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I am all for the death penalty when it is proven without any doubt that the person is guilty. Either confession, DNA (has to be proven) , video etc... it has to be proven. Once that has been done there should be no appeals, no plea bargains , nothing... no waiting years.
This is an example of having an opinion about something without having thought it through. To be fair, many people have this opinion, but they are all doing the same thing.
The long appeals process that everyone complains about in death penalty cases is the reason that 4% of the people convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death who are innocent are not executed. Many of those who were falsely convicted were only exonerated during the last stages of the process as well.
In the Ronnie Lee Williams case in Oklahoma, Ronnie was down to his last stage of appeals and had spent over ten years on death row before the real killer was discovered.
Shorten this process down to 24 hours and there'll be a lot of wrongly executed people. That would probably do more to abolish the death penalty than anything else.
If people who supported the death penalty were not hypocritical, they wouldn't oppose a thorough appeals process and more importantly they'd be willing to use tax dollars to pay for good representation for someone accused of murder, rather than simply the haphazard defense that many still get.
The DP is horrific and ILLEGAL under international law.
You guys are only surpassed by China and Afghanistan in your hurry to execute individuals.
Recent revelations state that ONE IN 25 persons executed in the US are "likely to be innocent".
I wasn't at this guys trial, maybe he did it maybe he didnt - but the attitude shown above is EXACTLY why these nasty violent crimes occur.
No one cares.
No "humanity" at all.
What would Jesus do, oh Great White Christian Megapower?
Lots of "us" don't believe in Jesus and don't care what he would do (we are not a Christian nation), but if one did, one would be comforted by Jesus's words from the bible: Psalm 137:8 "O Babylon, you will be destroyed. Happy is the one who pays you back for what you have done to us."
Anyway, most people in other countries have no clue how much day to day violence the USA has to deal with. I've lived in other countries and it's really very awesome to be able to walk down the street at any time of day without fear of being attacked; to see a man walking towards me on a sidewalk and not feel the need to hold on to the knife in my pocket I keep for self defense. Must be great to go on walks without pepper spray. Lots of us can't do that here. Get jumped on a few times and you would stop caring about violent criminals too.
I don't really care what happens to violent offenders. I hope they all suffer and die horribly, the world over.
Prisons are also a huge drain on money for very little return.
The death penalty isn't designed to be lasting punishment, it is meant to the the ultimate punishment, the deprivation of life.
That the punishment ends when the individual dies is irrelevant, it isn't part of the idea.
Often, the institutionalization of a person eliminates the confinement as a punishment, the imprisoned adjust to life in confinement, nothing is accomplished by keeping them there except that they can't directly impact the general public through crimes.
A life of imprisonment as punishment will never equal the finality of death as a punishment. There is no acclimation to death, no getting used to it. While one can argue that someone can get used to the fact they will be put to death, when that time comes all that goes out the window and reality come knocking.
I disagree. There are very few civilized countries that have the death penalty. We are in the shrinking minority of Iran, Iraq, N. Korea and Communist China and perhaps a couple of other African countries, that still have the death penalty.
I think we don't have the firing squad or electric chair or gas chambers is because the reaction would be that juries would refuse to convict on capital crimes. If it can be accomplished clinically on a hospital gurney....they are absolved of some of the guilt or at least of the guilty feelings and nagging doubts.
Felix C is correct on this one. Utah and Oklahoma still can use firing squad as a method of execution. There are five members of the firing squad and none of the shooters ever knows who fired the lethal bullet. I believe this has always been the case; the last person executed by firing squad in the U.S. was in Utah in 2010.
They wouldn't actually. The thing about people who choose this lifestyle, and it is a lifestyle choice, is that they never think they will be caught. And I'm sure those who have been have gotten away with much more than they were ever charged with. So there really is no deterrent to crime other than what is already inside of the individual that guides them to the choices they make.
Nonsense. Many lesser killers would be deterred if we ramped up the execution rate to a few thousand a year.
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I could care less about the guy.
