Capital Punishment

Discussion in 'Politics & Government' started by Ken Anderson, Mar 24, 2015.

  1. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    This is why I am opposed to capital punishment.
    Not only was this woman not allowed to grieve the loss of her four year-old son, who was brutally murdered in 1989, but she was unjustly charged and convicted for his murder, spending twenty-two years on death row based on the lies of a police detective.

    While there are surely people whose guilt is so certain, and whose crimes are so horrific, that I certainly wouldn't mourn their deaths, it is too late to say oops after the death penalty has been imposed.

    Police are assessed on the basis of their arrest records, prosecutors are judged according to their conviction records, and judges are afraid of allegations of being light on crime, and this doesn't always lead to a just justice system.
     
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  2. Mal Campbell

    Mal Campbell Supreme Member
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    Plus, the justice system is so overloaded that cops don't have adequate time to truly investigate crimes. For a murder, they may have at best a week, so they are going to go for the obvious perpetrator, focus their limited time and resources on that person to the exclusion of others.

    It's definitely a flawed system - from start to finish. While I am all for the idea of the death penalty, I don't believe our current system works. Yes, there are some crimes that are so heinous, the criminal deserves to die - but we see too many stories where the system gets it wrong, like the one you've just mentioned.

    Also, one reason to institute a death penalty is to deter crime, but statistics have shown that it has no effect on violent crime. It's also supposed to give the family of the victim "closure", but again studies have shown that most families, while they believe the criminals death will make things better, it doesn't. And then there's the cost. It actually costs about 10 times more to house and execute a death row criminal than to keep him in jail for life. Our system just doesn't work on any level.
     
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  3. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    I think that there are some crimes so terrible, and the person who committed those crimes so unsuitable to ever be released (or escape) from confinement; that execution is about the only realistic answer to dealing with the situation.
    However, I don't think that it is a necessary answer for most murderers. In cases like Ken mentioned, where there was definite miscarriage of justice due to the lies of the detective; just a life sentence would have sufficed, instead.
    The other side of that is the fact that people spend years and years before they are actually executed, after conviction. This doesn't make much sense, especially with all the cost of the constant appeals, and keeping a person housed on death row.
    If the death sentence was only used in crimes of a horrendous nature, and also where the perpetrator was KNOWN to be guilty of the crime; then there would not be so many excuses for appeals, and the execution could be done a lot sooner.
    As an example, the man who kidnapped those girls and kept them locked up for so many years. He ended up killing himself, so it was not an issue in his case; but it is an excellent example of the kind of person that I think should be executed. He was known to commit the crime, so there was no chance of justice convicting an innocent person. The crime he was accused of was horrible, and there was no likliehood that just putting him in prison would ever change this man.
    However, we have a woman here in Alabama who was just convicted of killing her granddaughter, and has been given the death sentence. While it is true that the woman's actions led to the child's death; it was never the grandmother's intent to harm the child, just a case of very poor judgement and parenting.
    I don't remember what the child was being punished for; but the grandmother made her run around the yard, and it ended up killing the little girl.
    While it was not a suitable punishment, or a safe one; it was not that the grandmother ever wanted to harm her granddaughter. The death was basically an accident caused by poor judgement, not deliberately, or even by extreme anger. I agree that this woman should serve time for this crime, or at least be put in a mental institution because it certainly seems to me that she is unstable mentally. But I think that the death sentence is a wrong decision in this case.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...ng-9-year-old-granddaughter-article-1.2157961
     
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  4. Richard Paradon

    Richard Paradon Supreme Member
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    I believe there are some people who deserve the death penalty, especially the parolees or people who have been pardoned just to repeat their crimes. However, I feel it is a better punishment to be jailed forever with no chance of freedom. And not in a cell with all the amenities that a lot of people can not afford.
     
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  5. Brittany Houser

    Brittany Houser Veteran Member
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    I am a proponent of the death penalty in cases where there is absolutely no doubt of the person's guilt. In these days of DNA evidence, we can be much more certain of such things. There is such a high recidivism rate among violent criminals, society has to have a means of protecting itself. In the case of a rapist where a child is concerned, absolutely!
     
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  6. Pat Baker

    Pat Baker Supreme Member
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    You wonder how many people are in jail that are really not guilty. We have seen many people released from jail once the new techology can provide that that person is not guilty. I don't think capital punishment is the answer, we are no longer in an eye for an eye world. I don't know what we can do about the rising crime but the thought of being put to death has not stopped crime in the past it is ovious we need something else.
     
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  7. Lydia Williams

    Lydia Williams Veteran Member
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    This is a difficult topic. It's often impossible to know somebody's 100% guilty, unless multiple witnesses saw it with their own eyes. Evidence could be faked/planted and such. I also think all life is sacred - I try to avoid killing bugs whenever possible, and a scumbags life is still a life, and taking it would be morally wrong to me.

    Furthermore, I believe "an eye for an eye" is not the way to go. I don't think we should stoop to the criminals level by committing the deed of killing them. Instead, I think life imprisonment is a good compromise. They should have no luxuries. No contact with other inmates. I feel as if solitary confinement for the rest of your days would indeed be a punishment worse than death. And if somebody is found to be not guilty at a later date, they can be released. Death on the other hand, is non-reversible.
     
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  8. Hannah Davis

    Hannah Davis Veteran Member
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    Yes, living in the state of Arizona I am quite familar with this case. I remember when it first went to court I wasn't sure if she was guilty or innocent in the whole thing. She never once waivered on her story of what happened or in her innocence. Yet in the end she was convicted along with those who no doubt did commit the murder. Now she has been relelased and plans to file a lawsuit which I can't really blame her for.

    As for the death penalty itself I think what happened here is part of the reason why so many spend decades now on death row. There was a time when a person sentence to death was put to death rather quickly unless they got a delay on it. Now some have wondered if some innocent people were put to death because there wasn't the evidence gathering such a DNA back then. So, now its go to death row where you spend decades perhaps the rest of your life. This is why I shook my head during the whole Jodi Arias trail another high profile murder case in this state, when the jury couldn't decide to sentence her to death the death penalty was taken off the table and everyone including the news media was outraged. I was like why even if she had gotten the death penalty she wasn't going to be put to death any time soon if ever for that matter. Anyway, this week the judge in the case sentenced her to life in prison with no chance of parole odds are the same sentence she would of gotten with the death penalty whether people want to admit it or not.
     
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