I'm personally for the death penalty. And I love how TX has an express lane. (In the words of Ron White.)
In CA they keep them on death row for years and years and years. It's ridiculous.
I also don't agree that the form that is used is inhumane. What would be inhumane is to kill the person the same way that they killed their victim. But lethal injection is far nicer than beating the guy in head with a hammer 25 times (one more time that his victim).

I do believe that inmates should be taught/educated/skilled to return to society. I think a lot of inmates were never taught life skills as children and basically out of lack of skills ending up in jail/prison. But I also believe that there are truly evil people in the world and no matter what their upbringing was, they would do bad things.

Posted By Kathy on 04 Nov 2009 08:34 PM
...In CA they keep them on death row for years and years and years. It's ridiculous...

Agreed. Never ending trials aren't fair for the families of the victims, they aren't fair on the tax-payer, and they aren't fair on the defendant - either he's innocent and should be aquitted, or he's guilty and should carry out his sentence. It shouldn't take a decade to decide which.

...I also don't agree that the form that is used is inhumane. What would be inhumane is to kill the person the same way that they killed their victim. But lethal injection is far nicer than beating the guy in head with a hammer 25 times (one more time that his victim)...

Agreed. The gas chamber isn't "nice" - nor is shooting, or hanging, or the electric chair. The only way it could be considered any more inhumane would be the "clinical," impersonal nature of the procedure, but I think that's appropriate - the justice system shouldn't be personal.

I do believe that inmates should be taught/educated/skilled to return to society. I think a lot of inmates were never taught life skills as children and basically out of lack of skills ending up in jail/prison. But I also believe that there are truly evil people in the world and no matter what their upbringing was, they would do bad things.

I'd be willing to agree that there are criminals for whom rehabilitation is impossible, but even in these cases I don't agree with the death penalty. As I said before, it just seems... wrong to me

TheDeepestBlue,

Try 30 years on death row.

One of the last death row inmates in CA that was not put to death due to "inhumane" was a guy that killed a gal by hitting her in the head 24 times with the claw end of a hammer and since that didn't kill her, he strangled her with her belt. So, as far as I'm concerned, lethal injection was a walk in the park for that creep.

They spend more money (in CA) keeping a guy in prison each year than they spend to educate a child for the same time period.

I say put them to death and stop wasting money.

Penn & Teller did a Bullshit! episode on the death penalty....and actually, you'd be surprised at just how unlike falling asleep peacefully the lethal injection is. Really, there aren't very many ways to execute someone that don't have the potential for horrible suffering. There are basically 3 parts to the lethal injection, sodium thiopental - which induces coma, pancuronium bromide - which is a paralytic agent, and potassium chloride - which causes cardiac arrest. It is believed, that since no anaesthetic is used, and since sodium thiopental has short-term effects, it can wear off early....and the sentenced criminal can be in excruciating pain but not able to give off any outward signals because of the paralysis. In this case, they would be fully aware and unable to move or speak as they slowly suffocated to death while simultaneously having a heart attack.



>.> If you can't tell, they're very anti-death penalty

Aly-- No one believes capital punishment is The Answer. It is more like putting down a mad dog.

Coral -- If a perfect world is anything like a perfect story, then it is going to need villains and antagonists.

Posted By JHBowden on 06 Nov 2009 01:47 PM

Coral -- If a perfect world is anything like a perfect story, then it is going to need villains and antagonists.

And everyone knows the baddies get what's coming to them at the end... right?

Posted By JHBowden on 06 Nov 2009 01:47 PM

Coral -- If a perfect world is anything like a perfect story, then it is going to need villains and antagonists.

 

Reason #4 why marxism fails XP

You're 100%  right. Prison generally makes people a lot worse before it will make them better. Prisons are really just a breeding ground for mental illness, not to mention keeping people in there is extremely expensive. The only plausible reason that someone should be kept in prison is if they are extremely dangerous, and genuinely need to be removed from society. It is a really good thing that there is such a push in the Criminal Justice System at the moment to move away from imprisonment and towards rehabilitation. IMHO community membership should not be conditional, and rehabilitation should always be the ultimate goal of corrections. I'm so glad we are moving away from the retribution stage now, it's getting old.

Now about capital punishment; firstly, it has a brutalising effect on society. Research shows that in societies where people are executed as punishment, there are higher rates of murder. This is because the REAL message getting out to citizens is that it is ok to kill people, and that there are indeed times where people deserve to be killed. Secondly capital punishment hardly works as a deterrant, you'd think people would have figured that out after centuries of it not having any effect on crime rates.