Poll: How do you feel about death penalty?

[lacktheknack]

No from me.

I read a research paper that found putting people on death row cost more than standard life imprisonment, due to higher likelihood of pleading innocence, higher security, death row's waiting list being decades long, and other things.

 

[spartan231490]

I approve. Some criminals can't be rehabilitated and they should be executed.

 

[babinro]

I'm very much against death penalties in general.

This topic has come up recently in Diablo 3 as people apparently miss running back to their corpses and losing millions of experience. I don't get it. A game should promote fun as much as possible. Dying in game is a mental punishment and one that often costs some amount of time / efficiency loss.

In my opinion, games should have survival rewards rather than death penalties. In addition, they should utilize concepts from Kirby Epic Yarn or the recent Mario games whenever possible. Let a game of ANY skill level have a shot at experience all of the games content.

I also think games should offer multiple difficulties or modes. Give people their Hardcore mode and punishment based challenges as a means of creating replay value. People will go back and play the game if it's a strong enough product.

 

[DANEgerous]

To people that watch or read Dexter he is on the Chaotic/Lawful Good/Evil where does he lie? Frankly I find him absolute chaos and absolute good. I mean he finds killers that want to kill again an kills said killer. FANTASTIC! So would I! Objections to him being evil or lawful or lawful being the only way permitted are the only ways I see escaping the Lawful "Dexter justice system" if you will but I adore the "Dexter justice system" if you have killed and are likely to kill again then killing you saves lives or negates loss of life. Literally from an objective position this is a fact. So... in the end if I object I in some degree approve of murder. Yes I know that it is not realistic and that it is hypothetical but still a valid experiment in philosophy.

 

[Chareater]

I don't think anybody has the right to choose if somebody lives or dies, sure if they are a threat to society then remove them from society (e.g. Jails) But killing? I just think life is a basic right that nobody has the right to take away.

 

[Robert Marrs]

I'm 100% for the death penalty for certain crimes. There is no reason we should be spending tax dollars to house criminals who have life sentences. Honestly I feel like the process should be sped up as opposed to doing it 10 years later and spending even more money on appeals and lawyers. The only problem is the American justice system is not perfect. There are too many prosecutors who care more about just winning a case than actually serving justice. Thanks to DNA some of those people are now being released from jail but when you have people hiding evidence and offering other prisoners reduced time if they lie in court its really just not safe to have a death penalty.

If we start holding the people who do this accountable and get rid of the buddy system mentality that exists between judges, prosecutors and the police that has them looking out for each other instead of serving the people that problem might get solved. When or if that does happen I would 100% support an expediated death penalty in place of life without parole along with a more rehabilitative attitude towards non life serving inmates. Some people can be helped and some european countries have proven that trying to help prisoners instead of punishing them is very effective but if someone is never going to be allowed in society again there is no point in keeping them around. I look at it the same way I look at someone being brain dead on life support. They are not actually living at that point they just exist and YOU are paying for that existence.

 

[Zontar]

Way to against it. The state has no place nor the competence in saying who gets to live and die. Oh, there are people who are just so evil we need to do it? Then given them life in prison with no possibility of parole, if what they did was really that sick and twisted one of the other inmates will get to them faster then a planned execution would. Besides, life without parole is just an execution in it's own means, only without the intense plain all forms have been demonstrated to have and with a much longer time with the bastard behind bars.

 

[Qvar]

I'm not ok with it (uncertainity, reinsertation, bad choices, unequal life opportunities...), unless we are talking about rapists. The more I talk about that the more I feel like I would strangle them with my own hands if necessary.

Of course, as has been pointed out already, the proof required for that should always be absolutely irrefutable. No 2 or 3 witnesses. That's something that requires DNA, witnesses, and some type of recording, to say the least. And revoking the sentence as soon as some of the proof used is found faulty. Not that shitty moves the US are known for.

 

[zegram33]

You want to try rehabilitating these fuckers? Go nuts. But while you piss years of therapy and tax dollars on trying to "rehabilitate" a man who just took away some kids' fathers or wives' husbands, I'm not going to shed a single goddamn tear as monsters like this get put in a casket with a nameless grave.

sorry, but it costs WAAAAY more to execute someone than it does to imprison them forever, cuz of al the crazy retrials etc they get

personally, I'm anti death penalty because I cant think of any type of law that wouldn't be one hell of a slippery slope in terms of how much evidence was acceptable.
and basically...
As I see it, the death penalty should be allowable, HOWEVER
if it is later proven that the man/woman killed was innocent, the judge who decided on the death penalty, MUST face the death penalty. no re-trials, no loopholes, if he killed an innocent man, then since society has already said that's a crime punishable by death....theres only one option to avoid making a mockery of the societies values.

and that way, a judge would have to be either really sure or really outraged at the crime

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

I don't trust any government enough to have the right to kill people. Even if it's stable now, that might change and it pays to have this shit established.

And it's actually MORE expensive then life in prison. I find the idea of wasting additional money for some completely pointless and hollow revenge to be barbaric.

Life in prison isn't much better anyway.

 

[Dimitriov]

You want to try rehabilitating these fuckers? Go nuts. But while you piss years of therapy and tax dollars on trying to "rehabilitate" a man who just took away some kids' fathers or wives' husbands, I'm not going to shed a single goddamn tear as monsters like this get put in a casket with a nameless grave.

sorry, but it costs WAAAAY more to execute someone than it does to imprison them forever, cuz of al the crazy retrials etc they get

personally, I'm anti death penalty because I cant think of any type of law that wouldn't be one hell of a slippery slope in terms of how much evidence was acceptable.
and basically...
As I see it, the death penalty should be allowable, HOWEVER
if it is later proven that the man/woman killed was innocent, the judge who decided on the death penalty, MUST face the death penalty. no re-trials, no loopholes, if he killed an innocent man, then since society has already said that's a crime punishable by death....theres only one option to avoid making a mockery of the societies values.

and that way, a judge would have to be either really sure or really outraged at the crime

This sort of thinking is actually technically wrong. I am just quoting your post because it is the most recent, but many people make this mistake.

The historical precedent really derives from the fact that only the state (or a monarch etc.) has the right to kill someone. So a murderer has usurped the state's right over its own citizens and thus is punished by the state.

Now you may well not like that, or think it should be changed, but that is the underlying historic principle behind executions.

In other words it is impossible for the state to murder someone, because they are already deemed to have the right to kill. Human rights don't enter into it because those are not some divine birthright, but rather certain legal privileges which have been extended from governments to citizens. And where the death penalty is legal those particular human rights obviously don't apply.

OT: I am morally in favour of the death penalty, but I do have some practical reservations.

 

[ThoughtlessConcept]

It should be there, not for doing drugs/smuggling, being gay, or adultery like it's used in some other countries.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

and basically...
As I see it, the death penalty should be allowable, HOWEVER
if it is later proven that the man/woman killed was innocent, the judge who decided on the death penalty, MUST face the death penalty. no re-trials, no loopholes, if he killed an innocent man, then since society has already said that's a crime punishable by death....theres only one option to avoid making a mockery of the societies values.

and that way, a judge would have to be either really sure or really outraged at the crime

That's insanely problematic. In this scenario, a judge could still be executed for doing their job perfectly.

A judge can only rely on the evidence presented, and that evidence is never going to be perfect, it's possible to frame someone, it's possible that someone down the chain fucked up, it's possible that DNA evidence was incorrect, but a judge has no way at all of knowing what those instances are.

You are essentially suggesting that out of two judges with completely identical evidence presented, one should be executed and one shouldn't because of someone completely unrelated to them down the chain fucking up.

You seem to be under the delusion that the system is perfect and mistakes don't happen. But the court system is as flawed as any system of the government, and it's just as liable to error. The evidence acquired may not always be correct, the picture that seems clearly painted might be completely wrong, but it's still completely indistinguishable from valid evidence to the judge or jury.

And even if you chose to punish the person responsible for the false evidence in those instances, what would be the line at which a judge would be sufficiently sure to convict someone of the death penalty?

Because there's ALWAYS a chance. Even if the evidence presented was valid, there's ALWAYS a chance that the person was still innocent, that something else was going on.

People speaking of video evidence are apparently unaware of very convincing masks, genetic twins, or doppelgangers. But if you have clear video evidence of someone being killed by someone else, there's still a 99,8 percent chance that they did it. Should a judge withhold the death penalty on that 0,02% chance? After all, one in 500 times they'd get executed for giving it.

A judge would never withhold PUNISHMENT if there was video evidence, but are they sure enough to risk their own death?

How sure would you have to be then? 99.99% sure? 1 and 0 are not probabilities, and there's no such thing as absolutely certain evidence. So basically, you're suggesting that a judge be executed for doing their job exactly as intended and trained.

You're basing this idea on the flawed notion that incompetence is required for a false sentence, that if perfectly executed the criminal justice system would never give anyone innocent a sentence, which is a nice idea but completely false. This would mean that 100% certainty were required for a conviction and there's no such thing.

 

[Risingblade]

The death penalty is a waste of time and money. 90% of inmates who enter the system are eventually released, the money wasted on the death penalty should be going to rehabilitating those lesser offenders.

 

[mortalsatsuma]

The main problem I have with it is that it just takes way too long to do it. In America It can take decades to execute someone for a crime they committed. I can understand lodging appeals etc but why does it often take this long?

 

[Phasmal]

Conflicted.

OT: It's so not fair that I'm not allowed a one-word answer because that's the long and short of it. Logically I oppose it because I don't think it works as a deterrent, but there's a part of me who would like people who commit certain types of crimes to be dead.

 

[Mobax]

I'm against the death penalty for 3 reasons.

1. It does not discourage people from committing violent crimes, I did a study on it for school 10 years ago, and US states with the death penalty on average had higher violent crime rates then states without the death penalty. And while the doesn't prove the death penalty should be removed, it does show it obviously does nothing to reduce the risk of violent crimes. Simply put, the death penalty is not a deterrent.

2. The risk of innocent people being wrongfully executed. It has happened, it is happening, and it will happen again. There was a famous case in Canada of David Milgaard, he was falsely convicted for rape and murder, he was 17 when he was sent to prison 1970. He server 23 years before he was cleared and released. Canada had the death penalty on the books until 1976, but fortunately Milgaard was not sentenced to death, or else he surely would've been executed. I believe in the legal system of innocent until proven guilty. And by extension, I don't think the risk of one innocent life executed is worth all the vile people who would be destroyed.

3. Finally it's a hypocritical punishment. The laws of a nation will tell you not to murder. But they will punish you by killing you? That takes away from the right of a society to condemn the taking of human life when the very practice is endorsed and carried out by the society which criminalizes it. That sort of eye-for-an-eye way of thinking is backwards at best, malicious at worst. As that cliche goes, it makes the whole world blind. We don't punish someone who kidnaps someone's child by kidnapping their loved one. We don't beat sanction a person convicted of assault to be beaten. I understand the sentiment that more tangible punishments are needed; whether to teach the convicted a lesson, or to give a measure of satisfaction to the victims. But at the end of the day, those who are executed don't learn anything, and it doesn't bring back the victims. It also absolutely closes the door on any chance of reconciling and possible regret and forgiveness.

There are other reasons too, the cost of the legal proceeding for a capital case etc. But those are more semantic in my opinion. I think it is in the best interest of all people and societies to have laws and punishments which do not engage in the behavior they outlaw. And a society that looks at rehabilitation over retribution is going to be a society which cares more about all it's members. Perhaps even have less crime, as young people in trouble would be given help and chances to turn their lives around as opposed to the cold oppressive system that just breeds more disconnect from civil society.

 

[Pat]

'Killing is wrong. We're going to prove that by killing them.'

Seems legit.

Capital punishment is the ultimate hypocrisy in any civilised society. People have been killed and later found to be innocent. It's barbaric, it isn't justice, it's just punishing pain with more pain.

The 'eye for an eye' mentality is ludicrous.

No, the rationale for it is simple: You take the right to life of another, you lose yours. Pretty basic and my justification for it.

Also, an eye for an eye doesn't make the whole world blind. It leaves everyone with one eye.

That's still a whole world without any depth perception. People bumping into doors, each other, falling down stairs; it'd be total chaos.

Seriously though one of the many things I take issue with is that a select few people are legally allowed to kill. These people are just as fallible as anyone else. They make mistakes! Look at the Rosenbergs case. Two people wrongly executed out of total paranoia. And from what we've seen in recent years: Snowden, War on Terror etc. That kind of paranoia is alive and well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8xrGCVrENk
I'd watch this interview. The guy used to be Commissioner of Corrections in Georgia. I'll take it from an expert. And you won't be hard-pressed to find other stuff like this from other executioners.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

I'm against it in its current practice, but I'm for it in theory.

Let me clarify: I live in the US, our prisons are completely overpopulated - in large part due to an archaic stance on lesser drug charges requiring a mandatory minimum sentence. We're well aware (hell, there are movies, books, comics, and other popular media rife with this as a theme for crying out loud) that putting lesser criminals into close cohabitation with violent criminals results in making more violent criminals than you had originally. The situations in the prisons are deplorable - there's an entire group of sub cultures, prison gangs that operate from inside to terrorize the outside, and just a myriad of bad problems caused by not dealing with either our minor offenders or our major offenders appropriately to their crimes.

I personally think that, if law enforcement should run up on a criminal in the act where there is absolutely no reasonable question of their guilt and that person is a violent offender (pedophile kidnapper, serial rapist/murderer, arsonist, etc.) then the penalty they face should be harsh, physical, immediate, and public. Seriously - if the police find a man in a house filled with furniture made out of people, I expect to see that person hanging from a high place and being pecked to death by wildlife within the month. I think that's very reasonable. The "put them away so they do no harm again" thing really doesn't work in our prison system. Not to mention the fact that we have poor, innocent, starving children on our streets that won't be helped because we're spending $45,000 a year keeping murderers cozy, warm, and fed so they can't do horrific things to other human beings - AGAIN.

The above thought does not transfer to people who - in a fit of passion or in a moment of total mental instability - commit a violent crime that is wholly uncharacteristic of them as a person. Guy walks in the the wife and gets a flash of angry and pulls a shot - he has a chance of redemption or rehabilitation at least. I'd be comfortable with him being locked away as a punishment for a reasonable amount of time, then given some sort of rehabilitative tasks (therapy, service to the community, reintegration). I'm willing to extend the same type of punishment to first-time single offense criminals, gang members who got sucked into a bad life due to socio-economic pressures and are still redeemable, and the like.

I am, like anyone, concerned that on occasion the innocent may end up where the guilty should be - and that is a problem, but evidence analysis is getting better and better and cameras are in more and more places and that problem is one we're just going to have to keep fighting with the whole "innocent until proven guilty" philosophy. I also believe that minor offenses (petty theft, minor drug charges, non-violent crimes) should be treated entirely differently than major offenses (violent crime, repeat offenders of a violent or escalating nature). Thousands of prisoners in our system would be better served - and we as a society better served - by punishments that involved contributions to society rather than removal from that society.

Seriously though, there do exist human beings who are beyond redemption and a poison to our whole species no matter how deep or dark a hole we put them in and things for which one's life should be forfeit both to preserve society from their corruption and to serve as a final standard by which we all must live. Until we live in a world where there is no strain on resources forcing a choice between helping the innocent needy and storing the criminal element - I have to err on the side of being harsher to criminals and being more charitable to the needy.

 

[zegram33]

and basically...
As I see it, the death penalty should be allowable, HOWEVER
if it is later proven that the man/woman killed was innocent, the judge who decided on the death penalty, MUST face the death penalty. no re-trials, no loopholes, if he killed an innocent man, then since society has already said that's a crime punishable by death....theres only one option to avoid making a mockery of the societies values.

and that way, a judge would have to be either really sure or really outraged at the crime

that if perfectly executed the criminal justice system would never give anyone innocent a sentence, which is a nice idea but completely false. This would mean that 100% certainty were required for a conviction and there's no such thing.

no offence, but I think you've misunderstood my point
the whole POINT of this system is that to hand down the death sentence rather than life imprisonment, a judge has to be BLOODY sure of the evidence as presented.
yes, if the evidence he was given was wrong then he can die, but for that situation to have happened, he would already have killed an innocent man in cold blood (or had him killed, which is legally the same thing).
the fact the criminal justice system is hugely fallible is....kinda the whole point, this system is about making sure the death penalty remains confined to cases where the judge is absolutely certain that the convicted party is guilty.

To put it another way: If the Judge isn't willing to bet his life on that, then what right does he have to take the life of another.
In cases like these, judges would give a life sentence instead.

unless im getting confused and American judges don't handle the actual sentencing, or something, in which case, this should instead apply for whoever actually gives the sentence (ie, a jury shouldn't be executed for contributing to the "guilty" verdict, as they had no input on the actual sentencing)