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78
9 votes
Apr 18, 2015

We as humans need to protect and help one another. I understand that to some people the death penalty should be legalized. But who are we to play God, to kill those we deem deserve death? We are hypocrites if we kill a murder. What would be next? Raping a rapist? It must be taken in perspective. Yes, it's only used in extreme cases, but even in Sweden there is a prison where the maximum sentence is 12 years. They use their resources to educate and help the prisoners. The prisoners come out of there well educated and do not go back to hurting others. This should be considered. After all, we are humans, and it is not morally correct to kill other humans.

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67
main reply
3 votes,
Apr 18, 2015

Although I agree with your position generally, I feel like your argument is weak. If we say that the reason not to kill other humans is because it is objectively morally incorrect to do so, point blank, we're opening up the possibility for someone simply to reject that shared morality and find no good argument to avoid murder. We need to look at it from a less absolute angle -- there are solid, concrete reasons for not executing our prisoners that have nothing to do with whether or not they "deserve" it (although the concept of someone "deserving" death is an even worse example of an absolute morality pressed where it doesn't belong). The point you bring up about Scandinavian prisons successfully reducing recidivism by actually trying to reforms criminals is a better place to start. If it's possible to prevent most criminal behavior through education, it stands to reason that society as a whole has more to gain by applying that education to all sane criminals, with the .001% that are "irredeemable" being locked up for a longer time -- if nothing else because that's actually cheaper than executing them.

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100
3 votes
Apr 18, 2015

I used to be a supporter of the death penalty. On an emotional level I often feel that some criminals should die....especially those who hurt children, or torture and kill mercilessly.
However, after taking a sociology class we learned that countries with a death penalty have higher murder rates than those without. It seems to be because the actions of the government are often internalized by the population as a normative ethical code. Therefore, if the government thinks killing people is a 'solution' then the general population will also think killing is a solution.
Once I thought about that, I realized that I actually do not support the death penalty.

Besides the circularity of the logic is well known: We kill people, who kill people, to prove that killing people is wrong.

Finally, there is a statistical probability that we accidentally kill innocent people, since our justice system isn't perfect. In my opinion, even killing one innocent person accidentally, is enough to make the whole practice immoral.

So, as much as I do think some people deserve to die, I don't think it is good to place the power of capital punishment in the hands of a government....particularly since no government is ever infallible.

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0
User voted Yes, in some cases.
main reply
0 votes,
May 21, 2016

I support the death penalty, but if life without the possibility of parole (LWOPP) meant just that, that is you go to jail until you die, (no parole, no pardon, no nothing, unless PROVEN innocent) I would support getting rid of the death penalty. As we've seen in some cases people who have gotten LWOPP, have gotten out to kill again. In some states LWOPP means will look at you again in 20 years and see if you should be let out. In some states the parole board will change a sentence from LWOPP to LWPP, and parole them. There are people who should NEVER be allowed back into society.

Your claim that "countries with a death penalty have higher murder rates than those without" isn't true, when you look at the top ten countries for homicides have no death death penalty, but the country with the most homicides has NO death penalty. Honduras homicide rate of 90.4 per 100,000 (2014) so the claim isn't true.

No we don't kill people to show that killing people is wrong to kill them to stop them from ever killing again, after a trail and almost endless appeals. Basically we are saying this person to too dangerous to EVER be let out and the ONLY way we have currently to stop said person from ever getting back into society is to end their life. Like I said if LWOPP meant just that, then I could support getting rid the the death penalty, but until that happen, I will support the death penalty.

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100
opinion
2 votes
Mar 8, 2016

It is better for a person to die knowing that he/she did wrong no matter how long it took them to acknowledge that, than to die and never realising their wrong deed. Life with the burden is more difficult than death.

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100
User voted Yes, in some cases.
1 vote
Oct 22, 2015

I've had this discussion with a colleague of mine before. For the two of us it came down to whether the death penalty could be applied reliably against the correct perpetrator of the crime. I argued that it could be applied with the correct amount of knowledge, and used examples of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley as examples of that. He disagreed, and believed that on this subject it is best to err on the side of caution. Yet he failed to convince me because with modern technology the perpetrator could be identified with more than enough assurance needed for such a conviction (as in ~99% certainty).

For me I am within the ~70% who believes the death penalty can be applied successfully. However I do only believe in such a measure for first degree homicide, as in that circumstance I believe that the death penalty ensures the perpetrator never again commits such a heinous act but also the punishment would fit the crime more adequately than many of the verdicts applied today.

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100
User voted No, never.
1 vote
Nov 18, 2015

Death penalty doesn't do anything else other than more violence.
Maybe it costs less than keeping them in jail, maybe its easier, for some a relief and for others it may be revenge or pleasure.
Thing is - we're humans and regardless we still proceed to hurt one another. If you want to fix this - killing even more of us isn't going to fix the problem - that way you'll just make it worse.
It may be a solution to some; but there's nothing to do about it and I am nearly guaranteed it hasn't and won't work as it's been proven in the past.
How do we know what could "Death penalty" applied to and for? Some may say Murder, rape; etc. But how do we know we'll keep it under control? How do we know who keeps it within the boundaries?
In some countries, being homosexual would receive the same penalty as being a rapist and it is considered to be in the same category. Today, we would start with murderes; tomorrow with rapists; after that with homosexuals - and in the future you'll be sentenced to death penalty for just not agreeing to a certain president, state, or religion.
We need to grow out of this and work all together - people can be fixed and people can change. Some things come from the childhood or a wrongfully done path of learning; we need to learn to correct these people as we should all have a fair and equal chance. Crime I doubt will ever stop - we shouldn't worry about what to do with the criminal after the crime has been done, we should worry about how to prevent the crime from happening at all.
Killing someone won't bring you a loved one back, and it won't make the others stand back - you'll just instead make them angrier or have more of a purpose against you and/or whoever it is.
Some may say Prison doesn't work, but that's because Prison isn't and hasn't been set up properly in the past few years - it shouldn't punish, it should teach and reconstruct a person back to it's morals; it should try to make the person see what was wrong and not to do it again, or ever; or even know not to do it in ever in the first place. We can never be 100% sure if the person is actually guilty, and innocent people can always die - once again, we're never sure.

We can't control power, and killing someone would make us just as "bad" as the person we'd be sentencing.
This of course can be taken and moved back and forth inbetween many many different perspectives - and it requires a lot of analyzing - but I believe this to be the right way to think of it and see it. Please correct me if I'm wrong or if you think otherwise. I'd be glad and interested to hear & know.

Thanks you very much, and wish you good luck.

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100
User voted No, never.
1 vote
Feb 1, 2016

Putting aside morality, I am of the opinion that justice systems are much too fallible to dole out such a sentence. Even if a justice system were somehow 99% correct we cannot allow for the possibility of executing an innocent person. Even in cases where there is apparently infallible evidence we cannot allow the precedent to exist.

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100
1 vote
Feb 10, 2016

Affectively, one might ask, should murder be allowed?

The only difference between the state/country committing murder and an individual is motivation and methods.

The states motivations being punishment, revenge and, the claim at least, that the action deters the act in others.

The latter view apparently held despite the eleven thousand or so people murdered the U.S.A in 2014.

I mention the States as it is one of the few counties that still executes.

Is there a more inhumane act than to hold a person on death row for years and then finally decide to execute them?

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40
5 votes
Apr 18, 2015

Yes, death penalty should be allowed. Criminals that have been proven guilty without a doubt and that have committed an uncalled for and irreversible crime deserve to be executed, especially if these people are not able to be rehabilitated. If they were to get out, although it's not likely, they would probably get out and do it again, costing another innocent life. I know that it is wrong to kill but why should someone that went out and kill someone else be able to enjoy another day behind bars when you got family members out there suffer and hurting. I feel that if allowing the death penalty it would stop a lot of these senseless crime as far as taking someone life.

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50
main reply
6 votes,
Apr 18, 2015

No one deserves to die, ever. Death is a total and permanent obliteration of what can colloquially be called their soul. If you killed someone, by your own logic you deserve to die. Who can kill you though, since they then would deserve to die? Or if not, who has the power to dictate who lives? And by condemning someone, even as punishment, again it seems they must condemn themselves. There is far too much potential for abuse.
Consider also that incredibly few people have been proven guilty. Modern developments in DNA evidence checking have proven innocent many people who served decades in prison for nothing. What if they were killed instead? If there was a death penalty, at that point the people who convicted the innocent person would deserve it themselves.

Could you explain how having people suffering justifies murder, by the way? What do you even mean by "why should [they] ... be able to enjoy another day behind bars when you got [sic] family members out there suffer [sic] and hurting." Firstly, I can guarantee you they aren't 'enjoying' time in prison. Prisons are abusive money making machines in America, they don't cater in the slightest to what an inmate wants. Are you suggesting we kill all these disproportionately black criminals and replace them with people who can go and enjoy these luxurious prison cells?

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75
4 votes,
Apr 18, 2015

"No one deserves to die, ever." - This sounds like radicalism at its best. There are people who deserve to die. If someone murders a child (let's assume the worst scenario, it happens - rape, murder, cold blood, multiple times), he deserves nothing but death. I agree we shouldn't torture him (although the parents have the moral right to do it), but we definitely should execute him. Who has the power to dictate who lives? In this example, the parents.

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50
2 votes,
Apr 18, 2015

I hold that no one deserves to be destroyed, or to be tormented to the point where they desire destruction as a release from pain. Certainly they should suffer for what they have done, but I consider it more desirable to reform them and make them a productive and safe member of society rather than remove them.

Why do you want the people with the most incentive to hurt a criminal as much as possible to have control over what happens to them? I'd like to point out that the American prison system has become for-profit, leading to a ludicrously high incarceration rate for the benefit of the few, at the extreme cost of the many. In particular non-violent, non-destructive crimes can lead to extremely long times in prison.

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Load more (1) in reply to OI ROhE's post (No one deserves to die, ever. Death is a total and permanent obliteration of what can colloquially be called their soul. If you killed someone, by your own logic you deserve to die. Who can kill you t...)
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100
User voted Yes, in some cases.
main reply
1 vote,
Sep 15, 2016

Morally, I cannot argue whether or not the death penalty is good or bad, though I still believe it is a bad policy.

There have been multiple cases where someone was put on death row and years--sometimes decades later-- were let off because the trial wasn't done correctly, new evidence arrives, or the evidence wasn't analyzed properly the first time. So no, I do not believe your first trial should ever be a death sentence.

That being said, If someone goes to prison for life without parole and they have no grander punishment, they'll act out even more and cause even more violence inside of prisons. If someone is on death row, they have even less to be punished with.

I think that all death penalty cases should be left as life-sentence cases, but if you kill someone on the inside, you should be tried again for the death penalty. Since prisons have cameras, guards and witnesses, it should be a relatively quick second trial. This system would perhaps be an incentive for prisoners to act in less violent ways.

Additionally, there is a little fun-fact I learned in my Ethics class a couple years ago. Ironically, the violent crime rate in states that still support the death penalty is higher than in those with no death penalty.
deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-p...wer-murder-rates

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67
main reply
3 votes,
Apr 18, 2015

It's not about the crime, it's not about the victim, and it's not about the supposed perpetrator. It's about us as a country. Any nation that puts its prisoners to death is no better than those it executes.

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100
1 vote,
Apr 18, 2015

This is a horrible false equivalency that I've seen thrown around. A murderer, in ethical, rather than legal, terms, is a person who kills without justification. A murderer has demonstrated that they will violate the most basic of human rights: Life. By the act of violating another person's fundamental right, they have also chosen to forfeit their own. The society is justified, by virtue of that perpetrator's crime, in ending the murderer's life.

Otherwise, you would say that a person who shoots and kills an attacker attempting to rape and kill them is on the same moral ground as the attacker, or a police officer that arrests a burglar is morally guilty of kidnapping, which is absurd.

You could argue about the process by which we assign the death penalty, due to the probability of a false conviction, but that is not necessarily reflective of the inherent morality of the death penalty.

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0
User voted No, never.
0 votes
Jun 25, 2015

I don't see the need to use the death penalty. Murders as inhuman as they may seem, are in fact human. A psychologist interviewed murders and cam up with these conclusions. and lastly, "Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?" as said by Holly Near

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0
User voted No, never.
0 votes
Jul 3, 2015

Killing people who have killed people makes about as much sense as the rest of the government's nonsense.

People talk against the Constitution, against the "right to bear arms" portion, and say that the document is old and out of date and didn't take into account modern times...

The same people who applaud the death penalty seem to forget the "eye for an eye" doctrine predates the Constitution by about 4,000 years...

So... when is a document too old to be of worth?

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0
User voted No, never.
0 votes
Jul 20, 2015

No. Ineffective deterrent, costs more, innocents have been exonerated by DNA evidence, life in prison is better punishment, and it gives the government the ability to legally kill.

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0
User voted No, never.
0 votes
Jul 23, 2015

No for these two reasons:

  • If you call death sentence for someone that commited a kill, you should also call death sentence to the person that put on the electrical chair: he is a killer too.
  • If you kill a person which is actually innocent, what would you do at last ? Revive him ?
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0
opinion
0 votes
Dec 17, 2015

Only in extreme cases (like:evil mastermind-ish plans to conquer or destroy the world,Spectre-like acting),in other cases (murder,armed robbery,rampage,vandalism on important buildings) reducation should take place.

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