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However, there is only one scenario where I think it is not only suitable, but pretty much needed. That is to deal with people who are currently serving long sentences (30+ years) and committ and order murders inside of prison. There are prison gang members who have are already doing life and where they are charged with murder they have been known to literally laugh in court. They have no fear of the justice system because they are already doing the worst it has to offer. In their cases, I think capital punishment is quite fitting since there are no other options. You can't put them in another prison, many of them are already in prisons like Marion, Pelican Bay, San Quentin, and Florence ADX; you can't get any tougher than that, so a date with a needle is really the only solution.
However, there is only one scenario where I think it is not only suitable, but pretty much needed. That is to deal with people who are currently serving long sentences (30+ years) and committ and order murders inside of prison. There are prison gang members who have are already doing life and where they are charged with murder they have been known to literally laugh in court. They have no fear of the justice system because they are already doing the worst it has to offer. In their cases, I think capital punishment is quite fitting since there are no other options. You can't put them in another prison, many of them are already in prisons like Marion, Pelican Bay, San Quentin, and Florence ADX; you can't get any tougher than that, so a date with a needle is really the only solution.
Yup, it's sad but true.
That's why that economic study somebody cited claims that an average of 18 lives are saved by every execution. It's not deterrence necessarily - it's the fact that a lot of these people would be killing, ordering murders from the inside.
Dating back to Mills, economists have pointed out that you always need to be able to "ramp up" the punishment to deter the next greater harm. Incidentally this is also why death penalty for rape/child rape is not necessarily a good idea...if it was death penalty, they would have nothing to lose and only to gain by killing their victims...less witnesses.
Of course this doesn't apply to some poor guy with an IQ of 65 who robbed a convenience store because his friends told him to.....
If we had public executions, people would think about the death penalty differently. We are no better than the so called terrorist nations we are fighting as long as we execute the living in an eye for an eye manner. And gee, the death penalty sure doesn't seem to be deterring crime .. hmmmmmm.
On the other side of the coin ... with lethal injection being the preferred method of execution, for those of you death penalty lovers, don't you think that's a bit humane? I say if we want the death penalty, bring back public executions with the guillotine, firing squad and the rack.
I think death penalty should be limited to those who have either video or dna evidence of their crimes. That would greatly reduce the risk of wrongful death.
However, I support the Death penalty and would even like to see an expansion of the number of crimes that would qualify for the Death Penalty - one of which would be certain sexual offenses against children.
I have witnessed an execution at the request of a victims family. I can tell you that the execution did bring some closure / finality to their ordeal.
I think the current methods of putting someone to death is way too cruel and unusual and feel they chould be banned.
I feel a more modern method of pushing a murderer out a plane at 35,000 feet in the middle of the pacific would be alot more humane, plus the fact that they could do a whole planeload in 10 minutes.
I fully support the death penalty. Dead criminals commit no further crimes.
In 2005, there were 2,337,090 people arrested in the US and charged with either violent or property crimes. We execute about 40 a year.
There would have been no crime in 2006 if we had executed 2,337,090 people, instead of only 40. Please explain how executing 40 people and leaving 2,337,050 alive would have affected the number of crimes the following year.
In 2005, 44% of all known homicides remain unsolved, and there has been no arrest. If every person charged with a homicide in 2005 had been executed, 44% of the killers would still be at large. How does capital punishment stop them from re-offending? You would have executed more than 7,000 people, and still barely got half of them, who are still hiding under your bed every night waiting to kill you.
I firmly believe in capital punishment. Without question, eveyone at the Capitol should be punished....severely.
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