what are your feelings about the death penalty?

[UpsideDownFlag]

Poll question: what are your feelings about the death penalty?

[LDS Jock]

1. Completely against the death penalty

Not necessarily for religious reasons, but just consider it inhumane.

[maveric]

2. If your son or daughter was raped and mutilated to death by a

RW fundie who laughed in your face and flipped you off during the trial, would you still be against the death penalty?
I know many people who are "against" the death penalty until a child or a family member is murdered. re:Westerfield/Van Damme trial.

I dont think that anyone is "completely" against the DP.

[mark414]

5. COMPLETELY against

why should timothy mcveigh be allowed to decided his own fate (i.e. telling his lawyers to stop all his appeals and just let him die)

murderers should be given life in prison, no exceptions.

they should wake up every day locked up for what they did. don't give them an easy or early exit.

[Mojambo]

6. I would hope that those around me who weren't feeling the same grief

would do their best to restrain my impulse towards vengeance.

It is not supposed to be used as a tool of vengeance.

I know many people who are completely against the death penalty. I am one.

[LDS Jock]

12. well, I am completely against it

Killing someone else doesn't bring back the one you lost. You can never know for sure until you are in that position, but to the best of my ability, I am 100% against the death penalty.

[KT2000]

18. Yes some people deserve to die

for their crimes but that is not what society really faces.

Does a government have the right to kill as punishment is the question.
When a society uses murder as punishment, does that make the society better in any way?
If a society errs in using murder as punishment, what does that do to the society?

The answer can be found by witnessing an execution. Other than the cheering sickos the feeling after an execution is one of emptiness. It did not fix anything and made murderers out of the innocent.

We should not kill for our own good.

[immoderate]

55. I agree with KT2000

We, as a society, should not kill. We should be against killing.

I don't begrudge people their desire for vengeance, their emotional reactions. That's why we let our civilization handle it.

--IMM

[phylny]

25. I am "completely" against the death penalty.

I think that life in prison with no chance of parole is punishment enough.

[Mandate My Ass]

27. Yes I would still be against it

completely.

[skygazer]

36. You know, I hear this argument all the time

And it pisses me off every time. Revenge is not the same as justice and is NOT something to base the law upon. I firmly believe that neither I nor the State, have any more right to take a life than that RW fundie you're talking about. Sure, if that scenario happened, I might want to kill the bastard myself but I would know it was wrong.

I don't base my belief on any kind of Biblical principal because I don't follow the Bible. I believe it is morally wrong to take a life in anything other than self defence.

[Mandate My Ass]

45. That kind of emotional manipulation is the reason

why politicians will always portray themselves as tough on crime -- it's a guaranteed vote getter. All they have to do is ask people to imagine themselves or their loved ones as being in danger and the sheep will be screaming that we need to start stringing up jaywalkers.

The pols know the DP is not a deterrant, and if they send a few high-profile convicts to the death chamber their careers will be safe by making the rest of us believe that we are too.

Meanwhile there continues to be reversible errors in nearly 70% of all capital cases.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

39. Your question demonstrates exactly why a "civilized" society should NEVER

engage in the death penalty.

Civilized societies are organized around JUSTICE. Justice is not always fair but it is just.

You just asked if a family member were murdered, would someone want revenge. Of course they would. Revenge is revenge. Justice is justice.

Revenge is hardly a bulwark of civilizations.

[Th1onein]

52. That particular emotional argument has been used for years on this topic.

It doesn't move me at all. I am completely AGAINT the death penalty. Period. No matter what.

[athena]

56. Juries make mistakes.

If one innocent person is executed for a crime s/he didn't commit, that's one person too many.

That is the reason for abolishing the death penalty. It has nothing to do with revenge. Would you still be for the death penalty if you were sentenced to death for something you didn't do?

[Journeyman]

3. Did Beria deserve death? Did Heydrich? . . .

Should Aticus have shot the dog? Where is the line that divides?

[ulysses]

4. against, 100%

maveric - of course I'd want to kill someone who harmed my family. That's why we don't have vigilante justice any more.

[maveric]

7. You dont feel that life imprisonment is too good for some.

Did you ever see the Richard Speck home video from prison. He was happily snorting coke, holding a wad of $20.00-$100.00 bills, showing off his breasts he obtained via hormone treatments and then having sex with another inmate. This is a guy that mutilated 8 nurses. He was enjoying life at our expense.
Charley Manson even tells of how he likes being inside. He gets all the dope and sex he wants.
The DP should be reserved for the worst of the worst.

[ulysses]

8. what satisfaction would we derive

from the state-sanctioned killing of these people? What?

A developed society has no business killing its own citizens.

[maveric]

10. It would make me feel damn good to see monsters like this

taken off the planet before they harm or influence anybody else.
Are these killers "citizens"? Members of our "society"? These are anti-social predators that would not hesitate to kill again, even while incarerated.

[ulysses]

51. it would make you feel good, perhaps,

but as nsma points out, you feeling good doesn't necessarily make for justice.

Are these killers "citizens"? Members of our "society"?

In point of fact, yes, they are. As such, they should be subject to the impartial rule of law, not the rule of grieving families.

[Hepburn]

9. Frankly...

...I think LWOP is worse than the death penalty.

My opposition to the DP: The state enforces "thou shalt not kill" and to punish, kills. I don't want the blood of others on my hands no matter what has gone down. If killing is wrong, it is wrong PERIOD. I also have a problem with the issue of: "What if the verdict was wrong?" There is really no way to bring someone back from death if the judge or jury made a mistake. Too many DP row inmates have been released on Project Innocence for me to not realize that some times juries and judges screw up very, very badly.

[maveric]

11. Watch the Richard Speck video sometime.

You may change your opinion.
Its disgusting!

[Hepburn]

13. I have...

...and it was disgusting. But IMO a civilized society killing its members is worse. Speck was like a caged, sick animal to me. You many think he looked happy, but I would not label his "performance" as that. Who knows what really was going on in his head and how much he really enjoyed being caged and used for the remainder of his life. He could have been lying his sick ass off for all we know.

Prisons are very ugly places. Sick, scary and brutal. IMO: That to me is worse than ending that kind of hell on earth.

[meow2u3]

33. LWOP should be the "penultimate" punishment

with LWOP in solitary the ultimate

[prolesunited]

28. Why would the solution to that mess be the death penalty

Perhaps we need to simply clean up our prison system so incidents like that DO NOT happen.

What you are saying is that since we are unable to control our prison population, we should just kill them.

You call that justice? :wtf:

[athena]

58. It's not about punishment.

The reason for locking people up is to protect the rest of the people. It's not to punish them. You can't ever punish someone -- some people will never be sorry for what they did, regardless of whether they're in prison or sentenced to death. Each person is autonomous.

It is very uncivilized to think of the justice system as a system of punishing people. It is in fact a system of protecting the public from criminals. The way to do that is:

1. Make jails more secure so that criminals won't be able to escape,
   
2. Stop putting people in jail for frivolous reasons such as drug use -- what such people need is treatment,
   
3. Abolish the death penalty.
   

[Infomaniac]

14. I don't have any moral opposition to the death penalty.

I don't have any moral opposition to the death penalty. I oppose it in nearly all cases for economic reasons. Death penalty cases are expensive - except in places where folks don't seem to have any qualms about executing the innocent - and the money spent trying to execute a few means less money to keep violent felons behind bars. Many states that have the DP have higher violent crime rates than those that don't. Why? Too much money is spent trying to execute a relatively few individuals. It boils down to how much justice can you afford. Texas is a perfect example. John Penry, a mentally retarded man, kidnapped and raped a woman in Texas. He was released after two years due to prison overcrowding and costs concerns. Penry went on to break into a woman's house, rape and murder her. He's been convicted and sentenced to death twice. I think he's been on Death Row in Texas for nearly 20 years. His appeals have gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Huge sums have been spent trying to execute him, which weren't spent on keeping him in jail after he raped the first woman. Does this make sense? Shouldn't we be spending the money more wisely? I sleep better at night knowing that someone who commits a Class A felony (murder, rape, kidnapping) is going away for a long time.

[mvd]

15. I am completely against

Yes, I feel so mad about some heinous crimes that I'm tempted, but when it comes to the death penalty, there should be no chance of error or bias. I feel that we can't have a fair system without either having no death penalty or having everyone convicted of a crime get the death penalty (with a rigid appeals process for all.) And the second way doesn't take into account variations in the severity of crimes. It also would limit access to the courts. It's silly to try to put a cutoff on what kind of murder would deserve death IMO. I'm someone who doesn't think the state should be killing when it is against murder, and who thinks life in prison is enough punishment and sometimes more punishment.

[AntiCoup2K4]

16. Nobody should answer this until they read the Stanley Hilton interview...

Traitors who murdered 3000 people in cold blood as a pretext for a war where they could murder thousands of others. These are the most vile scum on the planet, with the possible exception of child rapers.

However, dealing with child rapers is easy...release them to the general population of the prison and let the convicts handle the rest.

That wouldn't work with the neocons... they would declare the convicts "terrorists" and have the prison invaded before "lights out" the first day of incarceration.

[Djinn]

17. when justice truly is blind

and everyone has the same access to decent representation and cops all become paragons of virtue then I'll probably support the death penalty in some cases even though it is useless as a deterent.

Until that day I'll be against it

[Festivito]

19. Only if incarceration fails badly.

Escapees, parolees determined life-forfeits would be eligible.

Aside, the most heinous crimes need study more than vindictiveness, even in the case of my own loved ones.

Add that a human desire for balance lowers the threshold of proof needed for retribution, since after losing someone, any person dying offers a small amount of balance. It's just not good.

[Mechatanketra]

20. Perfect justice can only be wielded by perfect people.

And I don't know any of those, do you?

Court trials don't determine the truth, but just the best estimation of the truth. Society currently needs to rely on use of these best estimation to control crime (or rather, to reduce recurrence of crime) ... but errors will be made, even if we didn't have occasional spurts of corruption and prejudice to deal with.

Supporting the death penalty is a claim of perfection, a statement that you are so confident in the unerring accuracy of your justice system that you'll bet human lives on it. And frankly, letting people that arrogantly naive walk around free is far more dangerous than letting murderers live on behind bars. :eyes:

[TaleWgnDg]

21. take out the religious connotations !!

I stand with Justice Thurgood Marshall and Justice William J. Brennan who both opined over and over and over again that the death penalty was a violation of the cruel and unusual punishment as enumerated in our constitution's 8th amendment . . .

. . . because the imposition of capital punishment "does not comport with human dignity" (Justice Brennan) or because it is "morally unacceptable" and "excessive." (Justice Marshall)

[jonnyblitz]

30. yeah, the "thou shalt not.." crap made me wince...n/t

[TaleWgnDg]

22. and FYI . . . some of us will not be polled as

you've posit the queries . . . again, REMOVE the religion from your questions . . .

[Piperay]

23. Opposed on principle but

I am ambivalent about people like McVie getting it.

[Jack_DeLeon]

24. I mix of 2,3, and 4.

I think the death penalty should definately be used for the highest forms of treason, it should also be used in heinous crimes, I also think it should be used for multiple murders or repeat murderers.

[MostlyLurks]

26. Only in extremely rare cases.

One of the last truly conservative planks of my own, personal platform, was a belief in the death penalty. I’ve read and researched a lot about serial killers, and that really informed my belief in the practice. There are some people who are irredeemable and permanently, irrevocably dangerous and they need to be put to death. This is why I still hold some belief in the death penalty, theoretically.

However, as I grew older and more aware of society in general, it became clear to me that the inequities in the judicial system precluded the notion of fair trial in all cases, especially for minorities and the poor. Frankly, if you can’t guarantee that the people you’re frying, suffocating and injecting aren’t actually guilty, I don’t want that blood on my hands.

I still think there should be “special exception” cases, in which the crimes are so heinous and the evidence so overwhelmingly clear, that a judge (and only a judge) can mandate the death penalty. But I think those cases are few and far between. For example, I don’t think McVeigh should have been executed simply because I, personally, do not believe the OKC evidence was overwhelmingly clear against him (And please don’t try to involve me in a debate over that issues, as I haven’t got the attention span or desire. I pre-admit I may be wrong.).

[noonwitch]

29. I am opposed to it in all cases, but I understand why people support it

When someone is murdered, it hurts so many people.

[Ezlivin]

31. Read Mike Gray's "The Death Game" if you support the death penalty

I can't imagine someone who supports the death penalty retaining that view upon finishing the book.

The book should be made into a horror film. because I started fearing for my own life after reading it. I can see now how innocent people can be put on death row.

Very frightening.

Even if you only view it from a strictly monetary point of view, it's cheaper to incarcerate than it is to execute.

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

41. Or An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

nt

[Journeyman]

48. "Cell 2455, Death Row" by Caryl Chessman. . .

a view of death row from the inside. . .

[SOS]

32. 112 inmates

have been freed from death row on grounds of FACTUAL innocence. Not technicalities, but rather the wrong person was convicted.
Such a shoddy system in indefensible.
Anthony Porter's response to this poll is the only one that really matters.

[truthspeaker]

34. I'm against it, but not for the reason given.

I feel that, theoretically, the state has a right to kill criminals after they have been found guilty of certain crimes. But I know that in practice it is impossible for a human justice system to be 100% infallible and I do not think it is ever acceptable to execute an innocent person.

[Beer Snob-50]

35. I get frustrated with the pro-life groups

who support the death penalty. I guess life ends at birth. I firmly believe that the government has no right to put someone to death in my name.

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

37. Only for public figures

There's a good argument for Ken Lay to face the firing squad. Think of the damage he did to so many lives!

I think that CEOs, politicians, and other intensely privileged and powerful people should risk death for relatively minor mistakes. We would have a much better country and world.

For common killers, I think life behind bars can be much more miserable than simply dying. Many crave death. But imprisonment also offers the possibility of redeeming oneself.

[hunter]

38. No Death Penalty. God will sort them out when it's time..

Our human lives on this planet are so short, there is really no point to executing people. We are all born into Death Row. Christ Himself was executed, and if it was wrong for Him, it is wrong for all of us.

I have a very religious point of view. When we kill others (no matter that they may be monsters) we kill a part of ourselves.

Peace.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

40. The state as murderer.

The sheer illogic of the death penalty is overwhelming. The state murders murderers because it is opposed to murder.

It is barbarism under the thin veneer of the law.

[mvd]

47. "It is barbarism under the thin veneer of the law."

Well said!

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

42. Not only am I against it, I am against the litmus test for application

When one murders another in a premeditated fashion, then maybe that family or a few families or a dozen families are harmed in a devastating fashion by their crime against society.

When Kenneth Lay ripped off America in a premeditated fashion, literally thousands were harmed and even devastated due to HIS crime against society.

Until corporate criminals who commit crimes TEN TIMES or a hundred times more damaging to society than a single murder are eligible for the same "remedy", I say the law is being arbitrary and caprecious in its interpretation of "crimes against the people."

[noamnety]

43. 100% opposed, no exceptions. (Except ...)

I oppose it on all grounds, ethics, finances, etc. In all cases.

However, if a prisoner is sentenced to life without parole, I believe they should have the right to die at their own request - prisoner euthanasia.

If we are doing it as a compassionate act toward the prisoner, I do not believe it lessens us as a society. If we are doing it for revenge or "justice" without their permission, then it is a violation of human rights, and lessens not only the prisoner, but all those who allow it to happen.

[okieinpain]

44. Sorry, but some people deserve the death penalty.

[TX-RAT]

46. A necessary evil. I'm for it.

[MrSlayer]

49. I support the Death Penalty.

I know what I would want done if someone harmed my family. As I said many times before, the person had better hope the cops get them first because there will be no merciful lethal injection from me.

[Catholic Sensation]

50. I believe certain people deserve to be executed

anyone who harms children (murder, molestation, etc.) doesn't deserve life

and traitors deserve death too. Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, even Benedict Arnold are sub-human for what they did.

[DubyaSux]

53. No way...

I'm against the death penalty because I wouldn't put my pet cat's life in the hands of a room full of lawyers - let alone a human life.

[porphyrian]

54. Until the legal system is fair and just for all...

...we should suspend the death penalty. Currently, the system works in favor of the rich over the poor, and this classism, which is unacceptable to all Americans, is additionally levied unfairly against minorities. The legal system should be fixed immediately or completely replaced.

[Iris]

57. I'd vote for the first, but how about "The State doesn't have the right to

take a life" rather than "Thou Shalt Not Kill"?

[artv28]

59. Death penalty

If there was some evidence that it was a deterrent I would support it. Since I don't believe it is a deterrent, the death penalty is not an important issue in my opinion. Since most Dem's are against it, Conservatives try to use this issue as a way of making liberals appear weak on crime when in fact there is no evidence and little reason to believe it works as a deterrent.

[KamaAina]

60. "Killing people is wrong. And to show you exactly how wrong it is..."

we're gonna kill you!

That is the convoluted, Bush*ian pretzel logic put forth by death penalty supporters. Just get rid of it so we'll at least have a fighting chance of being considered a civilized nation, please?

[johnnie]

61. Against

Although when I see stories on what some of these people do to children, it really starts me a thinkin'.
I just would like them to crack down on the prison system. hard time should be hard time. I think if someone is serving life, they should just get their room and their meals.

[Psst_Im_Not_Here]

62. Made it an even 100 completely against

My best friend was brutally raped and murdered in 1996. We had grown up together. When her murderers were caught, this question was a hard one. But, in the end, I knew what was right. I wanted those SOB's to suffer. Death was too good, too quick and too easy for them. I wanted them to be in prison for the rest of their natural lives. I wanted them to miss out on their families lives like we had to miss out on hers. I wanted them to wake up every single day of their lives looking through those bars knowing that their families and friends would never again see them outside of a cage, because that's where they belong. And that's where they will remain if I have anything to say about it!

On the other issues involving the death penalty, the death penalty is not given out equally and is not ever going to be. State sanctioned murder is wrong in my opinion, and always will be. The chances for abuse and mistakes are just too high.

My mother and I got on the subject of it once and I made this point, isn't the crucifixion of Jesus the biggest case AGAINST the death penalty? I'm not at all religious but, I think it's a valid point.