Here's a story from where I live about why we SHOULD use the death penalty on walking garbage like this Sean Everett Scott cop-killer.


It just amazes me how some drug-dealer gangster can kill a cop with a family and get only life in prison. He should be getting the death penalty. Some of you may be saying how bad prison is for a life-time but no, prison is not that bad. New York state pays $30,000 a year on prisoners (I know, my father's a former NYS correction officer) and now we have to keep this crap in prison for the rest of his life. Any person who kills a police officer should get automatic death penalty because they just killed someone that puts on a uniform to protect the public everyday. I hope this guy gets his ass kicked in prison by some correction officers or the other garbage prisoners.

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"Republicans believe that everyday
is the 4th of July, while the Democrats wish everyday was April 15th" - Ronald Reagan

There are people I wouldn't mind seeing dead, Osama and Saddam among them.

But I oppose the death penalty for several reasons, most of them practical:

1. It costs far more to execute someone than to imprison them for life;

2. There is scant evidence that the death penalty is a better deterrent than life in prison;

3. Too many mistakes have been made in death-penalty cases. The key factor often seems to be whether you had a competent lawyer. Keeping someone alive preserves the possibility of redress if it turns out there was a mistake and they are innocent.

Philosophically, I would add:

1. Life in prison IS no picnic. This guy just flushed his whole future down the toilet.

2. Killing him would add one more human life to the cost of his crime. It might feel satisfying, but it really just extends the tragedy.

3. Execution cuts off the possibility of redemption. A really, really bad decision made when young does not mean someone is irrevocably evil. Perhaps in the next several decades he can mature enough to eventually pay for his crime in a more meaningful way than dying -- by giving back to society, perhaps.

If someone harmed my family, I would pull the trigger on them myself and bear the consequences. But I cannot condone our legal system doing it in my name, given all the problems surrounding it. I will accept life in prison as a suitably harsh substitute.

NOT revenge...There is a difference...

It sounds like this particular specimen of human refuse is a real gem...Would killing him make the cop any less dead?

Lock him up and throw away the key...

I agree with Raytri's first two points, it is NOT a deterrent and due to the appeals process and special handling costs more than locking the bastard up and giving him three squares a day.

I disagree with the redemption part...especially with murderers..there are a few instances when the homicide occurred in the heat of the moment, or in self-defense where there is some hope, but in the case of hardened criminals I think that caging the animals is the way to go...

The theory that life in prison is a doddle is un-realistic...The thought of 23-hour lock-down, zero privacy, unknown amounts of abuse, and no hope of EVER getting out would be enough for me to ask for the needle myself if I were in that predicament...

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The last time this country mixed politics with religion, people got burned at the stake.

And might I add, TeenRepublican, while you're looking at this topic with Sadistic perspective - wouldn't you rather have the killer suffer for years and years along with the families of the victim - rather then the easy way out??

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Truth is by nature self-evident, as soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear. Gandhi

I struggle with the Death Penalty all the time. I like the revenge part, the justice part. But I also understand that it is impossible for Humans to have a fail-safe, perfect justice system. Therefore I rely on the teachings of Jesus....as he said in John 8.

John 8

7But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

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II Cor 4:18

I think I can take it to the cynical extreme. People receiving life imprisonment without the chance of parole (basically a death sentence) are people society has deemed unworthy and incapable of interacting with the rest of human society. Furthermore, they are judged to be beyond help, hence the life sentence. As such, they are locked up key is thrown out. So why delay the inevitable? Why keep someone deemed unworthy of societal interaction, deemed beyond redemption in the eyes of society alive? Why not just put the bullet in the head and be done?

There are those that say that the death sentence is brutal. Indeed many countries of Europe have no death penalty (a precursor to being allowed in the EU is that you may not have a death sentence). But I say, locking one up for life, letting them rot in a dank cell with no hope of freedom is more cruel than killing them. The end result is the same, just in one instance you do not drag it out for many decades. The difference is that in the other case, one can feign some sort of moral superiority. Claiming not to be for killing someone, but taking away all freedom and hope and letting time do your dirty work is the same as killing them.

That being said, I don't think the death sentence is just something that can be thrown around. Surely we want to believe in reformation, the ability for one to learn from past mistakes and get on with it. And for certain criminals, reformation is indeed very possible. People that receive it must be deemed basically inhuman. A threat to society, no chance of reformation, scum that society wants nothing to do with. As such, I do favor keeping a death penalty on the books. There are cases in which it should be employed, but it must be used with discretion. Though I believe all those guilty of child abuse (not talking spankings or anything, but downright abuse physical or otherwise) should be shot on the spot. The death penalty is not a deterrent, it is disposal of societal garbage.

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WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Ikari,

I can see your point - and don't get me wrong, especially when there are Monsters taht commit horrific crimes on children, I could ALMOST agree with you.

eventhough I am agnostic, and as such do not believe in organized religion, I still hold very strong spiritual beliefs. I believe that it is God's job to decide who lives or dies, not us. The only exception of that is self-defence, but I think that goes without saying.

I think it is also important to note, that of those victims families who have had the perpetrator killed by death penalty, very few feel satisfaction from the death. The percentage is quite small actually, that feel satisfaction or relief afterwards. I unfortunately don't have the link as I studied this in Sociology, but it is something to consider when looking at this issue.

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Truth is by nature self-evident, as soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear. Gandhi

I really don't see how it extends the crime, he is a killer and needs to be killed, eye for an eye perspective.

How much does it cost to put someone down? It costs $30,000 per year in New York state of tax payers money to keep him locked up. Let's say he lives till 75 years old, that would be about $1,440,000, since he is 27 right now. This would not match the cost of putting him to death. He'll be living the good life watching movies and getting anything he wants while the family has to live with him alive...for the family's sake death of the killer would be the answer.

Letting him sit in a cell for life is what he was destined to become, he is a little gangster drug dealer who's only destination was prison.

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"Republicans believe that everyday
is the 4th of July, while the Democrats wish everyday was April 15th" - Ronald Reagan

Is that I am completely opposed to murder.
If it is ok to justify murder in any case, where is the boundary? What is worthy of death and what isn't?
Why is the defendant's crime considered illegal murder yet the punishment is not?

On both spiritual and practical levels, I do not think it is ok for any human being to decide that another human being is worthy of death. Why do we punish people for murder in the first place? Because it is a disgusting act.

And I think people who murder should be in prison for life with no chance for parole. That's a long time to stew about your bad choices.

$200bn to kill 20k in Iraq

that works out at $10m per person, at $30k a pop, surely it would be better to incarcerate them?

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