Why are you against the death penalty?

[Anonymous]

I don't understand why people are against it in 1st degree murder cases. We have these animals like the killer on U street that just murder people with no regard for any social norm and we wonder why they aren't put down like the vermin that they are. There is no reason why they should get to spend the rest of their life on the taxpayers tab. None. Clean up our streets.

P.S. I don't buy in to the biblical forgive and forget BS so that isn't a good enough excuse for me.

[Anonymous]

Because it's not right to kill them back. Because we are supposed to be a civilized people.

[Anonymous]

Because people on death row are more likely to be poor people who did not have adequate legal defense and if they're wrongly convicted and get life in prison at least they can be let out if the truth comes out. Can't reverse the death penalty.

Because sometimes it is much harder to live day-to-day in prison than it is to die dramatically and therefore life in prison is a worse punishment.

Because it is often cheaper to keep someone in prison for life than it is to give them the death penalty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because people on death row are more likely to be poor people who did not have adequate legal defense and if they're wrongly convicted and get life in prison at least they can be let out if the truth comes out. Can't reverse the death penalty.

Because sometimes it is much harder to live day-to-day in prison than it is to die dramatically and therefore life in prison is a worse punishment.

Because it is often cheaper to keep someone in prison for life than it is to give them the death penalty.

Straw man argument. Most of those people sit on death row for over a decade as they go through appeal after appeal and our Supreme Court reviews all those cases any way.

[Anonymous]

I'm not. & I don't buy the line that the death penalty isn't a deterrent, either. It absolutely deters at least one person from committing another murder.

[Anonymous]

Because it's final and there is no redo. The legitimate argument against the death penalty flew out the window as soon as the first innocent person was executed. Every week you hear of people being released after having spent years, sometimes decades in prison for crimes they did not commit. How can you justify that in any case, but most importantly with something so definitive as the death penalty? At that point it's just murder.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, meant to say the legitimate argument FOR the death penalty, not against, of course

[Anonymous]

Because it is barbaric to take a human life. We should not reduce ourselves to the level of killers.

No civilised country still has the death penalty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because people on death row are more likely to be poor people who did not have adequate legal defense and if they're wrongly convicted and get life in prison at least they can be let out if the truth comes out. Can't reverse the death penalty.

Because sometimes it is much harder to live day-to-day in prison than it is to die dramatically and therefore life in prison is a worse punishment.

Because it is often cheaper to keep someone in prison for life than it is to give them the death penalty.

Straw man argument. Most of those people sit on death row for over a decade as they go through appeal after appeal and our Supreme Court reviews all those cases any way.

It's not a straw man argument. Haven't you seen the number of people who are freed from death row because of the recent advancements in DNA technology? Those people were already convicted, appeals done. Generally, eyewitness testimony is the evidence that convicts them. Suddenly, we have some breakthroughs and we can test samples that years ago were untestable. And guess what? It turns out that those eyewitnesses were wrong.

What would have happened if some scientists had not made these advances? They would be dead.

Given how many errors have shown up this way alone, how many other innocent people are on death row, for whom there is no DNA evidence but who were also convicted by eyewitness testimony?

We make too many mistakes in order for me to feel good putting people to death.

[Anonymous]

1. Possibility of wrongful conviction. This will never be zero. Never, ever.
2. The state is committing an act it forbids. The inconsistency is colossal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because people on death row are more likely to be poor people who did not have adequate legal defense and if they're wrongly convicted and get life in prison at least they can be let out if the truth comes out. Can't reverse the death penalty.

Because sometimes it is much harder to live day-to-day in prison than it is to die dramatically and therefore life in prison is a worse punishment.
Because it is often cheaper to keep someone in prison for life than it is to give them the death penalty.

Precisely why the death penalty should be abolished and instead murderers should be given life without parole and to be served in solitary confinement. That is justice.

[Anonymous]

I would clarify that I am for it, but only for particularly heinous crimes and where there's no shadow of a doubt as to the guilt of the person who was convicted.

[Anonymous]

Abraham Lincoln - "it's better to let 100 guilty men go than to imprison one innocent man."

Too many innocent folks get killed. That's the easy argument.

The other is that it actually costs more to put someone on death row and execute than to sentence them to life without parole.

It's amoral to me because it's an unjustified killing (to me). The only time I'd justify killing a human being is if that person was an immediate threat to someone I value more than the assailant. Then I'd kill. But years after the crime? That's pretty primitive.....stuff we yell at Iran about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Abraham Lincoln - "it's better to let 100 guilty men go than to imprison one innocent man."

Too many innocent folks get killed. That's the easy argument.

The other is that it actually costs more to put someone on death row and execute than to sentence them to life without parole.

It's amoral to me because it's an unjustified killing (to me). The only time I'd justify killing a human being is if that person was an immediate threat to someone I value more than the assailant. Then I'd kill. But years after the crime? That's pretty primitive.....stuff we yell at Iran about.

should read "guilty men go free.."

[Anonymous]

Because it's meted out unfairly and disproportionately, depending on the state one lives in.