How many people truly oppose the death penalty? (enemy, lawyer, poll)
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it goes more to the phrasing of the question. do you think 40% of Americans opposed the killing bin laden?
There is a difference between defensive and revenge killing.
The death penalty is usually a revenge killing, and not a defensive one because the person is already confined before the fact, not running around on the loose.
I'm actually not all that interested in justice, OR revenge. I think that the first is somewhat fallacious thinking and the second is savage and beneath us. What I do believe in, is taking people out of society who clearly are not wired to live in society, to the point that they violate the right for others to exist in safety. Protecting society from human monsters. That, I support.
The issue I have with the death penalty, is that I wish we had a more certain and sure way to determine factual guilt. I wish that there were a means by which in the most egregious of cases, someone could be brain scanned to determine the facts of the matter in a way that was utterly fool proof, 100% accurate, and with zero margin for error. Only to be used either voluntarily or in extreme cases. So if you are accused of something and you know you're innocent of it, you can clear your name. If something so perfect existed, then I would be completely on board with the death penalty, but I'd want it to be as humane as possible. No pain, if that is something we can achieve. Because the point is not suffering, it's not revenge, it's the elimination of a person who rapes, murders, molests children, someone whose antisocial behavior is so extreme that they are beyond rehabilitation.
And for others with lesser crimes, the point should be more about finding and addressing the root causes of their behavior and trying to reshape them into functional members of society. Not just penning them up for punishment in a way that might make them even more criminal, destroying their families and jobs and ability to live a normal life when they get out, so that they are even more desperate and even more likely to resort to crime to survive.
I do not believe that human life is inherently sacred, just for its own sake. But I believe very strongly in what makes our species prosperous, which is living in functional societies where not only physical power but also intelligence is valuable and protected. In order to do that, those who egregiously violate the safety of others cannot be allowed to run amok, and I'm OK with their lives being humanely terminated like a rabid animal.
But we have to make sure, very sure, that we are only using that to extinguish the lives of those individuals, not victims of a flawed justice system. As we do not in fact have the means to do that right now...I have to hold back my full support for the concept of the death penalty.
There is a difference between defensive and revenge killing.
The death penalty is usually a revenge killing, and not a defensive one because the person is already confined before the fact, not running around on the loose.
Right- with the death penalty, we’ve already held a trial and determined the person is guilty. The cost of housing a person on death row is typically astronomical, partially due to the fact that most have numerous appeals to get them off death row. It’s also problematic that there are racial disparities in who gets on death row in the first place and within the US, there are a lot of different regulations requiring who gets the death penalty.
In Florida, not only can you get the death penalty, but a unanimous jury is not required. So, you may end up with a jury consisting of some of your peers and still get a death penalty because the people are not your peers were able to impose it.
The death penalty is suppose to be a deterrent for future crimes by other citizens in addition to being punishment for a murderer. How many of the current murders that are rampant in US cities would have taken place if we had swift justice for murders?
In order for the death penalty to have an impact on future killings, all executions should be open to the public. Either in person or televised.
Then someone demonstrated with some sourced figures that carrying out the death penalty on a person cost the local government significantly more than putting them in jail for life. Jail is cheaper than the lawyers that are required to administer the necessary procedures and trials and appeals that someone has a right to before the death penalty is enacted.
I am not willing to pay 3 times the amount just to have them dead rather than in a cell for life.
There are so many people on death row today, especially child murderers and convicted serial killers, who have gotten to live long healthy lives on the tax payer's dime. Killers like Ed Kemper or Sam Little got to become elderly men, while their young victims died painful deaths. How often have we heard of child abductors, who murdered their victim's, escape death row? It happens all of the time. We really have to start considering what this does to the families of those victims and I know putting a murderer to death won't bring their loved one back, but murderers should NOT get to live to their 60s 70s or 80s. That's not justice.
I realize, as a person of color, that there are times when a person maybe wrongly convicted due to the jury's interpretation of the circumstantial evidence presented. But, I'm talking about cases where there is NO doubt. If somebody kills a person (with 1st degree murder intent) and it wasn't in self-defense and there is no doubt that they did it , I support a speedy execution!
Well here we have an interesting catch of things.
As to whether I am for or against, well that gets into what I said about having me on a jury in that I know too much.
There is a theory that people are willing to declare someone guilty and sentence them to the DP because they know in our system there is plenty of time for the mistake to be caught if they are wrong. They can do that action without it weighing heavy on their conscience.
But what if we say, "The man you declare guilty and sentence to the needle will be taken out in 30 minutes and put the death.". How many jurors would be willing to go for that?
And there is the catch. If they don't say he is guilty, for their worry of making a mistake in such a rush, THAT'S IT!......he can't be tried again for the same killing in the same jurisdiction.
As far as no doubt of something, there are people who will say that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by a missile because they saw the rising tail fire and heard the boom......but that impression is a trick of physics for light (the image of the burning 747 climbing without its nose) reaches the viewer before sound (the boom of the nose being blown off the airplane).
So what is certainty? What is no doubt?
As far as whether I am for or against well that is what I said about having me on a jury for I know too much.
Last edited by TamaraSavannah; 08-10-2021 at 02:22 PM..
Surveys vary with the exact percentage of people who oppose the death penalty... typically the number cited in the US is around 60% support its existence.
Yet I find it hard to believe that 40% of Americans oppose the state killing Osama Bin Laden. I'm guessing that number is probably closer to 10%. That would mean the vast majority of people who "oppose" the death penalty really only oppose it unless the crime is really, really bad, right?
If you don't think the state has the right to take away a human life for any reason, then why the absence of outrage from those who oppose the death penalty on Bin Laden's "murder"?
I myself was against it as an adolescent until I was for it. When there were all-white juries and other serious indicia of injustice the expression "those who got the capital don't get the punishment" made a good deal of sense. Experience has shown that there are a great deal of crimes where the culpability of the accused is not in serious doubt. It was the Son of Sam murders that really moved me to the pro-death penalty camp. There was no doubt that David Berkowitz was the Son of Sam. People argued about his psychological condition. To be honest his psychological well-being is of little concern to me. A mass-murderer is almost never mentally healthy.
Society seems to have lost any sense of right and wrong, of moral absolutes. We have outlawed most cash bail, and worry more about "mass incarceration" than public well-being. People have rights. And in most cases, capital defendants are not angelic choir boys.
I definitely support the death penalty, but I wish it were used more wisely. I saw the story of Kenneth Foster, on Netflix, who received the death penalty because he was the driver of a car where his buddies and him were planning a robbery. In the course of the robbery, one of his accomplices shot and killed someone. Kenneth Foster never exited the car or fired a shot. His initial sentence was the death penalty, which was later commuted to 40 to life in prison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Foster
On the other hand, consider a monster like Jake Patterson, who murdered Jayme Closs' parents, abducted her and held her captive for 88 days for his own sick pleasure. Going into the trial in a state that does not have the death penalty was a little ridiculous. The maximum sentence of life surely can't be considered justice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Jayme_Closs
Hypocrites of our own system. Dont kill others! Yet here , let's legally kill you.
I can't rally behind an execution . I would probably be sitting with the families of the victims....wishing them peace . Hoping no others have to endure that burden. There is no one size fits all answer.
The death penalty needs to end. One falsely accused and innocent person put to death is one too many. There are too many built in failures where the accused do not have access to proper counsel. For various reasons, law enforcement has shown to be flawed at times in the hows and whys of detective work. There is no correcting a death penalty.
The Innocence Project has shown how many wrongly convicted are innocent. The death penalty removes that chance from the wrongly convicted innocent person to be released. https://innocenceproject.org/about/
The death penalty cost more than life in prison.
"The death penalty is far more expensive than a system utilizing life-without-parole sentences as an alternative punishment. Some of the reasons for the high cost of the death penalty are the longer trials and appeals required when a person’s life is on the line, the need for more lawyers and experts on both sides of the case, and the relative rarity of executions. Most cases in which the death penalty is sought do not end up with the death penalty being imposed. And once a death sentence is imposed, the most likely outcome of the case is that the conviction or death sentence will be overturned in the courts. Most defendants who are sentenced to death essentially end up spending life in prison, but at a highly inflated cost because the death penalty was involved in the process." https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/costs
The death penalty is a failure.
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