The Death Penalty

[Tom]

Should capital punishment be allowed? Why or why not?

[Doki-Chan]

It should be allowed
Its amazing of how sometimes you hear people getting away for murder, Murder! Its unspeakable, why should people who kill (With the exception of self defence) innocent people be allowed to stay alive?!

[Windy*]

Yes. And that's just what I believe. :D It costs too much money and is completely illogical to keep people who don't deserve to be alive, living. If they've gone so far to murder someone, I don't think they should even have the joy of sitting in a jail cell for the rest of their life. Like I said - far too much money, anyway. Shouldn't we be spending it on people who NEED it, instead? Not murderers whose only fate is to rot away in prison? It's just so mindless to me.

I know the system has been proven fallible in the past, but I think these days with our ever-advancing technology, the chances of error are the most unlikely they've ever been, and I have a fair amount of confidence in it.

Otherwise, I'm not entirely sure why people are opposed to this, unless it's for some kind of religious reason people have created for themselves... but that'd be an entirely different topic. :)

[Matt Alan]

Yes. And that's just what I believe. :D It costs too much money and is completely illogical to keep people who don't deserve to be alive, living.


Do you know the cost of a death penalty trial? Its several million dollars. Life in prison costs half as much.

A man shoots his wife/child/pastor/neighbor/mistres/etc, kills him/her/it, and then we give him/her/it a lethal injection? An eye for an eye? its legalized murder. Does it make it right for us to kill them? Are we no better?

Everyone has their own opinion here, but I'm fully against it.

[Tom]

Do you know the cost of a death penalty trial? Its several million dollars. Life in prison costs half as much.

A man shoots his wife/child/pastor/neighbor/mistres/etc, kills him/her/it, and then we give him/her/it a lethal injection? An eye for an eye? its legalized murder. Does it make it right for us to kill them? Are we no better?

Everyone has their own opinion here, but I'm fully against it.

I totally agree. It costs more money to sentence someone to death than it does to put them in prison for life.

Capital punishment is old-world justice that has no place in modern society. We shouldn't justify the killing of ANYONE, condemned criminal or not. Besides the fact that I find the death penalty to be completely hypocritical, there is no way to prove 100% that a person condemned to be executed has committed the crime they are accused of. Our justice system is far too faulty to be so powerful as to just kill people as it sees fit.

Tom

[Merr]

Of course it shouldn't be legal!

The entire concept is just so hypocritical. "Because you killed someone that somehow makes it right for us to kill you too," I think not. If killing someone is such a horrible crime, why should we allowed to kill criminals? They're still human and no matter what they did, there should always be some chance for redemption. People make mistakes, and for some mistakes there should be punishment, but punishment exists to prove a point to that person. They're supposed to learn from their mistakes (kindergarten logic!) If you're dead, you can't learn anything. But even if you're stuck in a prison cell for the rest of your life there's still a chance to understand and learn from your wrongs.

Self-righteous rant over!

[Windy*]

So to summarize, everyone thinks we should keep bad people alive because a. it's hypocritical to put them down, b. it's cheaper (which, admittedly, I didn't know about, since the only thing I ever hear about is how it's more expensive to us the other way around), and c. we have to assume everyone can learn from their mistakes?

I'm still a little iffy on the subject.

[Merr]

So to summarize, everyone thinks we should keep bad people alive because a. it's hypocritical to put them down, b. it's cheaper (which, admittedly, I didn't know about, since the only thing I ever hear about is how it's more expensive to us the other way around), and c. we have to assume everyone can learn from their mistakes?

I'm still a little iffy on the subject.
Based on all that, why do you think we should kill them then? You say they don't deserve to live, but could you expand on why they don't deserve to live.

Oh, and I'm really not trying to argue or anything. I just think it's interesting to hear other people's opinions on the subject.

[Windy*]

Based on all that, why do you think we should kill them then? You say they don't deserve to live, but could you expand on why they don't deserve to live.

Oh, and I'm really not trying to argue or anything. I just think it's interesting to hear other people's opinions on the subject.

I just don't think murder, in ANY case, is some kind of mistake. It is an absolute, conscious decision that must be made and is carried out, a majority of the time, in a fashion that doesn't suggest remorse or doubt. None whatsoever.

If someone has that kind of sickening mentality, aren't they incredibly dangerous to society? How can we assume all murderes will ever change and "learn from their mistakes"? Wouldn't it be difficult, if not impossible, to change the mentality of a killer?To me, it only makes sense to impose the death penalty on such people who will ALWAYS pose a threat to others.

And while we may be doing the same thing in return, it is, in my opinion, done in a much more humane fashion than any murderer would do. (And yes, I do know how it works, if you're about to bring that up.) At least we're not using firing ranges to exterminate our criminals like in some countries. Compared to what is done elsewhere... I think America does pretty well with treatment. And it's still "murder" in the sense of what is being done, but I think the exchange is fair punishment for something like murder, ESPECIALLY for people with multiple-offense cases.


I know I'm pretty much alone in my opinions here, but oh well. :\ I'm just a bad, cold-hearted person, aren't I.

[Doki-Chan]

Your not alone Windy-chan I totaly agree, I'm just not as knowladgable about this kind of thing compared to others so my opinion is a bit uneducated I supposed. I just don't see why killers get to live while innocent people who deserve to live are dead. I just don't see why we should keep them alive.
People have told me that its a better punishment to live and rot in a jail cell and be reminded in your mind about what you done but, they're still alive. Its not fair. (I know life isn't fair, don't bring that one up!!)

Again, I wish I could be more intuitive towards this situation and back up my opinion with more political or better information but, I'm jsut not knowladgable when it comes to this kind of thing.

[Matt Cruea]

People who use the "capital punishment costs too much" defense are stupid.

It costs absolutely nothing to throw people into a spike pit.

[Mat Growcott]

I've been doing english sociology classes (only at school level, of course :D) and i have to say the death penalty could be VERRRRY helpful if it wasn't abused by the people controlling it.

I can't speak for the yanks. But crime, and how it is dealt with, is the height of stupidity in britain. For example! A kid of 13 took a knife into school and he was caught. The school expelled him on the grounds that it could have been a danger to other kids and the government forced the school to pay a ridiculous amount (over 2000 pounds) for ruining this kids education...

I'm not saying the death penalty should be used for something as petty as that. Or that it should be used overly. Just in a certain case where there is no doubt someone did something and they deserve to die for it (Serial murder, Torture...etc)

And other forms of punishment should be brought up aswell. A high percentage (nearly 60%) reoffend after getting out of prison.

Now who can safely say that prison is having an effect on prisoners?

This is all from a british point of view. Soooooooo.......m'yeah. T'is my two cents.

[Chinomi]

Canada = No Death Penalty.

[Autumn]

I'm completely against the death penalty.

I mean.. to me, it's just wrong and unjust. Sometimes when I think about it, I think "Sure, it's a good way to control the population! =D!" But there are better ways to go about it... Aaand... corpal punishment just really sucks in my opinion.

Yeah. My views suck. ._.

[Deiji]

I don't think the death penalty is right for many reasons. One because i think its just... sick and inhuman.. i mean, isn't it just legalized murder? Murder someone for murdering someone else.. it just seems wrong. If someone murders someone, they should suffer for a LONG period of time, not have their life taken instantly. I think life in prison is a much better punnishment. But the problem these days i've noticed is so many people who have murdered adults and even children get away with just 10 years in prison. I think that's wrong. But that doesn't in the slightest make me think that a death penalty is right. I think all muderers should be stuck in prison for the rest of their lives, or most of it at least, with no way out.

[Matt Alan]

People who use the "capital punishment costs too much" defense are stupid.

It costs absolutely nothing to throw people into a spike pit.

Damn that "no cruel and inhumane punishment" thing.

[ClymAngus]

Although I'm staying the hell out of this one (I'm fulfilling my quota of anti-trolling for the week) I do have one small point to bring up. I've heard a lot of talk about how much it costs to keep people in prison vs giving them the long walk. Well if your going to quote a statistical study at least quote your sources so others can check the figures for themselves. Otherwise it just turns into a game of he said she said.

[Matt Alan]

Although I'm staying the hell out of this one (I'm fulfilling my quota of anti-trolling for the week) I do have one small point to bring up. I've heard a lot of talk about how much it costs to keep people in prison vs giving them the long walk. Well if your going to quote a statistical study at least quote your sources so others can check the figures for themselves. Otherwise it just turns into a game of he said she said.

Quote from an episode of Law and Order, so take this with a grain of salt, it costs roughly 500,000 bucks to try a man for life in prison and more than twice that for a death penalty trial.

*shrugs* And that sounds right to me, if someone has a more exact number, post it.

[Tom]

Although I'm staying the hell out of this one (I'm fulfilling my quota of anti-trolling for the week) I do have one small point to bring up. I've heard a lot of talk about how much it costs to keep people in prison vs giving them the long walk. Well if your going to quote a statistical study at least quote your sources so others can check the figures for themselves. Otherwise it just turns into a game of he said she said.

Collected from various sources as quoted on deathpenaltyinfo.org:

"Death penalty trials cost an average of 48% more than the average cost of trials in which prosecutors seek life imprisonment."
--Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury
http://www.comptroller.state.tn.us/orea/reports/deathpenalty.pdf


- "The investigation costs for death-sentence cases were about 3 times greater than for non-death cases."
- "The trial costs for death cases were about 16 times greater than for non-death cases ($508,000 for death case; $32,000 for non-death case)."
- "The appeal costs for death cases were 21 times greater."
- "Trials involving a death sentence averaged 34 days, including jury selection; non-death trials averaged about 9 days."
--DPIC summary of Kansas Cost Report
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=7&did=918


"Capital cases burden county budgets with large unexpected costs, according to a report released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, "The Budgetary Repercussions of Capital Convictions," by Katherine Baicker. Counties manage these high costs by decreasing funding for highways and police and by increasing taxes. The report estimates that between 1982-1997 the extra cost of capital trials was $1.6 billion. (NBER Working Paper No. w8382, Issued in July 2001)"
--The Budgetary Repercussions of Capital Convictions
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8382


"The most comprehensive death penalty study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million more per execution than the a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of life imprisonment (Duke University, May 1993). On a national basis, these figures translate to an extra cost of over $1 billion spent since 1976 on the death penalty."
--The Costs of Processing Murder Cases in North Carolina
http://www-pps.aas.duke.edu/people/faculty/cook/comnc.pdf


"Florida would save $51 million each year by punishing all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole ... Based on the 44 executions Florida has carried out since 1976, that amounts to an approximate cost of $24 million for each execution."
--Palm Beach Post, January 4, 2000


"California spends $90 Million dollars annually above and beyond the ordinary costs of the justice system on capital cases. $78 million of that total is incurred at the trial level."
--Sacramento Bee, March 18, 1988


"In January 2003, despite a budge deficit, California Governor Gray Davis proposed building a new $220 million state of the art death row."
--New York Times, January 14, 2003

[Chris Nagy]

The thing about cruel and unusual punishment is that it has to be both cruel and unusual. Cruel is a pretty simple thing to prove, and unusual is a pretty easy thing to get around. If we are talking hypothetically... instating Cruea's spike pit as a sweeping measure in every prison that carries out death sentences would get the spiked pit around the "unusual" part of the clause.

[Mindychan]

I'm just going to say that when it's YOUR loved one murdered, your views might change. *shrug* I could never imagine such a thing if my husband or my best friend was taken from me in such a cruel way.

Heh, maybe that's how the families of the murderers feel.

Ha, spike pit. :E

[Tom]

I'm just going to say that when it's YOUR loved one murdered, your views might change. *shrug* I could never imagine such a thing if my husband or my best friend was taken from me in such a cruel way.

Heh, maybe that's how the families of the murderers feel.

Ha, spike pit. :E

If my partner was viciously killed by someone, I would probably want them caught, thrown in prison and evaluated to the highest degree possible. Would I want them killed? Maybe, at first. But that's just human nature, to want revenge. In the long run, I probably wouldn't really care, as long as I could be assured that they couldn't do it to anyone else. Killing them wouldn't bring my boyfriend back to life or take away any of the pain I would feel.

The interesting thing I find is that from a lot of reading I have done and documentaries and shows I have seen, regarding families of murder victims, I observed that when many, many years have passed since the murder took place (10-20 years, for example) before the murderer is found, what healing is possible has begun to take its course and a lot of the affected people don't really feel as strongly about executing the murderer--as long as the murderer is recognized in justice and are not able to do it to another person. Wanting someone dead is usually just a very rash reaction to these very unfortunate cases. But, this is not the result of a scientific study or anything, this is just my own personal opinion based on my own exposure.

That aside, I can understand one individual killing another out of revenge. I still think it is very wrong, but to me, that seems a little easier to swallow than making it into this big, bureaucratic spectacle--turning revenge killing into expensive paperwork. That makes me feel sick. We spend all this time and money on finding 'better' and 'efficient' ways to kill people. It just seems a little twisted.

I think people that commit crimes like this should be thrown in prison and studied. That's the point of prison--to segregate people that are a menace to society away from said society, we might as well study them and what goes on in their heads while they are available to us.

[Mindychan]

Mental illnesses is a fascinating area to study. My father is a bipolar paranoid schziophrenic (sp?), and when he got off his meds (twice), I feared for my life. He thought he still was in Vietnam and tried to sacrafice our animals (and eventually us, probably) to God.

Thanks for the information, guys :)

[Masahiko]

you know in new york, the death penalty was removed, and for 5 years straight, the crime rate continued to decline... i guess having a death penalty has nothing to do with scaring ppl into not commiting crimes.

[Alana]

This seems to be getting a bit sniperish, but here I go:


Pro. Mostly. However, thanks to the US's crappy justice system -- which has been very well addressed already, way to go Tom -- with its huge discrepancies in cost and time, capital punishment is such waste. I dig the spike pit idea for the 2006 fiscal year. Otherwise, lock 'em up and throw away the key, considering that offenders of the capital variety do not enjoy the same accommodations as your run-of-the-mill jailbirds. Subjecting them to psychological studies... has any breakthrough research ever come of that? I'd be interested to know if there's a collective direction research like that is geared towards.

As for the actual punishment, I follow the philosophy that the punishment should fit the criminal's way of life (Kant, I think). The method of punishment needs to be more reliable, though, since the US has the highest incidence of botching lethal injections, and they keep insisting on using the same three chemicals when only two are needed. (I'm pretty certain of that point; correction welcome.) What makes the methods nasty, is that they keep trying to kill them by the same method after botching it. That, I think, takes the inhumane cake away from the method itself. I do believe that there are criminals that deserve death. Showing them comparable mercy by making their deaths quick and painless constitutes justice.

[Fiona C]

On the one hand, some people see putting to death a criminal as the only way to find closure to their suffering.

On the other, death is the easy way out. As cruel as it sounds, if somebody does something wrong, they should live with that knowledge and guilt.

And somewhere in the middle, people HAVE been wrongfully convicted before, you know. So, there's a chance that the wrong person can be put to death.

~Fif

[Lucien]

The death penalty makes total sense. Killing the individual makes sure that they learned their lesson, and feel plenty bad about it afterward. More importantly, our souls can attain peace knowing that we in our righteous, 'Christian' spirit have put to death another human being. After all, we all know that people who do wrong or imoral things in their life can never again do anything good.

[Merr]

The death penalty makes total sense. Killing the individual makes sure that they learned their lesson, and feel plenty bad about it afterward. More importantly, our souls can attain peace knowing that we in our righteous, 'Christian' spirit have put to death another human being. After all, we all know that people who do wrong or imoral things in their life can never again do anything good.
Touché... ^^

[Nychold]

Oh good God. Get a bunch of 14 year old, Japanimite girls together who all squeal at the sight of their beloved Squall and Seifer, and this is the kind of mind-bending moral puzzle you get? Gimme a break, grow up, or get laid!

The answer is simple. There is no answer. Doing either is a contradiction to the "laws" imposed by man and religion. So unless you're all planning on becoming Atheists (maybe? possibly? no, I thought not), neither decision should sit well with you.

First, let's look at the death penalty. What's so terrible it's worth killing for? Freedom? Peace? Persecution? Tyranny? Murder?

Freedom is an illusion. You'll never be free so long as you live, because you're a slave to death. You work, you struggle, you lay back with ease, you love, you have a family, then what? You die. You do nothing but work toward your own death. So why fight over it? Why's it so important that you delude yourself with the notion of freedom?

Peace is a quaint little concept, but unrealistic. Around 20% of the world's population can't work their best without lots of stress. I'm one of them. I love stress, I eat it up. I do my best work 20 minutes before my projects are due, and I work even better after 1 AM. If the whole world is peaceful, 20% of the population would feel no pressure, no deadline, no reason to get up, no reason NOT to put off today what they can do tomorrow. In short, 20% of the world would be lazy. And either two things will happen. (1) The world will get sick of the freeloaders, and fight back against them, creating stress and destroying peace, or (2) the "lazy" people will create stress, and destroy peace themselves. And killing the 20% doesn't work, because, well, death creates stress.

Persecution. Read a history book for Christ's sakes. In the US alone, how many different cultures were displaced, beaten, persecuted, raped, destroyed in the name of progress? To say persecution is a reason to kill is to say you'd rather be living in a tee-pee on an open plain eating Buffalo meat in a loin cloth without any kind of soap or deoderant, or god forbid, the internet. Just think of all the wonderful smells you'd enjoy. Yeah, thought not.

Tyranny. George W. Bush. Nuff said. This man pushed us into war, can't find a single assassin, and wants us to believe the rising gas prices to exortion levels are because of a few refineries? Please. It's already been proven he has ties to Middle Eastern oil companies, and so did daddy. Why do you think we went back Iraq? And yet...we don't kill him. Hmm, interesting, no?

Murder. Ahh, the debate of the microsecond. And yes, it is just as trivial as the above. To kill anyone because they killed another is hipocracy. Of course, you all being 14 year old idealistic girls, you would know that a hipocracy should be avoided at all costs, because it's "just wrong". But why is it wrong? Simple. It condones an act which you claim to abhore. It's like your parents telling you "sex is wrong" while they grease each other's wheels right in front of you. A disturbing thought to say the least. And if it's not okay to kill for any reason, then it must be that killing a murder is wrong too. Well, is murder to prevent the deaths of several people really murder? Or is it saving lives? Who here would honestly say, knowing what they know now, if you were in one of the airports on September 11th, 2001, and you had a gun, would you not shoot the bastards? See? Hipocracy. We killed a murder to prevent further murders.

The answer is trivial by its very nature. Until you have a better understanding of humanity and the consequences of your actions, I'd say leave the political thinking to your betters.

:shutup

[Chris Nagy]

Oh good God. I have a large member and I like to wave it around because I can try and belittle people over having a debate in the debate forum. Blah blah blah.


Freedom is an illusion. You'll never be free so long as you live, because you're a slave to death. You work, you struggle, you lay back with ease, you love, you have a family, then what? You die. You do nothing but work toward your own death. So why fight over it? Why's it so important that you delude yourself with the notion of freedom?
Obviously, the answer is don't do any work. We're all going to die, so who cares when it happens. It's going to happen. We are free to do everything but live, it seems. I'm glad we got that cleared up, I was afraid for a moment that I was immortal.


Peace is a quaint little concept, but unrealistic. Around 20% of the world's population can't work their best without lots of stress. I'm one of them. I love stress, I eat it up. I do my best work 20 minutes before my projects are due, and I work even better after 1 AM. If the whole world is peaceful, 20% of the population would feel no pressure, no deadline, no reason to get up, no reason NOT to put off today what they can do tomorrow. In short, 20% of the world would be lazy. And either two things will happen. (1) The world will get sick of the freeloaders, and fight back against them, creating stress and destroying peace, or (2) the "lazy" people will create stress, and destroy peace themselves. And killing the 20% doesn't work, because, well, death creates stress.
The obvious solution is killing 80% of the population that doesn't work well under stress, so that both the planet will be unstressed (it doesn't deal well with stress) and those stress-lovers can get their fill of it.


Persecution. Read a history book for Christ's sakes. In the US alone, how many different cultures were displaced, beaten, persecuted, raped, destroyed in the name of progress? To say persecution is a reason to kill is to say you'd rather be living in a tee-pee on an open plain eating Buffalo meat in a loin cloth without any kind of soap or deoderant, or god forbid, the internet. Just think of all the wonderful smells you'd enjoy. Yeah, thought not.
I read a book once, it was by a guy who was persecuted. But he's dead now, so it doesn't really matter. Persecution is a reason to kill. We persecute someone, we might as well kill them.


Tyranny. George W. Bush. Nuff said.
If only you truly meant it. Instead you keep typing.


Murder. Ahh, the debate of the microsecond.
Oh my, you mean to say the world is not black and white? Wait... that's what you've been saying this entire time? Good lord, man, you are a genius of unparalleled mental keenness. To think, that there might be shades of gray in an issue... it boggles the mind. It surely isn't any sort of common sense that wouldn't require a huge post of psuedo-intellectual bullshit to prove. Thank you sir. I'd give you a tag of honour, but recently we recycled the tags and made them into black pins and white pins. We should probably melt them down again and make them gray, what with this grand new discovery of yours.

It looks like I haven't added anything to this discussion with this last post. Looks like you and I are in the same club. As for:


The answer is trivial by its very nature. Until you have a better understanding of humanity and the consequences of your actions, I'd say leave the political thinking to your betters.
Ah, thank goodness, we can expect you to stay out of politics because... wait, damn. You do think hypocracy is okay, so there is nothing stopping you from ignoring your own advice (which it would be best if you heeded it, but really it doesn't matter because eventually you'll die)-- oh no, we're all back where we started.

[Nikki Wright]

Oh good God. Get a bunch of 14 year old, Japanimite girls together who all squeal at the sight of their beloved Squall and Seifer, and this is the kind of mind-bending moral puzzle you get? Gimme a break, grow up, or get laid!

Sorta the pot calling the kettle black, now, isn't it? This section of the board is for people to discuss their opinions. Don't like them? That's fine, but don't be a jerk about it. You claim to be so mature, but you open up your rant with something like this? Grow up.

I don't want to close this thread. It's a good thread. I don't want to read anymore of this kind of stuff, so stop. Thanks.

[Tom]

The answer is simple. There is no answer.

So, there is no answer?


The answer is trivial by its very nature.

Oh, wait. So, yes, there is an answer?


Until you have a better understanding of humanity and the consequences of your actions, I'd say leave the political thinking to your betters.

So, the answer is there is no answer which really means the answer is trivial--so trivial, in fact, that only our 'betters' should even attempt to seek it out?

Did you really have to waste my time by making me read a 650+ word reply just so you could say nothing? You would have an easier time being condescending if you could actually stick to a gameplan instead of going the route of covering as much ground as possible with pools of jaded text, bad analogies, emogawth angst, and false senses of intellectual superiority.

I could almost smell the chach in your reply, but its long-winded body bored me more than offended me. Next time you try to play the role of smart-ass, try not to get lost in your own reply. :\

Now, if you please, leave the rest of us alone to have our 'trivial debate.' You're too good to be posting in this thread, remember?

[Alana]

Yo, less bashing of the better -- though they really asked for it -- and more topic please?

[Watercolor]

Okay, everyone BACK to your respective corners!

This is a topic and a place to voice ones opinion on a particular subject. How someone reacts to a topic may not be the same as the person before them.

No one is bigger, no one is better. While I may not agree with what has been said prior to my posting, I respect all of yours opinion and shall now voice my own.

The answer is: There is no answer. Not a universal one that everyone will be happy with.
There is only an answer as it pertains to a single person which is yourself.
Can you be judge, jury, and executioner? It all lies in the person.
It is a difficult choice with many answers. For even the answer could be no.

"Should be left up to the victim's family"
"The insanity plea",
"To be ill educated is to invite crime." Do you KNOW what we do with prisoners, even ones for murder? We educate them. We give them books, the internet, sports, everything we give our children in college, and they don't pay a cent. They are supposed to be paying for a crime and they get a free education. HELLO! Where is the punishment? Crime should be punished? That is a univeral agreement, but how?
"The experience of prison" Have you ever been in prison? It's not a nice place to be. But it's not the worst.
"Let the punishment fit the crime.", give the criminal the life his victim was denied? Or take the life the victim was denied?

How would you chose to judge such a thing? Put everyone with a mental illness in a hospital? Pay out the tax dollars to house them? How can you put a value or punishment on a person's life? Obviously you can't let them be free? If anything, what would the accused say?

"I'm sorry, I wish it were me." Hello, they just gave you permission to kill them.

"No, I'm sorry, it won't happen again. Let me live." So find a way to punish them?

There is no yes, there is no no. There is only the choices we make for ourselves. If we chose to let the judicial system judge our criminals, we chose to do that. If you say "Well I didn't" Then you didn't vote in the last elections so quit your whining. Don't be pissed at the president in office, the judge on the stand if you didn't vote for or against them, and if you did vote, well unfortunately majority rules, and if you want to start another civil war over dividing a country over an opinion, add guns to a debate, where is the next plane out of here, We all KNOW what civil war can do. Have us killing our families, and at that point we are just back to more death? I cannot decide a person's life where I have no right to take it. If you have a loved one die, it is your decision the course of action. If you are not, you are entitled to your opinion. Only you can answer them in the end, Make sure it is one you can live with.

*LOVE*

[Autumn]

I'm just going to say that when it's YOUR loved one murdered, your views might change. *shrug* I could never imagine such a thing if my husband or my best friend was taken from me in such a cruel way.

Heh, maybe that's how the families of the murderers feel.

Ha, spike pit. :E

And what if it's YOUR loved one who's getting the death penalty? Even if they *did* do something wrong, wouldn't it make you feel horrible? Losing someone so important to you?

This is a very complicated issue.

EDIT: Watercolor - "Answer is: there is no answer." Sakura - "... complicated issue."

I don't know why I did that, but reading them next to each other was kinda interesting in an odd way. o.o It was... droll, I guess.

[Seishiro17]

first off I must give props to Tom for this recent surge of great topics. thanks.

now then the thought of the death penalty and the money of a trail and such costs are all determined by a personal opininon, because really how much is a life worth, even a corrupt one. if you kill a single person there will always be someone hurt for the rest of thier lives because of it. what we call "justice" is flawed, justice is the uncanny event in which all participants come out of it at peace.

thinking of this inspires a question that is somewhat offtopic, but stll.

looking at the elemental compounds that make up the human body, a person is only worth about 5 american, but with all this money circulating to save/punish someone, how much is a persons soul worth?

in my personal opinion I find no problem with death penalties IF it can be proven that it isn't for the benifit for the previous victims, but rather that the offense can prove "beyond the shadow of a doubt" that the death of the criminal will save the life of someone in the future.

I suport the death penalty, and yet I don't support it's means...it's an interesting subject.

[Cheshire]

Though I was all for the death penalty for a few years, growing up, getting more matuer, and having a good bit of intelligence beaten into me made me change my mind. I'm compleltey against the death penalty. To me, it's completely hypocritical and the same as going "Oh, you killed someone, that's bad, you suck, that's wrong, and now we get to kill you for it >D". If murder is illegal, then I don't think you can justify the death penalty as an actual form of justice.

Also, I don't think it accomplishes anything. One family's already lost someone/some people they care about, and now another's going to go through the same in the name of "justice". I'd judt have the death penalty done away with and have the prison experience made much harsher, as I think it's rediculous to have the 'wrong-doers' of society gettin three square meals a day when those who actually abide by the laws don't.

Stopping before I go off on a completely different tangent here. ^^;;