The death penalty. Where do you stand and why?

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Permalink Reply by Alex V. on February 29, 2008 at 11:49am

The map is from the Wikipedia article about capital punishment. The colours are as follows:
- Blue: Abolished for all crimes.
- Green: Abolished for crimes except those committed in exceptional circumstances (such as crimes committed in time of war).
- Orange: Still legal, but abolished in practice (hasn't been used for at least 10 years).
- Red: Legal form of punishment for certain offences.

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Permalink Reply by Gabby on February 29, 2008 at 9:03pm

Ahhh the article helps so much more. Thank you :]

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Permalink Reply by ronan001 on March 2, 2008 at 5:10pm

the united states seems to be only country on the entire planet that would class itself as developed and a first world country, that has the death penalty.

Is every other country wrong? I would think it is the individual states that allow it are wrong and i hope some day in the near future it will not be used as a form of punishment in any states. It has no place within civilised society. It is a punishment that was suitable in times past but it is no longer appropriate in developed society.

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Permalink Reply by Gabby on February 28, 2008 at 6:52pm

Does andyone know if there are specific guidlines a judge or jury uses when deciding if the death penalty is applicable for the crime? Or do they just decide it on their own?

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Permalink Reply by Mayank on February 25, 2008 at 2:20pm

lol i remember starting a discussion for this but no one replied to mine :(....but yea i think it is right to have the death penalty as you need some high end deterrence for high end criminals with nothing to lose....plus life imprisonement will just lead to more jails being built and more money being spent which could have been utilised for something constructive...in the end i think that the criminals who are prosecuted under the death penalty are the worst of the worst and rehabilitation will not help them anyway.....as we say in our country "If the fabric is weak to begin with stitching it back together only means it will tear again"!

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Permalink Reply by Bloodnut on February 25, 2008 at 2:22pm

I don't think that there is a clear line about my alignment to this subject. mainly I'm against it because it's taking life, many people take human life for granted, I used to take it for granted (I had different influences such as violent games or the political state of my country), now I really don't think that death punishment should be used to anything beside terrorists,those who aid terrorist and nazis. every other psychopath is well simply put "a psychopath" so what will that teach him by killing him? prison is something that teaches you not to repeat your actions by making you live less good than outside the prison.
oh and about those inmates that have nothing to loose, well torture can be a very human solution comparing to the death penalty, god knows how many sadistic prison guards would gladly pacify some uncooperative inmates.

that's my opinion more or less but I basically agree with what Jordan wrote in his first comment.

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Permalink Reply by Gabby on February 28, 2008 at 6:55pm

I was actually thinking about torture as a form of punishment. Whatever happened to that? Do you think it would work better? What effects might it have good and bad?

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Permalink Reply by Jamie on February 28, 2008 at 7:13pm

That's pretty hilarious. This isn't an Islamic state missy, we don't do Sharia law here and there will no torturing as a form of punishment, not while the Geneva convention stands.

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Permalink Reply by Alex V. on March 2, 2008 at 5:48am

Torture would be even worse than capital punishment in my opinion. At the end of it all it's about how much you value human life. And while the death penalty is bad, torture is much worse. Besides, it's forbidden by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. See article 5.

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Permalink Reply by Gabby on March 2, 2008 at 9:24pm

Ah I didn't even think of that. Silly me. But of course I haven't taken my government class in school yet. Next year I'll be learning about all this stuff.

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Permalink Reply by Juan F on February 25, 2008 at 2:40pm

I used to be completely for the death penalty, and I used to believe that it was the perfect deterrent for crime. But the way that the U.S. justice system handles it makes it's point and use practically thrown out the window.

People are left on Death Row for decades, which, in that time, many of them are found to be wrongly accused. Sometime in the late 1980s, the Supreme Court justices took a look at the numbers of people given the death penalty, and found that , in all cases where the punishment was death, the victim was a white male at least 75% of the time, which shows the underlying race issue in the rulings.

As to the whole "higher top end punishment," there is always solitary confinement. Life in there, is, I'm sure, worse than death.

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Permalink Reply by Jordan on February 25, 2008 at 2:46pm

Punishments are supposed to fit the crimes. So are you saying that sitting in a room by yourself (solitary) is a fitting punishment for Taking another Human being's Life away?

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