The lethal injection is by no means at all humane. If it is inserted in the wrong place, or if something else goes wrong, the criminal can end up suffering in extreme pain for up to 45 minutes before they die. Nobody deserves that. As for the electric chair, it robs people of all dignity before they die, and things cna also go wrong there too, making the detah much more painful.

Death penalty -- for or against?
 

Do you believe that the death penalty is a good sentence for serious crimes? What crimes, if any, should it be reserved for?

I am strongly against the death penalty, because it simply doesn't make sense. Someone kills a person, and we kill them because killing people is wrong. That just seems extremely convoluted to me. How does killing people because they killed people show other people that they shouldn't kill people? It's like a parent hitting a child after the child hit them to show the child that hitting people is wrong. It's fundamentally absurd.

There is another thread on that. :) so don't get offended if the mods close this one down.

Previous Thread

i dont like all the killing its dumb, i agree with you. It makes more sense to just let the evil-doer rot in prison then end there suffering.

i'll be merging this thread with the original on the death penalty. :yes:

I think life without possibility of parole is worse. I don't think anyone has the right to decide who should be killed or not, in the face of God or not. Plus, the death sentence would be the easy way out. And if the person is innocent, truly innocent, at least they can make an appeal while they are still alive in prison.

I disagree with the death penalty, as, especially as we have been finding recently, people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time can be convicted and killed for something they didn't do. With different forms of genetic engineering, DNA fingerprinting, etc. we are finding evidence that have been freeing and saving lives of innocents and getting the people who really did the crime in trouble. If someone is wrongly convicted and gets the death penalty, it'll be too late when the evidence supporting them comes out. Honestly, in my opinion, there are probably some people out there that I think may really deserve the death penalty, but the risk is there and I don't think anyone should be killed for something they potentially did not do. Even if it is incredibly unlikely, the risk is still great enough that no one should die for it.

I believe in an eye for an eye. If you rape someone somone, slit their throat and then throw them in a dumpster, I think that should be your death sentence. I personally think just throwing somone in jail is saying "'Kay, well.. ya' killed somone, promise not to do it again?" Some people, I think, just don't deserve to live after they have gone and done something as bad as killing somone. :|

We just had a debate about the death penalty at my college. Honestly, I am for the death penalty. One reason is because of the costs. To house an inmate takes almost millions and millions of dollars out of the state budget thus putting the state further into debt. Taxpayers are paying a load of money just so the prisons can be run and so that they'll have plenty of correctional officers on duty to keep order within the prison. Also, with life sentence, yeah they'll die eventually, but in some cases it won't be of natural causes. . .some prisons are in poor unclean conditions and the inmates will catch something like MRSA or some other disease, then they'll have to live with that disease for either the rest of their life (which in many cases is very painful for the person.) or they'll die early. Let's not forget the possibility of the rest of inmates catching the illness and then they'll die off too...it's a possibility...and there is good chances that'll happen. Let's not forget...With life sentences, there may be a higher possibility that there'll be more prisons being built which is 400 million dollars out of the budget. There was one state that couldn't pay for the prisoner's stay so guess what they did with them...No, they didn't kill them off, instead they released them. Yes, that's right...They were released. Yet it was only 3,000 prisoners. Still too many. Let's not forget, if the prisoners aren't killed because of death penalty, there still stands the possibility of family members of the people the inmates murdered before being sent to prison coming and getting revenge.
Sure, it is said that the death penalty is unethical, cruel, and asking why we should have these people suffer, but think...Aren't these people suffering just sitting in jail? The ones that caught diseases and are given the life sentence, aren't they suffering and experiencing pain? More than likely they are. So why not just go ahead and free them of the intense pain? Also, trust me, once the Death Penalty has been enforced upon these wrongdoers it could put a little relief upon the economy. With Life sentence, I believe I have mentioned before that we're paying for the housing of these inmates. It's 15 to 17 thousand dollars PER INMATE. I know it's a lot, but people of each state are paying a fraction of the cost when they're paying their taxes. Trust me, when I start paying taxes i would hate the fact that my money is going towards people who sit in jail/ prison. Plus sometimes prisoners have a better life in prison. So we have discussed in class prisoners get everything they need in jail such as education also more enjoying things. Not something I really enjoy knowing when it comes to prison. Yet, this is what I think and how I see things when it comes to this situation.

@ Maiden: Can I ask this. What do you suppose be done with the murders? Give them a life sentence? You know that a murder will always be a murderer and there is always the chance that said murderer will once again kill another innocent for his own twisted pleasure.

i definitely agree that being locked in a cell for the rest of my life would be torture. i'd probably tell the nice police officers to just put me out of my misery.

but then in comes the other side, myself as a citizen, would condemn a criminal to life in prison.. rather than being put to death. i don't agree with it. an eye for an eye just doesn't make sense to me. just like two rights don't make a wrong.

i was actually having this discussion with my family the other day after watching penn and teller's bullshit. interesting episode i must admit!

check it out if you haven't already!

also, pedophile are screwed if they get put in jail. they're beaten severely or murdered once word gets around that there is a child phucker in the jail. inmates don't take to kindly to those people.

That might be so, but that wouldn't exactly change anything. So what if the sex offender was put to death. That may put the victim at ease for a little while, but it still will forever haunt them. Death of a family member could possibly change a person. It all depends on who you look at. Killing a sex offender and not a murder isn't at all right, proper, ethical, none of that. Neither is killing a murderer. Also to go back on how something changes a person. When it comes to sexual abuse, sometimes it depends on the person as I have mentioned before. It depends on the mental state of the person abused. I only say that from personal experience...since it happened to me twice. I'm not throwing that out there to get any pity or whatnot, just to make a statement and/or point my thoughts haven't changed and yes...I am aware of what happened to me and i have been hiding it for the longest, but I got over it and have moved on. Me, having been through this I still believe that these people shouldn't be put to death. I just think that these people should be locked up and/or flogged so no, death would NOT be a better punishment for the sexual offender. no no no. To me killing a sexual offender is just as cruel as killing a murderer, yet i still support the death penalty for a murderer. . .

@ Maiden: Well, there are somethings that cannot be helped. Even though those perverts are released and sent to go reap havoc upon other people, that's just something that'll keep happening. Just as perverts keep being released, so are murderers. Like that three thousand that were released in the state of florida or some other state, I can't exactly remember at the moment because I don't have the info right in my hands, but anyways there were three thousand released and well over half of them went back to prison. As for the religious part of it...The catholics, priests, and the pope....What can government do? Nothing...Why? Because when it comes to religious figures...well high religious figures such as the pope, if government were to attempt to touch that little situation (if the whole sexual abuse to people by the pope or whatever is true.) then that would probably cause some sort of controversy and then you'd have a bigger issue on being placed on their hands and the last thing we need coup de etat because they tried to do something for the well being of others. Yet, whatever they're doing in the catholic/priest/pope area is none of my concern and i couldn't exactly care less...Some subjects are best left untouched. . .

You can't really say that no one cares about the victims. Yet, I cannot show sympathy for either side I can say that so far as I have seen there has been many many programs to help these victims get back on their feet. For example: there are certain numbers one can dial to get help, support groups, heck there are even psychologists that could possibly help. If the victim has problems with the pervert coming back and one knows good and well that a person cannot exile him, then there are other methods one could take to make sure one is safe from encountering the criminal again. The easiest would be to just relocate yourself...Plain and simple as that. If a person is so terrified that the pervert will come back to them relocate yourself and start anew. Anyways, whether one is a pervert or a murderer they still have rights just like the rest of us, but i'm going to stay away from rights because when it comes to death penalty or life sentence, I'm more concerned about its cost and how it'll affect the country...Anyways, It would be better if the pervert was just given a life sentence rather than the death penalty, but just like giving a murderer either one, it would just put a strain on the economy and it is well known that a poor economy cannot handle any more criminals, costs, and whatnot.

Also...Chemical castration?! They do that? That seems quite harsh and it sounds quite unethical.

Chemical castration is medicating someone to have no libido. It is a reversible procedure--one only needs to stop taking the medication.

Ohhhhh. I had a misunderstanding of that. I thought they burned the "you know what" off with chemicals or something.

I figured that was the case, as Unicorns also seems to not know what it is by the context of what she said (though I didn't see it in her post at first... her text is bright orange so it's an eye sore)

Even so, her reasoning against chemical castration is wrong. They will have little or no sex drive, so they would be no more likely to use their hands over their genitals to sexually interact with someone.

He/she murdered someone, so let's just murder them back? I don't think that's right. Sure it sucks that we have to pay for them to live there in prison, but it's not like they get to live on good terms either. They're stuck in a cell 23 hours of the day (most cases from what I've seen watching LockUp). From interviews done on the show, most of the prisoners want to die, just to get it over with. Well, too bad, that's what I say. That person(s) you killed didn't want to die, but they died, you made sure of that.