There's almost certainly been a thread like this around here before but not recently and I never saw one.

Personally I'm undecided on the issue, possibly leaning towards its abolition, so I'm not actually going to argue for either side here. I just don't like not being certain about something and I wanted to be convinced one way or the other. Sitting on the fence gives me blisters. From time to time I might post to point out a huge flaw in someone's reasoning or ask a question but really I'm just here to watch.

To be honest, I don't know. I suppose I'm in favour of it's abolition. There have been many cases where the wrong person has been killed. And for one, we go telling people not to kill, and then kill people for a punishment (When I say we I mean the uncivilised countries like in the middle east and USA :P). We don't care what the murderer's motives were. He could have killed someone that had killed one of his family members, thus cutting out the legal side of the person being sent to death row, and killed him himself. And then we, society, say because he's killed a man who by our logic deserved to die, he should be killed. Seems a little like flawed logic to me. Not to mention that quite a lot of the criminals reform and are truly sorry for what they did. All in all, what does it accomplish? If the prisoner would commit the crime again, they should just sentence him to a few life sentences in prison, which would be by far much more of a punishment than death. Death is like a get out of prison free card in a way - sure you lose out on life, but it's better to lose out on a shit life in jail than actually go to jail. I can understand why people might be in favour of it, and be all "We want JUSTICE!", but really, what does it matter about justice? They are just proving themselves to be the same as the convict they are judging so efforltlessly. I actually did an essay on this for RE, and we had to relate it to Christianity. If I can get a hold on it I will, and post some of the things I put in it.

I'm against because there are to many innocents put on death-row.
BUT, if there was a way to be 100% sure someone is "guilty" and can't be formed into a productive member of society I say: Rid of the bastard.

argue against my post, because I've already stated why your last remark is flawed in a logical sense.

Sorry to bring religion into this, but let me tell you of the Christian view:

Many Christians are split on the idea. Some think it a sin, "Do Not Murder" being one of the Ten Commandments. Others, however, believe it's okay as somewhere in the Bible a passage can be read as "If someone's sins are so bad then you can kill them and it won't count as a sin for you", although that's debatable.

There are lots of contradictions with the Christian view. There are two things stated in the bible:

"an eye for an eye"
AND
"turn the other cheek"

That's why I never base my choices on it.

Yes, because the religion is so widely believed there are many different beliefs about what means what.

Personally, I think even if you are religious, you should still make your own decisions not based on your religious texts or beliefs. Anyway, I hope that's got the religious part out of the way.

Quote from Ustartin

Yes, because the religion is so widely believed there are many different beliefs about what means what.

u startin'?????

Isn't this going to be argued on the DC?

yes, and I'm on the pro-death penalty side; everything the opposite I've wrote on this thread :(

Death penalty is terribly wrong and stupid, for one simple reason: the law system is not infallible. Even if you disregard all the ways a corrupt government could abuse the death penalty, fact is that an innocent person could still be wrongly convicted and executed, and that alone is reason enough not to have capital punishment. Any system where the government has the right to legally kill an innocent person based on the conviction that that person is guilty, is a fundamentally flawed, and backwards system.

An eye for an eye would make the whole world blind.

Although if the only reason we took eyes in the first place was to fulfil our obligation following the removal of one of our own the cycle would never have gotten started.

And of course the last guy left with an eye would keep his eye because it's really hard for a blind guy to take someone's eye.

Unless he was doing a little victory dance to celebrate being the last one with an eye and he accidentally slipped on a banana skin and fell over face first onto a porcupine.

Haha.

Well coincidentally, I'm working on a seminar where I'm supposed to take my stance contra or pro death penalty using the theory of justice by Aristoteles, lol. Fun.

I'm contra, because of all the reasons previously mentioned, but also this too:

- The family of the convicted perpetrator (assuming he has one) suffers quite a lot of emotional stress because of it. If he were convicted to jail, there would be a chance for him to appeal higher in court or be made free because of good behavior. If not that, at least they'd be able to visit him. They suffer too though they haven't done anything.

- If we want to bring equality and balance here ... let's say a person who has brutally tortured and murdered 10 people will be sentenced to capital punishment. What about the person who did this all the same, but to 20 people? It wouldn't really be equal if they had received the same punishment, though the second guy has done a lot worse. What are you going to do, pull his nails out before execution to torture him even more? This creates a slippery slope in punishment, biased by standpoints of the executors, doesn't it?

- ... and I don't know if the reason of too many people being put on a death row covered this, but there's plenty of emotional damage to the perpetrator waiting for execution.

IMO