inmates and the date of death should be fairly quick (two to three years at most). Having a death penalty finally be carried out twenty years after conviction is not a deterrence.

 

I am against the death penalty, whatever the person looks like. I agree though that if how someone looks come into account in supporting or not the release of someone, it would be hypocritical.

I also believe that we should forgive people. Punishment is warranted when doing something wrong, but the ultimate punishment to me sounds more like revenge than anything else. I truly believe forgiveness accomplishes more than revenge.

 

In my experience forgiveness is overrated, it leads to complacency by the criminal. There are very few men like Jean Valjean in real life.

 

I'm against the death penalty, not on ideological or philosophical grounds, but on practical ones. You can't un-kill a dead person, and we have put innocent people (Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Cameron Todd Willingham) to death. We can of course try to tighten the evidenciary requirements for the implementation of capital punishment, and it would work on paper, but even legal systems predicated on the idea that it is better for a guilty man to walk free than for an innocent one to live behind bars (like ours) have been found to put "the wrong guy" away many times. Given that fact, I cannot accept that we would ever be able to come up with a system that guarantees no innocents will be executed.

I'm all for life without the possibility parole as the go-to penalty for murder. You can't return life to the wrongfully executed, but you can return freedom to the wrongly imprisoned. We have no evidence that the death penalty is more effective at deterring crime than life in prison, either, so we really can't argue that society gains any tangible benefit from having a death penalty for particularly heinous offenses.

 

Tri,

So, the money spent from the 50 years of supporting the mass-murderer weighs more than the life of a poor, homeless child that could be saved with that money.... there is reward for other innocents in that death penalty.

 

Blades, you're stepping into that nebulous territory known as constitutional rights. We all have the right to appeal and the right to representation, so the cost of the death penalty is higher than it looks at first blush. Many if not most convicted to life in present will not appeal their sentences, but those given the death penalty almost certainly will -- and they'll do it all on the government's dime. Beyond that, putting Cameron Todd Willingham to death and finding out a scant five years later that the penalty was given based on bad science, that arson did not cause the fire that took the lives of his three children (and, consequently, that Willingham was innocent), makes for really bad PR.

 

I think the majority of Illinois breathed a collective sigh of relief when Gacy was executed. I don't know of too many around here who would've lost any sleep over sentencing Kaushik Patel to death. He should have died with his kids.

 

That's where I disagree. Patel's crime was heinous, no doubt. But this is not a guy who kills people in a alley to steal their money. It's a twisted man who burns his children. I'm not familiar with the case, but right off the bat, he seems crazy and I think he would need mental help, not death.

And btw, can someone please explain the logic of being put to death only if you plead not guilty? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you plead guilty, the maximum you get is life in prison. Sounds like the death penalty is not really a punishment of the crime, but of wasting the court's time if you're found guilty...