Are you for or against capital punishment?

Putting Terrorism aside as a whole other rotten kettle of stew. I have a few questions.
1. If people feel so strongly that "life should mean life", why does there seem to be little political action on this front? If we want the bad guys (and gals) put away and kept away, why isn't anyone demanding it?
2. More importantly, I think that we need to study the child molesters, rapists, murderers and figure out what is going on in their twisted little minds. Until we can permanently cure these individuals, they should be locked up, or eliminated from society.
It's interesting that while we know a lot about how the atom works, we don't know much about ourselves.

There are a number of incontrovertible arguments against the death penalty.

The most important one is the virtual certainty that genuinely innocent people will be executed and that there is no possible way of compensating them for this miscarriage of justice. There is also another significant danger here. The person convicted of the murder may have actually killed the victim and may even admit having done so but does not agree that the killing was murder. Often the only people who know what really happened are the accused and the deceased. It then comes down to the skill of the prosecution and defence lawyers as to whether there will be a conviction for murder or for manslaughter. It is thus highly probable that people are convicted of murder when they should really have only been convicted of manslaughter

The death penalty is the bluntest of "blunt instruments" it removes the individual's humanity and with it any chance of rehabilitation and their giving something back to society. In the case of the worst criminals this may be acceptable but is more questionable in the case of less awful crimes.

I am against the death penalty. I think it is the ultimate perversion that as a deterent to killing, we are willing to kill.

How can we claim to be a civilized society if we are not prepared to regard all life as sacred? I'm not speaking from a religious perspective, but from a moral one.
Killing a person is not justice. It's just another killing. How on earth can deliberately stopping a heart from beating be considered a benefit to society?

We need to completely revamp the justice system. Of course that would require billions, but what better investment than in the human lives that make up our society? (The same can be said for education and medicine---yes, I am one of those people who want to sink major tax dollars into Life).

What disturbs me most about the death penalty is that so many people on so-called Death Row in the U.S. do/did not have the means to pay for an adequate defense. We need a well-defined, humane system of punishment. Life without parole should mean just that – no deals for people in this category. For pedophiles etc, there needs to be longer sentences and perhaps life-time monitoring, perhaps even with forced curfews and things like ankle bracelets. I have tried to find stats on so-called "cure" rates, but they are very vague. (Chemical castration does not usually work. Many of these men use a knife to express their rage if they are unable to use their penises).

We need decent rehab facilities for people convicted of lesser crimes who started out poor and uneducated so that they have some hope of betterment when they finish their sentences. Instead, too many learn a new kind of craft while in prison society and end up much more violent human beings than they were when they were incarcerated.

In this country, as well as in the U.S., the prison system is horrific. We talk about rehabilitation while creating the most soul-destroying atmosphere possible and then wonder about the recitivism rate. Even more appalling is the "white collar crime" system vs the "regular prison system" – Why? Because white collars have more dollars than the far greater percentage of the penal system who come from disenfranchized minorities?

The legal network is just too close to the political network for me to be willing to trust our judicial system to be equitable.

Aanii

The most valid reason to support the Death Penalty is to prevent proven murderers from killing more people. Some people are too dangerous to be left alive.

If society fails to protect the innocent from the predators then there is no need for that society.

I agree that the standard of evidence in many capital cases is way too low and that the DP should only be applied in the presence of incontrovertible evidence that someone has committed such a crime.

I would send someone to jail for life if there was any doubt of their guilt.

I would only apply the DP if there was no doubt of their guilt.

Forensic science has progressed to where we do have cases where the standard of evidence is absolute and those should be the only cases where the DP is applied.

In circumstantial cases the DP should NEVER be applied as I agree this lends to gross miscarriages of justice.

I used to be a big supporter of the death penalty, but I have read about too many people that have been wrongly convicted to support it now. There is a guy here in the Manitowoc area that was in prison for 18 years, wrongly convicted, and was released last year only because DNA evidence was finally allowed into his case. I do not think that we as a society should be allowed to put a person to death......let them go to prison and if evidence comes forth that exonerates them they can walk out. It does little good to find out that an innocent person died from a faulty trial. Talk about murder! That person's blood is on all of our hands.

You think the really alarming violence takes place outside the abortion clinic

This may or may not fit, I'll go out on a limb and say it will.

Wrongly convicted people are strong arguments against the death penalty but for some crimes & some people it is the only solution. How many pedophile/murder-rapist have re-offended. Does clifford olsen deserve life? Paul Bernardo? I would lose no sleep executing people like that.

Captial Punishment is as it says. However when it was on the books for the first degree murder of police, correctional service workers it devalued the lives of individuals in main street society. Just because we as police officers place ourselves knowlingly in the line of fire is there any difference in the value of my live or that of Lily's or Royal Highlanders - no not a chance.

To have society feed, cloth and take care of you medicaly etc in the Federal pen system now costs more than Donny Brasco makes a year. If you do the crime you should do the time, if you willfully take the life of a fellow citizen than what right do you have to walk the streets in 12 to 20 years after good behaviour is subtracted, none really.

At one time individuals felt that the existance of Capital Punishment ment that someone would be incorrectly sentenced to death for a first degree murder and rape (when it was called this) With the intorduction of dental forensics (Billy Stillman case) and DNA testing (which has been used to release older convicted individuals) the chances of a wrong sentence are narrowed. Is it a deterant??? Int he year after it was removed for rape the number of reported numbers of sexual assualts increased.