Death Penalty: For or Against?

[MobBoss]

I am against the Death Penalty. Prison is about rehabilitation, not revenge.

Its primarily about punishment. While rehabilitation is indeed attempted, its not always successful.

Can't think of any cons? A good starting point would be the immorality of it...

Whats immoral about putting someone to death that has been shown to murder others. Doesnt it keep them from killing even more people in the future?

It costs more to execute someone than it does to keep someone in prison for life.

On average yes, but it should because of the mandatory appeal process of the death penalty. If we made appeal mandatory for life sentences, you would see the costs involved there increase significantly as well.

The criminal justice system isn't accurate enough to justify so irrevocable step.

False. In fact, even to date, there has never been a confirmed innocent person wrongfully accused, and even those suspected are less than a handful. Thats out of thousands upon thousands of executions via our system. I would say thats plenty accurate enough.

There is no deterrent value to the DP.

Debateable and it largely depends on which study you read about it. It does need more research, but the amount of variables involved make coming up with an absolute answer quite difficult.

The DP panders to the lowest parts of human behavior to hurt others.

No, as 'cruel and unusual' punishments are disallowed, thats simply not the case.

The simple fact that people on death row are frequently found innocent when the investigation is revisited by people who give a damn about the truth.

Well, they are uncommonly found, but its certainly not frequent, and I would say this is an indication that the process actually works and is getting better all the time due to science than an objection to it.

Pro-lifers would be against this.

No, as there is a difference in an innocent child and a murderer.

As long as there is an innocent child anywhere in the world who does not have enough to eat, we should not pay taxes to feed a serial killer. Let them die.

Well said.

 

[Tani Coyote]

http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001000

On the other hand, we shouldn't blame the expensiveness of the death penalty on the concept of the death penalty itself but instead on the inefficiency of the American legal system.

The justice system here is extremely inefficient. In India, death sentences are much cheaper because justice is much more swift and efficient - it costs about 200 times less in India than here! (this is a rough quote from one of my uncles, who practices in India) And there is no statistic that shows that the Indian justice system has led to more false executions than that of any other major country in the world.

That's all well and good, but the problem is the appeals process. You'll have a hell of an overhaul to do.

That and, even if it becomes cheaper to execute, until it's 100% foolproof there are serious issues.

Dead people can't be used for labor either. We have yet to perfect a zombie race.

Finally, since we're likely to move more left as time goes on, I bet we'll make it illegal anyway.

If the American justice system is improved, the death penalty will save billions of dollars which could be better spend for our education (which in turn would reduce crime!)

Probably better to go after the military or welfare here.

 

[lordsurya08]

That's all well and good, but the problem is the appeals process. You'll have a hell of an overhaul to do.

Simple. End the corruption and money-laundering that goes on. Do you know how much money the judge pockets for every capital punishment case? Thousands.
Face it. It shouldn't cost $3,000,000 to prove the innocence/guilt of one man.

 

[lordsurya08]

Many argue that the death penalty is irrevocable. I can't argue with that, but how many people have been wrongly executed? Hardly any.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_innocent_people_have_died_from_the_death_penalty
(this site has its own citations, use those for confirmation)

This link shows ~168 people wrongly killed people out of 15,000+ people executed in the US as of March 2009. That's hardly 1%. There are far more innocent people who get killed in war, starvation, hunger, and genocide every single day.

Finally, the advancement of technology, especially DNA analysis, will bring justice even closer to perfection. Twenty years later we'll have sophisticated lie detectors which will almost always make sure justice is administered properly.

 

[Shadowbound]

One is too many. That you're willing to accept a margin of error in the application of even a mockery of justice risks the integrity of the entire criminal justice system.

And that does not include death row inmates that were exonerated before they were executed.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

This link shows ~168 people wrongly killed people out of 15,000+ people executed in the US as of March 2009.

168 too many.

 

[Zack]

As Shadowbound said, even one is too many.

 

[kosiosko 1]

Finally, the advancement of technology, especially DNA analysis, will bring justice even closer to perfection. Twenty years later we'll have sophisticated lie detectors which will almost always make sure justice is administered properly.

yes when we can hook up prosecutors/judges and witnesses to this, it will bring us closer to true justice... until then, should we not be a bit more careful, about killing our citizens

 

[Abegweit]

Prison is about rehabilitation, not revenge.

How, exactly, do you think that prisons lead to rehabilitation? To me this is the complete opposite of what prisons do.

They brutalize, they harden, they destroy the soul, they teach crime. Perhaps most importantly, they eradicate every tie that their victim has to the real world, consequently destroying any channel through which he might be able to assemble something approaching a normal life when he is supposedly set "free" from what was inflicted on him.

 

[Abegweit]

lets preempt all potential murders with the death penalty

Indeed. So I guess we should kill off every member of the human race. After all, every one of us has the potential.

 

[schlaufuchs]

How, exactly, do you think that prisons lead to rehabilitation? To me this is the complete opposite of what prisons do.

They brutalize, they harden, they destroy the soul, they teach crime. Perhaps most importantly, they eradicate every tie that their victim has to the real world, consequently destroying any channel through which he might be able to assemble something approaching a normal life when he is supposedly set "free" from what was inflicted on him.

Then the system is wrong.

 

[kosiosko 1]

Indeed. So I guess we should kill off every member of the human race. After all, every one of us has the potential.

That seems, at least to me, to be the 'Pro' argument made against rehabilitaion in the OP...

 

[Abegweit]

Then the system is wrong.

Oh, I certainly agree with you there. But, then, what has the state ever done which was right?

 

[Winston Hughes]

Doing further research, I discovered that both my assertions that the death penalty is cheaper and the replies that it is not are debatable. Read this :
http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001000

You should have read it yourself. If you had, you would have found this after the first four arguments in favour of the proposition that the death penalty is cheaper:

[Editor's note: Despite many hours of additional research, ProCon.org was unable to find additional Pro comments suitable for this question as of Aug. 29, 2008]

You would also have realised how weak the arguments were on the 'death is cheaper' side. The first, and most persuasive, case on that side is founded on an estimate made by a pro-death penalty pressure group which is so inconsequential it doesn't even have a wikipedia entry. That estimate, which represents the only statistical claim on the pro-death penalty side, sits totally at odds with the data referred to in the vastly more reliable entries on the other side.

The other three entries on the 'death is cheaper' side consist of:

*A lawyer making a joke about reusing the rope after hanging somebody.

*An evidence-free opinion from a 1974 book on Criminology.

*A blogger pointing out that rifle cartridges are cheap.

And that's it. Despite "many hours of additional research", the review you cite as showing two sides to this story includes no meaningful counter to the argument that the death penalty is considerably more expensive.

 

[El_Machinae]

I'm against the death penalty for practical reasons. Morally, I tend to live in a world where 'consent matters', and a murderer has obviously consented to 'living in a world where people are killed for selfish reasons'. As well, a society reserves the right to kill in self-defense.

If the DP was actually a deterrent, then it might make sense. Sociologically, I don't think it does, because the DP tends to make a society more barbaric. It makes a society more shallow and less intelligent. So, the death penalty doesn't protect the society like its goal states that it should. So, for those practical reasons (it doesn't do what I want), then no.

 

[Arakhor]

Great parapraxis!

It's not my idea. William II Rufus of England used that very same idea to keep sexual crimes low.

 

[Camikaze]

Whats immoral about putting someone to death that has been shown to murder others. Doesnt it keep them from killing even more people in the future?

The marginal difference (between execution and life imprisonment) in preventing further death is negligible, and is outweighed by the possibility of innocence, and the simple fact that execution involves killing someone.

 

[mitsho]

This discussion is so 1950ies...

 

[Cutlass]

Capital punishment deters other potential criminals from commiting crime. Many hardened criminals don't care about prison. Some even like it - free food and a comparatively better life.

No, it does not. There's not only no evidence of that, but it makes no sense logically either.

 

[Zelig]

Its primarily about punishment. While rehabilitation is indeed attempted, its not always successful.

Well, I think one has to be particularly sadistic to think of punishment as an end, rather than a means of deterrence.

Twenty years later we'll have sophisticated lie detectors which will almost always make sure justice is administered properly.

I really doubt that.

I'm against the death penalty for practical reasons. Morally, I tend to live in a world where 'consent matters', and a murderer has obviously consented to 'living in a world where people are killed for selfish reasons'. As well, a society reserves the right to kill in self-defense.

If the DP was actually a deterrent, then it might make sense. Sociologically, I don't think it does, because the DP tends to make a society more barbaric. It makes a society more shallow and less intelligent. So, the death penalty doesn't protect the society like its goal states that it should. So, for those practical reasons (it doesn't do what I want), then no.

My opinions generally fall similarly. Although I'm relatively ambivalent to the death penalty, people who strongly support it tend to make me suspicious.