I just want hear what other people have to say about his. I have to do a research project for this and I want to hear what the american people feel about this topic.

We execute some people who probably do not deserve it, and don't execute some people who do deserve it.

I don't think the current Western methods are inhumane (no more inhumane than putting someone in a cage for the rest of their lives), but it is often applied with Lady Justice peeking.

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"Tweeter was a Boyscout before she went to Vietnam and found out the hard way... nobody gives a d@mn."

Eh, depends on what you mean as inhumane. I consider government execution barbaric and America is rather behind the rest of the western world. The only European country to still use the death penalty if Belorussia, and its a dictatorship.

Is it inhumane, i dont know if that word even applies.

There are alot of people in the West that support the death penalty, particularly in Canada. Too many people that are guilty are given the death penalty, I think that this increases the probability that innocent people are killed. Although if the qualifications for the death penalty were stricter, less innocent people would be accidentally put on death row or be killed.

The death penalty is very humane, especially in the West. In most other countries, people get stoned to death or ran over, legs first, by steam-rollers. Clearly there is no suffering with the death penalty in the U.S. and there is a very complex process of legal action that is completed before administration of the punishment.

Administering the death penalty also eliminates the possibility of an offender being killed in prison, or the offender escaping from prison and killing again. Often child-killers are released in Canada before their sentance is over because they acted 'nice' in prison and simply go out and rape/kill babies again. If they were given the death penalty, it would completely eliminate this possibility.

A friend of mine was once called to jury duty for a death penalty case. They had to get a "death qualified" jury. First, they eliminated all those who said they opposed the death penalty. Then, they asked the remaining potential jury members if they considered the death penalty punishment (for the offender) or a deterrent (for other would be murderers). All those who answered punishment were excused form serving.

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Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive. - Theodore Roosevelt

In principle I do not have a problem with the death penalty. Eye for eye. If you take advantage your whole life of having protection from murder, and then grossly violate the obvious responsibility which comes with that most sacred of rights, then you should lose every freedom you have. Period.

However, I am opposed to the death penalty simply because I feel that a large number of people being executed are innocent, or their involvement in the crime is indeterminate. I refuse to stand by a policy that will lead to innocent people being, yes, murdered.

I don't buy into the innocent people being executed argument because I have yet to see convincing evidence supporting that claim.

The reason I don't support the death penalty is because it's a huge waste of money.

If executions happened within two years tops, I'd be fine with it. But right now it costs more money to execute someone than jail them for life.

The two options we have are to reform the system (which is highly unlikely) or abolish the death penalty to save the taxpayer money.

If you ask me, the entire criminal justice system is too soft on real criminals and too harsh on petty offenders (like pot smokers).

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Proudly a "South Park Republican"

for starters, if you were to be found guilty of a crime would you want to die or exist in any state possible? personally i do not think the death penalty should be used, we as humans do not have the right to murder! even people who have murdered! We should not even have the right to confine a person in a particular area. How much crime do you think would be eliminated if we rid ourselves of the soci-economic factors that create it? and for those that are actually crazy a proper support network can be created. no one has to die or be inturned as punishment.

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social critics are a pain

Why don't we have the right to kill a murderer? People spout this all the time, but they never back it up. Our society is based on the social contract. In order to receive protection from being killed, you agree not to kill. If you breach the contract, you may no longer live in the society, and if the judge decides that death is how we should remove you from the society, so be it.

And Gian55 - how can it possibly cost more to give someone the death penalty than jail them for life? Even if they're on death row for 25 years first, it still seems like it would ultimately cost less than having them in your care for the rest of their lives.

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"Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." - Hassan-i-Saba

"A Duke University study found... "The death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of imprisonment for life." ( The costs of processing murder cases in North Carolina / Philip J. Cook, Donna B. Slawson ; with the assistance of Lori A. Gries. [Durham, NC] : Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University, 1993.)

"The death penalty costs California $90 million annually beyond the ordinary costs of the justice system - $78 million of that total is incurred at the trial level." (Sacramento Bee, March 18, 198.

"A 1991 study of the Texas criminal justice system estimated the cost of appealing capital murder at $2,316,655. In contrast, the cost of housing a prisoner in a Texas maximum security prison single cell for 40 years is estimated at $750,000." (Punishment and the Death Penalty, edited by Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum 1995 p.109 )

"Florida spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty from 1973 to 1988 to achieve 18 executions - that is an average of $3.2 million per execution."
(Miami Herald, July 10, 198.

"Florida calculated that each execution there costs some $3.18 million. If incarceration is estimated to cost $17000/year, a comparable statistic for life in prison of 40 years would be $680,000."
(The Geography of Execution... The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America, Keith Harries and Derral Cheatwood 1997 p.6)

Figures from the General Accounting Office are close to these results. Total annual costs for all U.S. Prisons, State and Federal, was $17.7 billion in 1994 along with a total prison population of 1.1 million inmates. That amounts to $16100 per inmate/year.
(GOA report and testimony FY-97 GGD-97-15 )

From this; the cost of keeping a 25-year-old inmate for 50 years at present amounts to $805,000. Assuming 75 years as an average life span, the $805,000 figure would be the cost of life in prison. So roughly it's costing us $2 million more to execute someone than it would cost to keep them in jail for life. This is just the dollar cost, the externalities will be discussed in a moment."

http://www.mindspring.com/~phporter/econ.html

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Proudly a "South Park Republican"