We should use it, why?

We shouldn't use it, why?


Discuss.

We shouldn't use it for murder because of the number of times it will be administered wrongly, but we should make life imprisonment actually mean life imprisonment instead of just "Oh, do about fifteen years and then you can come out if you've been good."

Of course, treason can be punished by being hung, drawn, and quartered as is traditional because it's part of Britain's rich cultural heritage and it almost never actually happens so there aren't many mistakes. It can just be one of those laws that sits there and never actually needs to be used, like it being legal to shoot a Welshman on a Sunday with a longbow if he strays onto land owned by the church.

Quote from Zed

We shouldn't use it for murder because of the number of times it will be administered wrongly, but we should make life imprisonment actually mean life imprisonment instead of just "Oh, do about fifteen years and then you can come out if you've been good."

We have this. It's called life without parole.

Ah, but treason is an act of war and makes you no longer a citizen of the state, ergo you're fair game.

The chance of mistake still counts against it, of course.

The death penalty does NOT work as a deterrant to murder. When a person commits murder, they do it either for profit, out of passion, or because of a compulsion.

If they are doing it for profit, then they don't think they'll get caught, and do it even though it's illegal.

If they are doing it out of passion, then they're either caught up in the moments and therefore don't give thought to the future or they are so angry that they don't care about the punishment.

If they are doing it because it's a compulsion, then they can't help it: they're just sick ****s, and they know what they're doing is wrong, but they do it anyway.


The only other argument to be made for the death penalty is that those who are executed by the state never kill again. However, while this may be true, it actually costs mroe money for the state to put someone on death row than to keep them in a maximum security prison, and the average death row stay is over 10 years.

Finally, there have been over 100 recorded cases where people were killed on death row and later found to be innocent. That alone is reason enough to abolish the death penalty.

The death penalty is the one of the greatest things in my opinion. It's not like we are killing every single prisoner we have ever had either. Only the worst human beings are even put on death row, and some are even taken off. We give them time to overturn their conviction aswell. And you are put on death row for a number of years! Usually the people put on death row are mass murderers such as john wayne gacy or ted bundy. If your family is killed by a man, and many others are killed, people want to see the most important thing that man has to offer, taken away, because he took what was important to them away. DEATH ROW IS GOOD

One of the greatest things? The death penalty is right up there with concorde, Isaac Newton, and electricity?

You best be trolling. Prison is not a nice place to be. It is worse to be in there for fifty years than to just get it over with so they are not losing the most important thing they have to offer. We just made the point that it isn't only the worst human beings that are put on there - several are innocent. Read John Grisham's The Innocent Man; that should set you straight.

No not like elecricity, i beleive you know what i mean. It is worse to be in there for 50 years? A bed to sleep in, meals every day. Children in africa have it worse than that. sure u meet some big black guy named bubbles who decides to make you his play toy, but being in prison is not the worst thing at all. if you took a survey, more people are afraid of death, over prison. And I know that some people on death row have been innocent, i.e ethel rosenburg, but the majority are criminals who deserve no less. I say we don't abolish it completely, but we lengthen the time that a person is put on death row, so they have the chance to be proven innocent. 20 or 30 years.

So they are there for thirty years. Then the appeals start which will delay the process for at least another 10. They've been sentanced to death, therefore they are heavy smokers and do no exercise (based on anecdotal sources; Grisham, Williamson, Ward). You've essentially sentanced them to natural causes there, even if they commited the crime in their twenties. You might as well keep them in maximum security which will be cheaper.

Also, there's no reason (apart from human rights groups) that you couldn't give the really nasty criminals a worse prison. Dark. Slightly chilly. Maybe solitary confinement. Two meals of cold porridge a day. There are ways to give a person a really hard time without leaving them permanently or irreparably scarred, let alone dead.

As for saying they deserve it, will retribution bring a dead child back to life? If you were to flame me, would it be better for everyone for me to flame you back or to simply not post? Also, the real victims of murder aren't the dead, they're their families. To give equal retribution for a person who has killed someone you need to kill two of the murderer's children (one for each of the parents of the victim), possibly the murderer's father, and as many siblings of the murderer as the victim had. Retributing for a persons death should only be equivilant to taking away life experiences which will be acheived by gaol.

I think that if we are going to send people to get electrocuted to death that first we need a system of law that isn't prejudice or bias, seeing as how we are all human that seems impossible. I also think that we need lawyers that are not going to deliberately defend a murderer because of huge quantities of money, that makes it seem like a broke person cannot get an effective lawyer. Because the attorneys the state provides you are very bad at their job. All that said I really think that the American law system is in favor of those with a grand amount of money opposed to those who don't have much, making it hard to prove yourself innocent. Also the fact that people will sue just for money is yet another spot in that category.

I guess what I am trying to get at is that we need a proper law system before we can even consider killing them, however I think serial murderers should get killed instead of living off of tax money. Although they do it regardless of the law they still know it is wrong, the law cannot be changed just because of someone compulsive. If someone gets the compulsions to steal objects and they do it is still against the law, but if they don't steal they know they did the right thing.

In almost every circumstance the death penalty is not needed. But if someone has gone on a murder spree, killing above 10 people in a spree, and there is all the evidence and they were caught in the act, they should die. Nothing fancy, sentanced, taken out the back and shot.

Every other case judged on its merits.

i love the taken out back and shot steyene. But i do like the solitary confinement that zed is speakin. kinda like guantanamo bay. holy smokes that spelling is crap. anyway haha, i think creating the worst possible condition for them, and keeping them on the brink of death is the way to go. and maybe retribution for the family would be torturing the person, (if caught red handed, with no doubt they are guilty) and a dvd of it being delivered to the loved ones. they may dispose of it when they are pleased, and the person rots in jail.

Quote from likwid_Metal

and maybe retribution for the family would be torturing the person, (if caught red handed, with no doubt they are guilty) and a dvd of it being delivered to the loved ones.

People do not want to see the murderer tortured you sick fuck. If you think people want to see torture then you've never seen or read about real torture, that shit is disgusting.

Quote from Ash

Finally, there have been over 100 recorded cases where people were killed on death row and later found to be innocent. That alone is reason enough to abolish the death penalty.

Also this.