My Evolving Views On The Death Penalty.

I used to support capital punishment. Because as I told people, I think it's just a form of euthanasia, if humanely done. But I am beginning to lean in the other direction. Things like life imprisonment involve more suffering. But it can be always be undone, unlike execution. Even if you're in prison for decades, you can always be released when you innocence is proved. Plus it just makes society think some people's lives are worth less than others. Which I don't think I ever approved of.

 

May they keep evolving.
When you've worked in the industries I have, you begin to see the futility of trying to reason with or rehabilitate some people. But As I've held for decades, killing someone in retribution for inflicting suffering on you is to give THEM an easy way out. The death penalty is a way to spare the convicted the pain of regret and the suffering that comes from realizing you destroyed someone else's life. I will never accept that it is ok to give a convicted murderer a way to avoid living with the consequences of their crime.

 

Blacks make up 14.4% of the U.S. population, yet 43 % of total executions since 1976 and 55 % of those currently awaiting execution. The death penalty in this country isn't and apparently cannot be administered fairly and impartially pursuant to the 14th Amendment's equal protection and due process clauses, and is therefore fatally unconstitutional.

Race and the Death Penalty | American Civil Liberties Union
Innocence Project

 

Yes , it may be more punishment to give a murderer or child rapist a long sentence. However--I can't abide a person raping, strangling a 4 year old ( or any age) child to be allowed to eat, watch tv, exercise or do / enjoy any other activities and continue to live. And in some cases --BE RELEASED BACK INTO SOCIETY. It's a damn shame and a travesty of justice for some innocent people to be put to death. When that happens, there needs to be thorough investigations and punishments given to overzealous prosecutors or / and incompetent defense lawyers. I remember seeing Richard Speck ,who killed 8 nurses, sitting in jail smoking dope and having a great time living. That is not right . In my estimation, there are some people who need killed.

 

I disagree with the death penalty.
That innocent people may be extinguished and then, later, new evidence proves they were as innocent as they said; that is one reason why it's not a sentence in the UK.
It used to be but then that reality manifested, in some cases, years afterwards.

Yes, of course, there must be punishment but it should be based on the recognition that the justice system is flawed/imperfect.

If the person is later found to be innocent, no appeal system can reverse that penalty.

However, there's another much more significant issue now, imv.
The latest case shows a macabre element such that, it seems, the manner in which it is imposed is part of the punishment.
I think such inhumane actions demean the whole society that they are carried out in.

I've read it took over 20 minutes for it to be completed which, in itself, is disgusting and if the process - effectively a suffocation - is part of the punishment, why is death itself not enough?
Perhaps it adds to the argument that the death penalty itself is irrational and more to do with revenge than anything else.

 

I am not a fan of the death penalty, just due to how many decades old convictions have been overturned due to new DNA technologies in Michigan alone over the last few years.

My state abolished capital punishment in 1847. There were talks of reinstating it in the 80’ and 90’s but nothing ever became of it. Oddly, in 2002 we had death penalty case in Federal court. The body, found in a lake, that was within the Manistee National Forest boundary. This allowed U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who was under pressure from conservative groups, to file federal capital murder charges. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2002.

 

The part about "too many" really confuses me. Here in the UK, only one guy was wrongly hanged during my lifetime. He was held responsible because the guy who pulled the trigger was underage. His penalty was mainly because he told the younger guy to "let him have it". After decades of debate, it was agreed that he meant hand the gun over, rather than fatally shoot the police officer. A few years ago, he was posthumously pardoned.
Since the abolition of the death penalty, only a couple of murderers have subsequently been released from prison. They were without doubt guilty, but it could not be proven who had murdered who. They were released, but their victims did not come back to life again.
Our police also shoot and kill around 3 people a year. They are all terrorists or violent criminals and threaten police with firearms when they were shot. We have only shot and killed one innocent person in more than 3 decades and that was at the height of the terrorist attacks on London. The guy left a terrorist house in Stockwell and boarded a crowded train carrying a rucksack that was assumed to be a bomb. Unfortunately police did not know that the house the terrorists were using had been illegally converted into 2 apartments.

Meanwhile, over in the good old US, police shoot and kill more than 1,000 people a year, around 30 of them innocent bystanders, not to mention a few fellow officers.

I do not disagree with your views on the death penalty outside the UK and a few peaceful European countries.

 

Well, lets hope that gentleman that raped and impregnated that 10 year old girl is nice and comfy in his confinement. I'm sure he'll be a good citizen when he's released. Oh, and lets not be too hard on the folks that torture , starve and confine their kids to cages--I'm sure the kids deserved the treatment they received.

 

I find a whole lot wrong with it! First, I am not religious, but two wrongs don't make it right. In fact, they are finding so many in prison that are innocent. IF someone were to hurt me or someone, I cared about I feel living in prison for the rest of their lives is far more punishment than putting them to sleep. Which leads me to how we do it. Crazy how we do operations painlessly every day, yet we can't end someone's life in the same manner??? This guy in Alabama said to have filled the mask with vomit thrashing as he probably drowned from his vomit rather than the gas!!! The government said "it went as planned" That should be a big red flag! Second, they closed the curtain way before he was actually dead!!! Yet another red flag and most all media made it sound like it was just another day! I do not trust our government on anything!

 

It shouldn't be cruel. Just painless and effective,IMO. Like going to sleep. I believe that is reasonable. More than reasonable for those that torture children.

 

At least twenty years of research, has all indicated our votes no longer matter, and both democrats and republicans, apply their morality to everyone else, but seldom to themselves. Making US politics a grudge match straight out of professional wrestling, explaining why we have the lowest voter turnout. When there is no justice, in or out of court, the death penalty becomes nothing more than a lynch mob. It is applied to even people with 80 or less IQs, especially, if they're black. Notably, there are only a few states, responsible for killing more prisoners than anyone else. The state of Texas is one of these, and is currently killing prisoners who have not been given a death sentence, by letting them cook in the sun, in their cells.

 

I don't believe in death penalty or abortion. God is the only one who determines death.

 

an eye for an eye is the way, things like manson, gacy,speck, dahmer etc dont deserve to live period, gacy lived out his time in prison in relative luxury due to his notoriety and manipulative behavior, FUCK that

 

I will have you know, that abolition of the death penalty, resulted in a group of wrongly convicted murders being freed in the UK
However, it was simply because the court did not conclusively PROVE who murdered who.
They went public with their celebrations, but the victims did not jump out of their coffins and join them.

You win, perhaps we should have kept the death penalty.

 

You would certainly not want to be in a UK prison, after murdering a child or police officer.
Every time your flat screen television broke down, the electricians would be too busy to fix it for a few months. Then the overworked kitchen would keep forgetting to feed you. When they finally brought you a nice bowl of cereal, it would seem far less appetising when you heard the guys delivering it, discussing which bowls they had pissed in. It may be a joke, but you would not be the one doing the laughing.

 

The news a few days ago: A man rapes a four year old child, a girl. Now that little child will be off balance for the rest of her life and will NOT be a happy person. Put the perpetrator in jail for 20-- 30 years and then turn him loose as potentially a " productive "citizen?? IMO, some people need to be killed. That rapist is one such.

 

To post 14: "god is the only one who determines death." Your god is doing a fine job of it over in the middle east.

 

Truth be told I have no problem with it being painful , things like dahmer,gacy,speck et al deserve no quarter, and that goes ad Infinium for anyone that harms children