I had dinner with some colleagues last week, and somehow the conversaion got onto the death penalty. Our group consisted of 3 Brits and 1 American - all three Brits were anti-death penalty (for different reasons), and the American was pro-death penalty.

I was wondering if the majority of Brits are anti the death penalty. I was quite surpised by the views of my colleagues

I think there's a tendency to support whatever is happening in your own country or state, so the British are probably going to be by and large against the death penalty while an American (esp if from a state with the death penalty) is more likely to support it.

Very hard choice for me. I am British and on the whole am against the death penalty, my head tells me it's wrong and in this day and age when you hear of so many people being freed on appeals etc, how can you commit someone to death if you are not 1000% sure of guilt.

Then there is the emotional side of me and when I hear of child molesters/killers and the like I think that they should be condemned to death.

So I find myself very much torn.

Does that make sense?

I used to always say I believed in the death penalty but now my thoughts are very much like Buzz's.
Unless you can be 101% sure of someone's guilt then the death penality should not be an option.
And if you are 101% sure of someones guilt, they should be made to pay for their crimes by rotting in a cell - i'm sure that would be a better punishment than death.

Dare I say it? I agree with Buzz and PJ. As long as there are miscarriages of justice and the slightest doubt, you cannot have the death penalty.

Of course my opinion would probably change if anyone were to harm so much as a hair on the head of anyone I loved. :evilmad:

I voted against too. I don't hold with this eye for an eye stuff.

Against.

I think the death penalty is barbaric.

Maureen
Northern angel.

Im torn too.

I think if someone commits a hideous crime, and they admit it / forensics (sp) confirm they were the perpetrator - why should we pay for them to go to prison for 25 years ? I would also worry about their movements when they left prison. Would they commit a crime again ?

I think for some people the death penalty would be welcomed by me - like Rose / Fred West. So im for and against - so i cant really vote in the poll as there isnt an option for me.

I'd forgotten to vote myself!! I'm against too - for pretty much the same reasons given by Buzz, PJ and Patsy.
I much prefer the idea of LWOP (Life without the possibilty of parole), so that the general public can be safe in knowledge that the prisoner wouldn't ever be released.

Sorry I didn't have an option for you Bonnie!!

Sorry I didn't have an option for you Bonnie!!

S'ok ... I'll forgive you one day :p

in this day and age it is barbaric to put someone to death, but I also disagree with some of the lenient sentencing or prisoners (esp dangerous ones) being let out early on parole.

I am totally against the death penalty.Apart from the risk of miscarriage of justice etc, I think it's too easy a way out.For me, long term loss of freedom would be far worse than any physical punishment, so let em' rot!

I am for the death penalty. Hand wringing and worrying about innicent people being killed is the reason why the jails are full of folk we have no idea what to do with. Barbaric, yes but so is life. I would have it not as a deterrent but just a s means of saving us the bother of locking folks up who are not going to get better or be freed.

You can think too much about these things but sometimes you have to be realistic and not idealistic. Why paedophiles are not chemically castrated is another thing that we could do that would make a big impact.

Withou addressing the death penalty directly.....

Scenario: There are 10 people on trial for murder, and you know 9 are guilty, but don't know which 9. The 9, if set free, will kill again.

Option 1: Set all free to protect the innocent one. 9 more innocent people then get killed.

Option 2: Execute or incarcerate all 10. One innocent gets executed or incarcerated.

So its 9 innocent lives vs 1 innocent life. Which you going to choose?

More to the point, which system would you prefer your children to be living in.

The scenario is not real, but its not far off our current legal system of protecting the innocent at all costs. One example was in the US where a child rapist, evidence being that he had the childs stolen necklace in his pocket plus the DNA of his sperm in her, was acquitted because of a technicality (he was arrested while on probation and the probation officer was not informed, so the evidence somehow was non admissable).

I am strongly for a Net saving of suffering in a community. Where in the world do we see community rights placed higher than individual rights? Asia. The protection of individual rights at the cost of community suffering is the most bizarre thing I see in the west.

Death penalty? Absolutely. Jeffry Dahmer in the US was found with the body parts of about 7 people strewn about his apartment and fridge, in various states of decomposition, plus I think he videoed some of it, and he admitted it, and there was forensic evidence up the kyber on it. 1001% guilty? You bet. You want to believe in rehabilitation for such a person? If so, you want him rehabilitated anonymously where your kids are growing up?

Do you really believe locking someone up for their entire life and depriving them of their liberty is any less "barbaric" than killing them? Do you think emotional and psychological torture (aka depriving a person of their freedom till death) is somehow less barbaric? Really? Its just hiding the problem, and not dealing with it.

People kill = lose their rights to society in my book. And once those rights are lost, the death penalty is simple honesty. It is easy to decide when you have 100% guilt. And you also know when its not 100%. The flaw in the legal system is that criminal guilt requires 100% proof, but not really..... people get convicted on less (the civil balance of probabilities plays a greater role than we admit). So when it comes to the death penalty, it is equally corrupted by the less than 100%, and thats where the inefficiencies kick in. Solution:

1) Have certain crimes designated as eligible for the death penalty
2) If convicted of the crime, the criminal goes to a professional tribunal to decide if sufficient evidence is present that guilt can NEVER be disproved
3) if so, execute

And hold that tribunal criminally negligable if they make a mistake.

Thats another bugbear. No accountability. When someone goes out on parole and kills another couple of kids, where, exactly, is the person who authorised it? It is a matter of public concern and needs to be public.

Grrr. Anyone touches my kids and they won't touch anyone elses. I'll make sure of that. I wish everyone felt the same so my kids were safer.

What is murder?

The willful taking of another persons life.

To plan and take another persons life.

To Justify by lawful means the taking of anothers life.

To accidently take anothers life.

To accidently take another persons life whilst under the influence of ...........

alcohol, illegal substances, medications, another person considered persuasive or someone to be fearful of.

To take a life whilst considered mentally unstable.

To take a life in self defense.

To take a life on the spur of the moment, crimes of passion.

To take a life whilst performing duties on the front line of a war zone.

To take a life in a pogramme of misguided ethnic political cleansing.

To take a life for personal gain.

To take a life to hide another crime.

To assist a suicide. (This should be an exception to the rule, as it crosses into the Euthanasia controversy. Contravenes a living will.)


No doubt there will be numerous others, these are the ones that have come to mind.

Do all these types of murder deserve the death penalty or do we select some and leave the others with a life sentence?

Who choses who to execute?

Is it possible that some of the above are not considered to be a murder?

If we select to execute are we not lowering ourselves in a civilised world to the level of the lowest form of life? Those who kill by the sword may die by the sword or an eye for eye is hardly civil or humane.

By killing we become barbarians. No longer civil or decent human beings.

The only humane option in cases where someone has committed an act so fiendish is to give them an option to take there own life. Assisted suicide should not be considered murder. Simple and cheap. A pill. A pill in a bottle for each representative of the jury 2 lethal and the rest placibos. The guilty party takes them all. The jury members do not know who had the killer pills.

By enlarge I am against the death penalty however, mass murderers, child abusers who follow it with a murder, rapists who murder, murderers who believe it is there right to murder masses of men woman and children without any given conflict of war, I seriously would not want to keep alive at tax payers expense.

Murderers can not normally be rehabilitated.
Maureen
Northern angel.

Missed this earlier - I'm against the death penalty - totally.

Too many people have been convicted of murder only to be found innocent later. The death penalty is too final and gived no chance of rectifying mistakes.

I don't know, i am and i'm not! In severe cases i am when the person has been so evil and sickening that they were never going to stop and they are all there in the head, but two cases i am against one was Ted Bundy and the other was Aileen Wnornos only because they were clearly both insane.

It's an eye for an eye isn't it and another thing i hate is they also kill people at Election time to boost votes. Disgusting.

I'm for it, only b/c in this day and age DNA testing has cleared many a person and captured many a person. There are going to be times when mistakes are made but by and large there are some sick folks sitting in jail that I'm helping pay for them to get 3 squares, an education, and all the tv and free time they want. Call my barbaric, but it removes one more psycho who is totally un-rehabitable from the Earth.

I just read this (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060531/ap_on_re_us/left_for_dead;_ylt=AvzRICYiQjXif.uBD3_5lIRH2ocA;_y lu=X3oDMTA4dW1uZXIwBHNlYwMyNzQ3) earlier...this is very sick and very said and very wrong!

Dunno if it's true or not...( i don't see how it could be)
BUT...i heard that the death penalty costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement, like..the actual cost of killing one person.
I just heard the tail end of a radio debate,a nd that was the argument being used by the anti-death penalty side.

(When I get a chance i'll go find the show in the radio archives)

Is it possible that some of the above are not considered to be a murder?
Yes, some of the examples you listed are not murder (eg killing in self defence). I'm not sure what point you were making in the end - that the death penalty is bad but you still favour it?

I'm for it, only b/c in this day and age DNA testing has cleared many a person and captured many a person.
DNA evidence is not infallible - it can be accidentally contaminated or deliberately planted.

i heard that the death penalty costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement
In the USA the cost is very high because convicts typically spend a decade on death row going through all the appeals processes, and their legal fees are often covered by the State. If the State allowed fewer appeals and didn't fund the defence lawyers the cost would be much lower.

Too many people have been convicted of murder only to be found innocent later. The death penalty is too final and gived no chance of rectifying mistakes.
Yep that's my view too.

Dunno if it's true or not...( i don't see how it could be)
BUT...i heard that the death penalty costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement, like..the actual cost of killing one person.
I just heard the tail end of a radio debate,a nd that was the argument being used by the anti-death penalty side.

(When I get a chance i'll go find the show in the radio archives)

In a system fabricated by the lawyers for their own enrichment where the death penalty takes 10 years of appeals with the lawyers billing the public purse during all that time, of course it will take millions of dollars.

Thats nothing to do with the death penalty, just a bunch of opportunistic lawyers crating a system (beecause they can) for their own enrichment and then exploting it (which they can).

Its the cost of a bullet in China, then that gets billed to the family. I am NOT advocating that system, just pointing out that its not the death penalty that costs the money, its the corrupt legal system that generates the bills. Just one more obfuscation used against the death penalty.

It's an eye for an eye isn't it and another thing i hate is they also kill people at Election time to boost votes. Disgusting.

You mean executing people has that fatal flaw of representing the majority of peoples views aka democracy?

I disagree also, but only with the delay till election time. Maybe thats what you meant. If so, 100% with you on that.

Stiring the big spoon!

I think it would save a hell of a lot of money if we were allowed to put to sleep repeat violent/sex offenders...they obviously haven't learnt from a spell in prison so rather than let society continue to pay the price just slip them a nice but permanant sleeping pill!

Can we also castrate any peodophiles and rapists?

Had a case in Japan in the last week. Guy with a string of sex offences kidnapped a 7 year old girl and kept her for his personal use until he was bored then killed her.

Apart from the girls life being at an end, the parents are totally destroyed knowing what happened to their loved one.

I cannot understand any system that attaches any sympathy and concern with the guy who did this over the loss of life of the innocent, and the endless pain of the myriad of family who must live with knowing what happened to their little and loved daughter/granddaughter/niece/whatever.

Execute. Rid our world of this person forever so I don't have to ever worry about some idiot do-good social worker deciding he is fit for rehabilitation, only to see another life and family destroyed - possibly MINE.

Most argumeents against the death penalty are obfuscation:

1. We must not act like them or go down to their level

ok, so lets not take a 7 year old member of his family and do the same to her, as THAT would make us like him. Executing him bears no relation to us executing him and becoming like him. it simply removes a beast from society. If he murdered a serial killer, thats different, let him off!

2. Cost

Covered. Price of a bullet unless we choose otherwise. Irrelevant.

3. Inhuman

Like locking someone up and depriving someone of their liberty for life is somehow better? Its just liberal scapegoating and avoidence of depriving someone of their liberty is somehow human. This point is avoided by the liberals as it has no defence.

4. Mistakes

Covered. Easilly avoided. This guy? Guilty with a capital G. Just like Ted Bunday (unknown death count, but possibly over 100) and Jeffery Dahmer (not so many, but quite a few and body parts all over his apartment, and in his fridge, to proove it)

Opponents to death penalty should be made to live in the same place as all these people are rehabilitated into. Its the only way they will wake up.

"ignorant and disgusting comment to make.Wake up yourself.Get real."

That was a User CP reaction to the above post.

Maybe you should spend a day with the girls family and determine where reality is. I can tell your life has not been touched by one of these people. I pray it never does (to any of us), but if it does, lets talk again from your new perspective, it might be a different conversation.

Reality.

Maybe that's the answer then.
Let the families of the victim(s) decide.And only them.
(This used to happen in in some ancient societies.....the perpetrators were given sanctuary in some place...( a monastery or ancient symbolic sight) and only the next of kin could decide their fate.)


And mandatory death penalty for child molestors perhaps??

It seems to vary Aon, but the family of the Japanese girl above were asking for blood in the above case.

An eye-for-an-eye implies revenge, I choose to believe there is a role in the perpetrator being executed in the closure process in some victims recovery programs. The pain lives on, but the perpetrator does not and he does not become a living reminder of what occured (how many times do we read about when they are let out and how this re-awakens the pain from the past from the victims families).

If the family want blood, I say let them have it. It should be their choice (they are the victims), not me telling them their choice is an wrong one on biblical grounds.