I was watching a documentary on National Geographic about the Death Penalty and now I'm a bit curious about some things. For me it was clear that a certain group was statisically more 'for'/'against' then others. So I want to do a little survey here and see if the results indicate the same.

Remember you can do it anonymous and this thread is NOT about reasoning why you are for or against. I don't want a flame war or else I delete this topic myself.

For or Against single choice
	For, Male, 40-
	For, Male, 40+
	Against, Male, 40-
	Against, Male, 40+
	For, Female, 40-
	For, Female, 40+
	Against, Female, 40-
	Against, Female, 40+
Votes accepted starting: 12/22/09 08:44 AM
View Results

Just a little bump so this thread stays alive ...

Although I'm not without understanding as to why, in certain cases people may be for it, I have always been against the death penalty.



TIS

I hope to get around 30+ votes....so vote people vote!

BTW Did anyone else see Inside: Death Row on National Geographic? Very impressive documentary. There're 3 interviews with 3 inmates. In the end all of them is executed with injections.

people like charles manson should have the death penalty.

people like o.j simpson should have life.

It's an interesting topic, MMF. But for me, there's a grey area. While I'd always been opposed to the death penalty as a matter of law, since 9/11 I've come to support it in the most extreme cases (such as a terrorist attack).

But I still think that just throwing the switch on your average Billy-Joe-Jim-Bob, down in states like Virginia or Texas, does little if anything to deter potential future offenders. My main concern is an innocent person being put to death. Look how many convicted rapists have had their convictions overturned since DNA testing was perfected.

So for the sake of your poll, I'll vote that I'm over 40 and against the death penalty (in most cases ).

Its always tempting to be for it, and I can think of many horrible things people do which makes my blood boil and makes me want to see them die. Still I remain opposed to it in all cases if for no other reason because I have dealt with the legal system for 31 years from the inside, and I know how imperfect it is. It is too imperfect to be allowed to take human life.

Interesting post since you truly know the American system. But I think a legal system is never perfect, thus it can never be allowed to take lives.

I've thought about this a lot throughout the years. I can understand PB's sentiment on the 911 attackers totally. I also know if somebody in my family was brutally murdered I'd probably give it a second thought.

Deep down in my soul, I just don't see myself justifying the death penalty.

TIS

It's a crock of fucking shit; 'legal justice' doesn't deter crime, it doesn't 'make examples' of wrong-doers. People who don't commit serial murders are not acting out of fear for 'the law'. Likewise, serial murderers do not murder in knowing spite of 'the law'.

The continuation of the death penalty is a product and symptom of a hypocritical, backward, irrational society, driven by wide-spread emotional outrage and a failing humanity.

Why should Charlie Manson be killed and O.J. Simpson shouldn't? The whole subjective fluidity of this moral gradient is enough to render the whole thing fucking stupid.

The death penalty is a way for society to get rid of its own excrement, the very shit it created by its own social contradictions. There's a large refusal to 'understand' the psychological states death row criminals are in, and were in in the wider socio-economic context before they committed their punishable crimes.

The entire penal system is set up solely for punishment, not rehabilitation. Again, an outright rejection of self-critical analysis. There's very little capacity for genuine compassion. It's very anti-scientific. Despite all the progression we've made as a race, we remain philosophically at a loss; it is no coincidence that the death penalty is still upheld in the American states noted for backward head-in-sand-ism.

The entire system must be smashed. Let the blood of the law-makers run free into the drought-ridden deserts of a decaying world.

I completely agree with this.

I find it funny that someone can be put to death for murder, but killing the murderer isn't murder.

I've tried a capital murder case in 1993. The defendant was Joseph Miller, a brutal serial killer, whom I had previously represented in an arson case. He served only six months, instead of six years on that charge because of a judicial oversight and a disinterested DA,who was leaving for another job.

I agree with Capo that serial killers, like Miller, do not respond to deterrents. Their compulsion to kill does not yield to social conventions or consequences. I would disagree that most serial killers are created by society's ills. Most are antisocial.

I had the opportunity to meet Robert Ressler on a few occasions. He was an FBI behavioral scientist, who coined the phrase "serial killer", and upon whom the FBI agent in The Silence of the Lambs was based. He had anuncanny ability to review serial files and profile the killer. He could describe the apartment or car of the killer his age, employment history, etc. just by knowing the killing. What's interesting is that serial killers are virtually exclusively white males.

I believe that mass murderers often consider the consequences of their murders on the other hand. However, I don't believe that the death penalty deters murder any more than life in prison.

Also, as many of you know, I am against capital punishment. But to explain its administration, let me say that it may only be sought in specific instances, mentioned by statute. These include death of a child, torture, murder of a state witness, significant history of violnce and a few others. If a defendant is convicted of 1st degree murder in a case where the prosecution had previouslynotified the defendant of its intention to seek the death penalty, a second phase of the trial begins where evidence of the specific aggravating circumstances is presented.

The defense may counter by presenting evidence of mitigating factors. These can be anything. They are not limited, like the prosecution, in what can be presented to the jury. In Miller's case torture and violent history were the aggravating factors. One of his victims was 9 months pregnant when she was killed, and the DA wanted to use that as an aggravating factor, but we got that precluded pre-trial.

Miller's mitigating factors included abuse he endured as a child, limited intelligence, his fatherhood and marriage and others. At the end of the penalty phase the jury is required to make a mathematical determination of whether the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating. If all twelve agree that they do, then they must return a verdict of death...as was the case with Joe Miller.

A few years ago his death sentence was overturned, and the Commonwealth is in the midst of an appeal to reinstate it. I doubt that he'll be executed. While capital punishment is the law in PA, we've only had a couple of executions since 1962.

Very interesting posts Klydon and Cosa Nostra! Truly well said!

@Blibble:

The weird thing is that at the moment of death of the inmate they write down the time and the way how he died...and guess what...it's called murder...but then they call it legal.

I'm still against it, no changes here.

I am opposed to the death penalty. The U.S. is one of the few first world countries that still has it (Japan is another one). I do think that some people do things that are so bad that killing them is not morally wrong because they deserve to die--or at least no longer have a right to complain if someone tries to kill them considering what they have done to others. However, I don't think courts and governments should execute people because of the risk of an innocent person being put to death. This is a very real danger. Given the number of people who have been exonerated by DNA, it's very difficult to believe that there haven't been at least a few innocent people who have been executed. As far as I'm concerned, an innocent person being killed by mistake is a far greater injustice than a guilty person who deserves to die being allowed to go on living. In addition, there's no evidence that the death penalty deters crime. People who commit crimes generally don't have the personality type that would be deterred by something like that in the first place.

Having said all that, I don't buy the logic of some death penalty opponents that executing a criminal puts the executioners on the same level as the criminal, regardless of the severity of what the criminal did. All killings are not equal. I don't think that if Charles Manson was executed, the prosecutors who got the death penalty for him and the actual executioners would have been just as bad as he was. Nor do I think that if relatives of Sharon Tate, the LaBianca family, or other victims of Manson had killed him to avenge the deaths of their loved ones, they would have been as bad as him. As far as I'm concerned, Manson would have deserved either scenario so neither would have been immoral. But again, as long as someone like him can be securely incarcerated, it is better not to have the death penalty because of the danger of killing someone innocent.

The first jurisdiction in the world to ban capital punishment through legislation was the State of Michigan. I believe it was in the late 1800s.

The only European country with death penalty: Belarus.

Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1846. Every ten years or so someone makes noises about reinstating it but there's not a huge clamor for doing so.
This is especially true since Michigan has allowed shall issue CCW's since 2001. This probably permanently removed a major rallying point from those citizens most interested in restoring the death penalty.

The death penalty does not in and of itself bother me. The unfair and biased applications of the death penalty are what's wrong as well as rushed justice for those too impoverished to afford the best representation.

That's certainly a large problem surrounding it; the seemingly inevitable fallacies that stem from the same legal system of which the death penalty is a part.

But when it comes down to it, to the question of whether or not I think it's right (just), or defensible (justified) to take somebody's life, I'd also have to say a resounding No. It's inherently inhumane. (FWIW, without wanting to derail the topic, I feel the same towards animals; 'humane slaughter' is an explicit self-serving oxymoron.)

For some reason I'm surprised the "nays" are winning. I thought most of the BBers would be pro.


TIS

From Wikipedia - The Ten Commandments, or Decalogue, are a list of religious and moral imperatives that, according to the Hebrew Bible, were spoken by God to the people of Israel from the mountain referred to as "Mount Sinai" [2] or "Horeb",[3] and later authored by God and given to Moses in the form of two stone tablets. They are recognized as a moral foundation in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.[4]

#5 or 6 (depending on your religion), "Thou shall not kill". God made it easy. You don't have the intervention of human judgement and interpretation.

First of all, not everybody believes in either God or the Ten Commandments. I'm among those that don't.

Secondly, with all due respect, even if one does believe in those things "Thou shall not kill" is an incredibly weak argument against the death penalty. Hardly any believing Christians, Jews, or Muslims regard that commandment as absolute, with no permissible exceptions. If you're going to say that the commandment means that killing is never justifiable, then you should be prepared to say that the people of Poland, France, Britain, the Soviet Union, etc. should have allowed German soldiers to march into their countries and take them over during the WWII period because in order to defend their homelands they would have to kill German soldiers in the process. Nobody but the most extreme pacifist would make such an argument.

Many people have translated the commandment to mean "Thou shall not murder" instead of "Thou shall not kill." Although there are problems with this translation as well (some killings which are legally murder could be considered morally justifiable), even if one uses the word "kill" one can still justify the death penalty on the grounds that it represents an exception to the rule.

More people have been killed in the name of God than anything else, by the way.

And the vast, vast majority of people today would not resort to killing regardless of whether or not they've read or even heard of the Ten Commandments.

Morals are not limited to scripture. And most of those found within scripture are self-serving transparent contradictions anyway.

I've been in favor of the death penalty ever since I was basically old enough for form my own views and do research. And my feelings on this issue have not changed. For the record I'm 40+

I would seriously question whether that's true. The Holocaust wasn't done in the name of God (although Hitler does seem to have believed in "Providence"). World War II wasn't waged for religious motives by either the Germans or the Japanese. The genocide in Rwanda in 1994 wasn't done for religious reasons either.

History did not begin in 1939.

True. But if you're going to assert that more people have been killed because of religion than anything else, you have to provide hard evidence. Prior to modern times, there are very few reliable numerical statistics of any kind. So what you said is basically a conjecture.

Well, at least the poll doesn't confirm my feeling so far. The documentary made clear to me that Male, 40+ was more 'for' then the other segments.

The poll results might be different on a forum with a different focus.

You're right. I retract.