CONTRA
1. Religious arguments
Example:
[quote]hkstar (#153): “What part of “Thou shalt not kill” do you Christians not understand? I’m not even religious but those 10 Commandments seem pretty solid to me. How many people did Jesus put to death? Even for the most heinous crimes? None, I believe?”[/quote]
Well, the justice system is not really a religious but a secular matter. Any religious community should have the right to sanction its own members for transgressions against that community’s teachings (as long as those sanctions don’t go against the law of the state in which they practice their beliefs), but transgressions against secular law cannot be redressed by religious law. Considering the diverse beliefs in the US alone this should be obvious. Let’s say a Christian Methodist murders a Mormon. Whose religious law would be applicable?
Besides, most religious groups don’t even have a penal code sufficient to deal with the wide range of transgressions that face the judiciary of modern states, so why should they get a special say on capital punishment?

2. Innocents could be wrongly executed
Example:
[quote] spac3m0nk3y (#50): “…Second, how can you be absolutely sure the person is guilty? I hate to think about it, but I’m sure many innocent people have been falsely accused of a crime and then executed. That alone is not worth capital punishment.”[/quote]
This argument could be made for other punishments as well (there are probably some people unjustly imprisoned as well), but I concede that in the case of capital punishment, it would be difficult to cancel the verdict after the execution…
100% certainty will not be easy to achieve, so yes, the standards to which a trial with a capital punishment sentence should be held have to be high.
Requiring a confession would not be practical, as the convict could thus prevent his execution by simply withholding his confession.
Capital punishment could be reserved for repeat offenders. As Web (#128) said, the odds of being wrongly accused and convicted of murder TWICE are vanishingly small.
Also there are cases where the guilt of the offender CAN be proven beyond reasonable doubt. The case Don linked to in #133 is a good example.
Of course this leaves UNreasonable doubt, but I for one would be willing to take that risk.

3. Economical reasons
Example:
[quote]Richt T (#110): “It costs more to execute a criminal than to lock him away for life. Those who think money can be saved by killing someone are showing their ignorance.
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-murderersalive.htm“[/quote]
Sorry, but that’s not an argument against capital punishment, but one against the ridiculously long and complicated appeals processes.
However if convicted criminals were put to productive work, so they can pay for their expenses out of their salary, this could tip the balance for this argument. This could also be a valuable tool for rehabilitation.

4. The convict’s Right to Live would be violated
This is in fact the best argument against capital punishment, I have heard so far. Yes, the convict has violated just this same right in others, but doesn’t the US constitution have a passage where it says that an individual’s right to life is “unalienable”? Other modern democratic constitutions contain similar passages, so does that mean that no matter what one does, the constitution prevents capital punishment?
Well, obviously there are exceptions, for in the same sentence of said constitution – in fact right next to the word “life” – is the word “freedom” which is supposedly just as unalienable, but we see people sent to prison every day and for the most part no one seriously objects (at least not because of the constitution). I am no lawyer but I have my personal opinion on what those exceptions should be and will explain them a bit farther down this post.

There are a few more arguments that are not so well thought through:
5. “The death penalty is racist.”
[quote]Ronald (#115): “There are far more white people in the United States than black. Therefore there are far more racist white people in the United States than racist black people, … Therefore any jury is far more likely to have biased whites on it then biased blacks.”[/quote]
An astounding feat of logic… I recommend a basic course in causality. However even if those assumptions are true, even with my rudimentary knowledge of the US judicial system I know that there are safeguards against this: Both the defendant and the prosecution can refuse jury members they suspect to be prejudiced or racist. I believe both sides do make generous use of this right.

6. “I disagree with the precedent set by the government killing its own citizens, whatever the reason.” (also #115)
So you do, but that is your personal opinion (to which you certainly have a right) and not an argument against CP.

7. People on an internet forum have no right to an opinion on this matter
Example:
[quote]hello (#100): “Who are these people discussing what punishment is and how it should be? What makes anybody who has a PC and who is able to type a thinker and a knowledgeable person on a subject such as this, writing about people’s lives? Where does this arrogance come from which makes an idiot think that he has something to write that is worth reading?”[/quote]
Right back at you.

PRO
1. Justice
Just to define the meaning of Justice is something you could write books about, even if we limit ourselves to “retributive justice” as applicable to the topic at hand.
Obviously, justice is THE argument for CP, isn’t it? After all the offender killed, so it is only just that he be killed in turn…
However it is not that easy. I think that justice is what should be done after all the arguments both for and against CP have been heard and weighted.
If there are sufficient arguments for CP then CP is “just”, if the arguments against CP are better, it is “unjust”.
Justice cannot be the REASON for CP, it is the END to which CP should be applied or not applied depending on the reasons presented.

2. Revenge
Every time I hear a news-story about a guy who brutally raped and killed a 9-year old or other crimes just as heinous, it is a very compelling notion to just off the guy and be done with it. It is a very slippery slope we are on here though.
Revenge for one thing doesn’t care about justice. If revenge is the only reason for killing an offender, what will the family of the offender do? Revenge always leads to a vicious circle of violence.
It is for a reason that our judiciary system is built on neutrality!

3. Closure
It is possible that the death of the offender will bring closure to some of the victim’s family, but will it bring closure to all of them? Will they even know if it brings them closure until after the execution? Will they feel worse? How will we decide whether this criminal should die and that one shouldn’t? Will the criminal’s punishment be dependent on the mental state of the victim’s family? Will criminals whose victims don’t have any relatives get off “easy”? Would a mourning mother condemn the poor bugger who reacted a second too slow and drove over her child with his car? If I had just lost a loved one, I wouldn’t trust myself to make a “just” decision.

4. Deterrent
Deterrent would be a good reason for capital punishment, but its effectiveness is hard to prove.
Some statistics say the murder rates in the US are higher than in other countries despite the existence of CP, but there are many other factors that are likely to influence this as well, not the least of which are the very loose gun control laws. Also not all US states have CP, so the statistics are likely skewed.
Some argue that criminals simply do not consider any consequences or deterrents before committing a crime, or hey rationalize that they won’t be caught anyway:
[quote]Alias (#129): “To most would-be criminals (even criminals in general), their life situation or mental state just means they’re simply not thinking of the consequences. If I ever had occasion to plan somebody’s brutal murder, I’d almost certainly re-think the because of the punishment I’d receive – losing my life or losing my freedom. Either way, not being there to watch my daughter grow up would be a massive deterrent for me. But then I’m not criminally-minded.”[/quote]
That may be true, but on the other hand there are all those who DID consider the consequences and decided NOT to commit a crime. It is simply not possible to reliably collect those numbers for a statistic. Also it is impossible to know how many people will find a 10 year prison sentence inadequate deterrent and are swayed by the prospect of the death penalty.
I do believe that the death penalty does have a deterrent effect, but as it is impossible to quantify, it should not be the sole justification for CP.
Some others argue that the deterrent effect would be increased by making executions public and/or excessively painful. While this is probably true, I’d hate to see what society would come to if we started to take pleasure in such things. Reality TV is bad enough as it is today…

5. Prevention of Recidivism
For me, the best reason for CP is to protect innocents from those people who pose a serious threat to society. There are people who feel no remorse about killing and who will do so again if given the chance and the incentive (and for some, this “incentive” can be quite trivial). It is for those people (psychopaths, terrorists etc.) for whom CP should be reserved.
According to the US recidivism statistics, about 60% of released prisoners go on to become repeat offenders. According to that statistic only about 1% of released murderers were rearrested for murder within 3 years, but I don’t believe the vast majority of murderers pose a significant threat to the public and should thus be subject to CP. For example, some US states differentiate between murders of 1st – 3rd degrees, where 3rd degree murder would be murder without the intent to kill. I didn’t find any statistics regarding this, but I think a large part of murders falls into this category. Also there are probably a number of 1st degree murderers (intentional, premeditated and deliberate action) who do not pose a threat to society (i.e. the wife who poisons the husband who has been beating her, revenge killings, etc.)

FAZIT:
I support capital punishment for those who intentionally and deliberately caused the death of innocent people and are likely to do so again if released among the general public, provided that their guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt. This definition explicitly includes terrorists of all kinds.
Other criminals should be sent to prison and there made to work to help pay for their upkeep. Maybe they could even learn some craft to help support them after their release.

Hmm… This post has gotten almost as long as zed’s. I swear that wasn’t my intention ^^°

Then of course there are the psychological and educational issues. I wonder if those crude violent people didn’t grow up surrounded by ignorance and violence. Finally there will be some who are just psychopaths born with different brain function and can not judge right from wrong or even care that they can’t but these are few and far between.

The problem with capitol punishment (and I do support it for those that are psychopaths or brutal murders but the point is to remove them from society.) The reason for the lengthy and expensive death row process is that we do find out that people were innocent while on death row and people have been convicted on surprisingly little then had dna or a witness later exonerate them , there was a guy who spent 14 years in jail for killing a stranger with a glass bottle that had his prints on it then it turned out she had been struck by a car not killed with a bottle. Also the rich can murder in broad day light and maybe get off or avoid death and the poor and ignorant don’t get the same representation.

Big problem with deterrent is that we teach people to be self centered we say look don’t do this because of what happens to “you” if you get caught. Then some Jackass thinks well I don’t care or I just won’t get caught , is too stupid , or has already all but self destructed mentally and is just gonna take somone with him and enjoy the ride to the chair. Maybe even fantasies about the attention (at least he’s important for a little while.)

We need peoples heads on straight in our society in the first place. What would happen if everyone got an equal education for example and actually were forced to go through high school and grew up understanding the importance of education human life and ethics and actually were engaged more like college or trade school in learning what interested them as well as the important areas of development in a positive environment. The parents can’t be the only source of this environment especially when they had little education themselves.

Also everyone needs to be taught ethics and basic mental health and decision making early on. I’m not saying biased religious morals but the process of moral debate and thought.

Lets face it also in poor communities their are less real businesses/ jobs and the schools are a place to hang out and become delinquent while staying ignorant until they wash their hands of you. Mean while your taught via the rest of societies unwritten rules of the importance of competing for money , being greedy and selfish and getting material goods, respect and sex.

Turn on the TV and there it is. If we had high quality equal learning not some bullshit prison like sink hole for some and good schools for others this would be less of an issue. If our culture were fundamentally compassionate rather than everyone for them selves and screw you mentality this would help a lot.We need policy that doesn’t wait until some one falls through the cracks, melts down, malfunctions and then says lets make you sorry (that you got caught or maybe were ever born at least) after the fact. Maybe changing that would go a long way in stead of just being more defensive and punitive. Haven’t we tried the latter already and it’s not working ? Aren’t other well developed counties who are not having these issues looking at us and wondering why we are having this issue and thinking we must be idiots or have lost our minds ? As if they didn’t have reason enough to think that after we created foreign policy nightmares, then tried to deal with the consequences by electing crooks to office, shedding the bill of rights and declaring war on a noun.

Do we take a Que from them ? No were America and we know and we don’t contribute to our problems at all we say. That’s right when something doesn’t work lets go farther to the extreme that got us here after all what we do is always right so we must just need more of it.

As for the guy who said anti punishment sissy’s “shared their toys”, it’s because our parents were teaching us not to be narrow minded selfish pricks. When you get to be an adult the other “kid” maybe doesn’t have any toys and your the 12th one to tell him to get bent you don’t share and he mugs you , or you kill him first then his friend or father kills you and yours kills his and then maybe the state gets involved. Great way to live your life. There are lots of third world countries that all live by this tribal law, revenge, self severing, eye for an eye look out for number one mentality and everyone life is a living hell. There is always going to be one more guy outnumbering you at some point or some one with a little bigger gun or who just gets lucky. This a poor last resort and we can do better than that.

How many times have you heard a Realtor or new couple buying a home talk about are the schools here good ? In the benefits while the real estate agent is justifying that huge 30 year debt you’ll hear her mention how it’s worth it because the schools are good (unlike the others in cheap neighborhoods that aren’t right ?) meaning your kid will be groomed to think and function instead of groomed for a gang , prison or a life of poverty. They will be empowered instead of having to beat the odds at “cesspool high”. All the schools have to actually give a good competitive education (sorry for those that think they had to earn their kids education but we want actually want everyone to be able to think, thrive and at least be reasonable, because we have to live with them) that means when they leave they can speak ,read and write, understand critical thinking, basic scientific method, philosophy arts literature computer and a little basic financial/business skills and actually have a full understanding of themselves and the world around them on which to base decisions. Then give the opportunity to go to a real college. That is the only thing determining Harvard state or community college is their current grades and level of commitment to study and intelligence. do they want vocational training or a more extensive education ? At least they can exploit their potential.

We don’t want to put our money here though do we ? We need some one to flip that burger , scrub that toilet and bag our groceries. Without a formal caste system or slavery we need some way to force some people to work for minimum wage with no health care , or education and live in rented crappy real estate they don’t get to own unless they live in shack they had to get through a predatory loan they couldn’t even aford. Citybank then collects the rent and opens a check cashing/pay advance place next to the liqueur store since the rest are not getting a real loan anytime soon and we still want to make interest off their meager income.

So people are raised to feel entitled to stuff , told their self worth depends on it after all that’s how we keep the middle class slaving away for stuff they don’t need. Then being ignorant being told they need to get stuff , realizing they don’t have it fair or maybe not have the ability to think critically to even see they have options. Even if it will require an extra decade of their life ten times the work and some real education that’s not in card for many people. We instead have them act like idiots, or aggressive selfish materialistic a-holes with no value for human life and a warped view of reality and we act surprised when people who are poor or defective go bat shit nuts.

I once saw a woman almost stab a guy over a McDonalds parking spot ? Do you think this parking spot was really that important to go to jail over , or she even wanted it that badly ? I’d guess her whole life is way in the toilet and she’s at melt down before she ever pulled that knife over whose gonna get an egg Mcuffin in the first place. It matters little to that guy if he got stabbed that she’s gonna be punished later. We have people living life in perpetual state of stress poverty and “road rage” and were too busy trying to dig ourselves out of debt and chase the American dream to worry about our communities.

We give people just enough freedom, desire and ignorance so that when we dangle the carrot just close enough to their nose they loose it and try to take what they want. Others, poor or not, are still brought up totally morally bankrupt and they kill when they don’t get exactly what they want from someone or they just don’t know how to make decisions but have been taught they are supposed to be entitled after all this is America.

There will always be nuts and psychos out there thieves and crooks but Id rather they be educated “white collar” criminals or at least as small a percent as possible of the population.

How much crime would we get rid of if people were decently educated through child hood and then all had to choose Harvard- college or crime ? How much more would it go down if the environments were equaly good in the community and the parent rasing the kids in the first place and there was no poor or disadvantaged starting point ? We need a moral well educated youth across the board that didn’t learn first the value of money and self interest need for taking respect and competition as there universal core values before we said hey, ok the rest is up to you good luck ! For one of the wealthiest hardest working nations we have all the wealth in the top 10 percent how is that hand holding ? Welfare (for impoverished single mothers pretty much if your a man your expected to work at KFC and sell drugs on the side) we have 30,000 to 80,000k educations and then houses outside the ghetto that cost 300k to 800k no one can afford ? Dose welfare include an education or good schools to help you compete ? No. Should it ? Maybe not but if we had the other priories straightened out first we wouldn’t need the welfare and the prisons nearly as much.

So we don’t need to change the punishment it’s about as good as it might get. I do believe in holding people accountable but if you really want to lesson the chance you’ll get victimized on the whole as a society you need to hit the source in your society and not take some small consolation that your dead but so are they. Your family got revenge and the criminal didn’t care at least at the time they were committing the crime or were too stupid to make a good decision.

So you’ve set up an evolutionary sort of survival of the fittest reactionary system to weed people out after they go off the deep end clearly that’s not the best way to do it. As more criminals grow up dumb and violent and mentally defective, they act the way they are and you kill them, lather rinse repeat. That’s why the deterrent doesn’t work as you get tougher punishment and no prevention it just means they make dam sure not to leave any witnesses when they rob you. If these people could make good decisions or were growing up to have better options or give a crap rather than being defective with a faulty world view they wouldn’t be insane enough to rob you anyway.

I say why not rehabilitate them starting when they are two years old with a good environment and childhood education not once they are already long gone and the shit has hit the fan ?

We need to change the process that helps turn a newborn baby with no predispositions into dangerous human waste. There will still be crime but it would be the rare exception rather than the common statistic. There is a reason the prisons are not full of violent mostly rich business owners, doctors and lawyers or successful well educated people. There is a reason why on tv that these offenders sound like ignorant dangerous violent assclowns it’s because that they grew up in our society to be ignorant, dangerous, violent assclowns. You can say not my problem buddy screw you sink or swim but in a society we all have to live together and are dependent on one another so if your neighbors sink they very well may try and pull you down too.

You can say hey not my fault and maybe it’s not directly but as a whole when a society is looking for a real solution then they have to do what fixes the problem at the source, not just say you had your chance and still couldn’t cut it in America supposed land of opportunity so you suck tough luck.

This doesn’t work because we all have to live together and when someone else fails or goes insane we also bear the consequences and financial burdens. Talk of hand outs all you want clearly some thing was not enough or just not the right way. Some people will always be criminals but we have big problem when our prisons are overflowing and it’s with the environment that breeds this. Other counties that fair better have more uniform educational and wealth distribution and a different culture so comparing death penalty to crime rate is assumed causality. It’s apples to oranges when your society and culture is promoting, class division, narcissism, self entitlement and materialism coupled with a lack of universal high quality education (essentially violent crime waiting to happen).Our is inherently to begin with.

We have an education system that is really good for some and really awful for just as many. Look how much college or a home costs and ask why ? Because these are not considered necessities but instead investments and status symbols that we inflate and make out to cost a fortune because we are greedy.

Why do people keep saying how great our education system is and how wealthy our nation is when these benefits are concentrated among a disproportionately tiny mount (those not committing many crimes btw are in guess what group) ? We could even have lesser standards of both but spread more evenly as other countries still with lower crime happen to have rather than what we do now which is look at an average composed of two extremes in America and say hey we have a great system here too.

Some one has to be Janitor or make your french fires and we sure as hell can’t have them in college instead though right ? Some people would work 30 hours a week at burger king if it paid an ok wage that met all their needs , others might aspire to more but that’s not how our system is set up. We go a decade barley raising the minimum wage a few cents we let education and higher education be an overpriced status symbols. We implode our mortgage market till it burst and hundreds of millions of middle class Americans walk on their house payments, then give the crooks a 700 million bailout for their trouble, we let our nation go uninsured and pay 10 times the cost for prescriptions as every other country whos government isn’t on their payroll and we do all this to maintain an un official caste system because we think we are going to be rich some day too, or have this idea of this fantasy of the American dream. We deluge everyone with consumer greed and dysfunction ram it down peoples throats that they are in the land of opportunity and then make it so some can barley afford to live with any quality of life and are ignorant and so they act accordingly. We say hey it’s your fault and they say ok screw it I’m going take what I want, and we then go ok now your punished and they say whatever screw it at least I took you with me. Not the best system is it ?

I also read an article in London about a stabbing and how people were calling for better knife control I kid you not. They had the same discussions in the media like that it would not do any good , saying that people find a way to kill people, or that the criminals would stab you because you can’t get a knife and they had the argument going back and forth .It was identical to our gun control arguments but guess what I noticed they had pretty much no shootings to argue over.

And if your thinking your country is so messed up your afraid without citizens possessing arms that your government might go fascist on you one day or your neighbors kill you in your sleep then you have to wake up and realize something is very very wrong here.

On the first point, the difference between “kill” and “murder” is that “kill” simply means ending life, while “murder” indicates malicious intent and/or criminal behavior.

The 2nd point is that unfortunately, the justice system must be run by humans. It is left up to us and of course, we are prone to mistakes. However, if we chose the alternative, to do nothing, it would be much worse.

Since only the extremely bad individuals are executed, I’m going to give an extreme example to illustrate. Let’s say that we take 100 individuals like Saddam Hussein (spelling?) and sentence them to life in prison rather than executing them. Now let’s say that 10 of these individuals is able to continue his crimes either through a network of individuals or escaping from prison. Now let’s say that because of this continuation of crime 100 additional innocent people die. And just to make the figures work out nicely, we found out we as humans screwed up and 1 of the bad criminals was actually innocent. So, the question is, where are we better off? With capital punishment we’ve killed 99 murderers and 1 innocent, but we’ve prevented 100 innocents from dying. Without capital punishment we’ve let 100 innocents die and accidentally imprisoned 1 innocent man for life, but we’ve at least not killed the 1 innocent man.

The way I see it, it would be unethical to not have enforced capital punishment to prevent additional murdering of innocents in order to ease our conscience about making a very small number of mistakes.

The example above, of course, is probably off on likelihood percentages, but it illustrates the point. It also doesn’t take into account any murders of innocents that may have be prevented due to the next criminal fearing the death penalty. As mentioned previously by others, the inconclusive deterrent results in the US are probably affected by the lack of consistency with the death penalty.

Church’s Position On Capital Punishment
Armenian Church, 1 million members, Supports
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 million members, Supports
Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, 2.6 million members, cedes government its right to capital punishment
————
9.6 million Support

United Methodist Church, 8.6 million members, No Position
Southern Baptist, 15.7 million members, No Position
Seventh Day Adventist, 9.3 million members, No Position
Assemblies of God, 2.5 million members, No Position
Church of the Nazarene, 600,000, No Position
Church of Christ, 3 million members, No Position – check your local church
Baptist Bible Fellowship, 1 million members, No Position
American Baptist Churches, 5800 churches, No Position
————
41.2 million No Position

United Church of Christ, 1.4 million members, Opposed
Presbyterian Church, 2.7 million members, Opposed
Evangelical Lutheran, 5.2 million members, Opposed
Episcopal Church, 2.5 million members in N&S America, Opposed
Christian Methodist Episcopal, 886,000 members, Opposed
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), 933,000 members, Opposed
African Methodist Episcopal Church, 2 million members, Opposed
Catholics, 51 million members, Opposed
————
67 million Opposed

I grew up in a denomination that opposes (Presbyterian), and as an adult chose another denomination also opposed (disciples of christ). Looking at the numbers, I’m surprised we don’t have more opposed based on religious grounds. Then again, we often don’t accept every part of our creed.

In high school our teacher had us divide up and argue this position. This was an AP history course. I was the ONLY one opposed. A lot of their arguments were based on money. However, they lost in that regards, as it’s cheaper to keep a prisoner for life than to get him executed (because of the legal fees the state pays). I just can’t believe any woman or man can decide when another human dies. Depriving him or her of life cheapens our own, and leaves the criminal no chance to find grace before death.

the article was an interesting read but most of the comments makes one wonder if the head is any better on a body!

thinking that you have a right over somebodies life, even if it’s a criminal’s, would put you in the same place as the criminal you think that you have a right to punish. To draw a difference between you and what you call a criminal you have to be more careful with how you think.
if that’s what you wanna do, that is, reading how passionate you are about punishing”[/quote]

“Hello” – You are bloody awesome! The best post amongst all this disappointing garbage I’ve been skimming through. I was really deeply disturbed at the righteousness of the people posting in this thread and left speechless. “Hello” You summed it up perfectly.

Thankyou HELLO you rock!! :) :) :) I have nothing more to say.