I don't really like the death penalty because of the whole "innocent people" thing. But what if a person really did do a horrible crime like mercilessly kill innocent people for fun? Why would you be against his death penalty?

Because in some places it might cost more than tossing them in a dungeon for 40 years but then in some places all it costs is a bullet

I don't really like the death penalty because of the whole "innocent people" thing. But what if a person really did do a horrible crime like mercilessly kill innocent people for fun? Why would you be against his death penalty?

It's wrong to kill people yet it's ok to kill people who kill people?

Money reasons...etc

i've never found myself particularly riveted by the death penalty debate. sure you've got the occasional fucker who is wrongly executed, but these cases are few and far between. the vast majority of people executed were going to rot in a jail the rest of their life.

as far as i'm concerned, there are more important injustices perpetuated in the world for me to give a shit about about the human rights of the most utterly despicable people on the planet.

They have to pay the lawyers

But then in China they actually profit from it

Why is this so? I'm not doubting it, I've heard the same from numerous sources, but what is it that makes a death sentence so costly?

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty

I dunno has something to do with the trials I guess.

we had a class debate about this issue a couple of semesters ago in Criminology. Some interesting points were made on both sides. But I still have to side with life imprisonment. We watched a video with families of murdered relatives not comforted or relieved in any way by the fact that the murderer got the death penalty.

Whether it's an engrossing debate or not, there are still plenty of valid reasons for abolishing the death penalty. It's not always a case of "pick your poison". If OJ could be acquitted then Joe Idiot could be sent to the chair because Joe Killer outsmarted him. This should be part of any debate pertaining to what's wrong with the justice system.

this is true. i'm not saying that it is an unimportant issue in the context of the integrity of contemporary justice systems. the problem is that this isn't often the context that people are viewing it from. a lot of people treat the death penalty as some very pressing social issue in itself, which i don't really believe is the case. i have a difficult time understanding how anybody could HONESTLY object to executing people that were running around eating small children or cutting apart their neighbors. inhumane sure, but who really gives a shit? these are not people legitimately worthy of any sort of social activism. in the context of the mountains of other problems in the world, i would rate that issue as being negligible in terms of its earthly importance.

objecting to the death penalty on the grounds that innocent people occasionally get executed is really more of an issue with how tragically imperfect and arbitrary legal systems are, and, in my mind, not quite as much an issue with the death penalty itself. i'm not saying the core of this is not a BIG PROBLEM, because it absolutely fucking is. i served on a jury that consisted of 8 people desperate to throw an 18 year old kid away for life for having a murderer for a friend. fortunately for the kid, i can be pretty damn persuasive when i get worked up enough, and after a week i was able to eventually sway the entire fucking jury away from destroying this kid's life simply because of his associations. there's an excellent chance that the kid would be looking at life imprisonment had i not served on that particular jury.

this issue extends far beyond the scope of death penalty. sure it's easy to get all worked up when you hear about an innocent person getting the death penalty, but lower profile versions of effectively the same thing happen every day. victims of circumstance who either don't have great lawyers, fair judges, or just get saddled with ignorant jurors. i seriously hope that people don't HONESTLY BELIEVE that this problem magically goes away if the death penalty is universally abolished. you just won't be hearing about it as often.

that kid i set free had an exceptionally poor family. there was no retrying this case. there was no conclusive evidence to otherwise prove that he was completely uninvolved in the case. and there's absolutely no reason to believe a higher court would have picked it up, as even the defense attorney portrayed the kid as idiotic and worthless. if i wasn't there, he'd be in jail until the end of his life. that's just fucking it. life ruined. period. if i wasn't on that jury, this kid would be locked up forever and nobody in the fucking world would know about it or particularly give a shit.

is an innocent person getting the death penalty really that much more tragic than an innocent person getting life in prison without parole?

and in lighter news...


:)

and in lighter news...

never heard of peter cook before beyond a white noise reference. thanks.

man hundley you are the best poster ever

but basically i agree with you!  this topic was about the death penalty so that's what i stuck to but i think it's just as bad when innocent people end up in jail, i saw some thing on tv recently about this guy who spent god knows how many years in jail for molesting children, but then as it turns out almost all of those children were interrogated in a way that led THEM to believe they were molested, and after many years they realized WHOOPS THIS GUY NEVER DID ANYTHING.  even though he was completely innocent he lost a huge chunk of his life sitting in jail for no reason.

i think the defining factor with the death penalty though is that at least this guy got to go out and enjoy what was left of his life.  sure, it was essentially RUINED but it wasn't gone, him and another guy he met in jail got a farm together and went fishing and just sort of went on living.  the difference with the death penalty is that someone wrongly accused doesn't get shit.  they're dead, game over, you can't even make an attempt at having a life when you're dead.  that is why the death penalty is sort of the deep end of the debate, but i do think that it is a part of a bigger thing dealing with the entire system.

You have a peculiar gift for wording the more disheartening facts of society and making me depressed.

This is my power... This is my curse...

never heard of peter cook before beyond a white noise reference. thanks.

Yeah you always ask me WHAT COMEDIANS ARE GOOD and I have recently discovered that the ultimate, final answer to this question is probably PETER COOK. I've been too lazy to PM you directly and been hoping you would bump into one of my posts on the subject. He probably is the funniest person who has ever lived. I didn't think I'd ever say that about somebody, but I've really never seen someone cover as much comedic range as Peter Cook could effortlessly cover.

The huge tragedy is that he had a lot of personal problems, and battled with various addictions and shit all his life, so he never was really able to create the lasting creative body of work that he was capable of creating. He should be a household name right now, and it's deeply saddening that our generation has no idea who he is.

When I am less lazy I will make a Peter Cook topic so I don't start derailing random topics with the guy.

I'm all for the death penalty when it comes to counterrevolutionary elements of society

"who decides that?"


THE MASSES

I don't think anyone's legal system is trustworthy enough to feel comfortable with something like the death penalty. Really, it just seems uncivilized and barbaric for us to be killing people off for crimes, even if they did kill someone else. The best thing to do, in my view, is to keep that person locked away and try to get them to achieve some productive work in a setting where they can't hurt others in society. Even violent sadistic killers, I'd rather see them locked up rather than killed by the state. We should see ourselves as above killing our fellow humans, even if we abhor who they are and what they've done.