Young Writers Society

What do you think?

YES

(updated)

A) It's sheer hypocrisy - to murder a murderer.
No matter what we believe, the death penalty is a way of using laws to take someone else's life. When a murderer acts they do so for a variety of reasons - anger, insanity, revenge, attention etc - but what separates cultured and civilised society from murderers is rationality. By murdering someone, we are saying that a life should be taken because it goes against conventional society. I will not, however, sit here and defend murderers/rapists. But I will do is say that our rationality to implement justice (inc. suffering) without repeating in vengeance the atrocities we should be preventing is essential to fundamental law.


B) The freedom to live.
Yes, the murderer put aside law when they took a life; but I see no reason to manipulate the law to provide the same end based on our morals. Like I said, it lowers us to their level - we just have the backing of a few more people (in ancient and medieval times, I'd have been saying a lynch mob). You might moan about DNA databases or CCTV cameras or free healthcare but actually this is nothing when you give the government the right to decide when we live or die. We can't even legally commit suicide; if you fail, you can face criminal proceedings. And yet the death penalty means the government decides. I'm not one for caring a great deal about a lot of petty civil liberties, but I value my life. It's meant to protect me, as a citizen, whatever I do.

That said, it's very easily abused - when do we decide what constitutes the ultimate punishment? In the USA - and I don't claim to know the details, so please correct me on this - it's serial murder/rape. But in some countries in the Middle East and Africa, people can be executed for something as simple as their sexuality. Sure, most people over there would agree with the government, but it makes social progression very difficult to achieve and means that currently about 6% of the population in those countries could be executed. It's easy to throw your trust into the government, but attitudes change. You can't just say sorry and throw in some compensation a decade later.

If you care about civil liberties and want fewer murders, the answer isn't to use the death penalty - it's to ban guns.


C) Expense:

Source: http://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/past/16/2009

County estimates in Texas indicate that the death penalty system is much more expensive than sentencing inmates to life imprisonment. Gray County spent nearly $1 million seeking the death penalty against Levi King, even though he pleaded guilty to murder. Moreover, these costs do not include the cost of appeals, which will further increase the cost of the capital case, nor the costs of cases in which the death penalty is sought but not given. By comparison, a non-death penalty murder case in nearby Lubbock County typically costs about $3,000, court officials estimate. The average cost to house an inmate in Texas prisons is $47.50 per day, according to Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Thus it would cost about $17,340 to house an inmate for a year and $693,500 for 40 years, far less than even part of the death penalty costs. The regional public defender's office estimates that just the legal costs for a death penalty case from indictment to execution are $1.2 million.

So. It's expensive. And the problem is that if you start saying that appeals could be cut down, you'll get a stronger response saying that suspects, if you will, do not get a right to put forward their case - in which case we will never be certain whether A) we're killing an innocent person or B) the murder is still out there. The fact that it can be wrong is a matter on its own - hopefully this doesn't need explaining too much.


D) A deterrent:

Not really. An example:



Not to mention, the USA has a very high crime rate when compared to Europe (at least, Western Europe).


Conclusion:

Those who want the death penalty only want it because they believe murderers should die, regardless of everything else considered. As Martin Luther King said, "An eye for an eye leave everyone blind." And that's difficult to debate.

The worst idea mankind has ever come up with.

Thinking logically, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. To kill a murderer makes you just as guilty as the murderer because, in the end, you're committing the crime that the murderer is being punished for. Murder. It's as simple as that to me.

Besides, killing someone for a crime doesn't make them suffer. It just kills them. A lethal injection doesn't hurt them, it doesn't make them spend the rest of their life in a prison to make them think about what they've done. It doesn't force them to spend their life away from their family and friends or make them live with the fact that everyone on the outside world hates them. Death doesn't do that, it just stops everything, including the suffering.

Think about suicide. People commit suicide because they want to stop suffering. If you ask me, the death penalty only helps out the criminal by stopping their suffering. Just because a man has raped forty women, killed half of them and done a load of other horrible crimes, revenge shouldn't be the first option. This guy's evil, we should kill him! Now, that's hardly going to make him suffer, is it? This guy's evil, he deserves to spend his days in prison! He deserves to be locked away for the rest of his life, having nothing to think about but what he's done. That's more like it.

This is something I feel extremely strongly about. I have a little story as well. A friend of my grandfather used to live in Florida a while ago. I can't remember the date exactly, but I think that it was some time in the 1960's. Basically, he had a friend that was murdered. My grandfather's friend and this woman weren't the closest friends, he'd just met her a few times and they got along well. There are loads of details, but to put it simply, the murderer was sentenced to a death penalty. My grandfather's friend hated that. He didn't feel as though the murderer was being punished, not properly. The murderer got the easy way out is what he apparently said. Unlike the woman's family, he didn't have to get through every day without crying and wishing that everything could be different. His heart just stopped. There we go, any regrets he might have had were gone like that. He didn't have to live with them because he was soon dead, leaving no time for justice to take its toll.

By murdering a person for a crime, you're just as bad as them, even worse. You killed them, so I'll kill you. Not barbaric at all... The death penalty is just as criminal as being a murderer or a rapist. That's basically my opinion. I've never understood the death penalty and I never will. If you ask me, it just comes down to common sense. I appreciate the fact that people do, and will, disagree with me, but this truly is something I feel so passionately about.

That is why I adore my country for banning any kind of death penalty. Britain ain't that bad, really.

Eh, I'll elaborate. Basically, though, not to seem overly jingoistic, but I like how my county does it - it's up to the individual states. And that's how I think it should be done - it should be up to the people living in said area to decide. I'm a big hater of federal government and of big government in general, so I like when things aren't dictated by them. Personally, I support the death penalty. And I don't think it is a matter of big government/small government at all - that has to do with the size of the government, how much they intrude, not how they intrude. How can I put this. Blink, you said it gives the government control over life - but government already has control over life. When we choose to live under a government, we have to live under its laws. Not that we have to follow them, but if we don't and we're arrested and found guilty, we have to pay the consequences. At that point, the government has complete control of your life, and the government dictating that you have to live the rest of your life like this or like that in a jail cell without parole is just the same as if they sentenced you to death. Ha, I mean well obviously it's not just the same - those are two vastly different punishments, belonging to crimes of different magnitudes. What I mean is that it is the same in the matter of government having control. They already have complete control. If you're worried about government turning all 1984 on us (as I often am myself, so that isn't a slight), you have to watch it other ways. Government is checked and its branches divided, for one thing. I know that could be applied to any argument, but what I'm trying to say is that Obama can't just be like "I want this guy killed" (legally) and have it done, and the death penalty isn't used on a large scale. It's decided by a huge amount of different, unbiased people and it has to go through tons of processes and checks.


I'm going to apply a personal argument now, as I don't like to do, but I think it's my strongest ally at this point. This spring a girl in my area went missing. The last she was seen she had been running by herself on a local wilderness-type trail (she was on track and cross country). She was my grade - a senior - and she went to a local high school, just starting to get back college acceptances. I didn't know her, but it was one of those things where she knew so many different people and was so popular and beloved that everyone had connections to her in some distant way. For a few weeks she was on everyone's minds. Facebook was flooded with wall posts, groups, pages, everything dedicated to her and the hope that she would be safe. Her mangled body was found in a shallow grave next to a lake. She had been raped and murdered. There was enough DNA at the scene to tie it to - who would have guessed - a local sex offender. That's what we were really pissed about - this guy had already served time for the sexual molestation of a little girl. He should have never been allowed back on the streets. Anyway, once he had been tied to this murder, new evidence came into light about a completely separate missing persons case. Tying him to that murder as well. A 14-year-old girl who had gone missing the year before, a case that had gone unresolved until now. They found her body as well, in a similar grave, once everything had been brought to light.

So this guy, this sexual predator who had raped and murdered two teenage girls and had attempted to do the same on a few others who managed to fight him off, was finally brought in. Now, this guy is a complete creep and obviously, a fundamentally horrible person. He was creepily smiling during the trial. They only had enough evidence to convict him on one of the murders, but they really wanted to get him on both. So they made a deal with him. In exchange for him pleading guilty to both murders they put the death penalty off the table. We, the local community, as well as the two families, were pissed about this. He got a life sentence without parole, but this guy deserved death. This is one of those guys who will never regret anything he's done, he'll just be smiling about it creepily for the rest of his life as he sits in jail, going to finger painting class and whatnot. (That's the thing, really. Skins, you said how it would be worse for the criminals to have to live the rest of their lives without freedom, being tortured by what they've done and having to regret it for years. While I see what you mean and respect that argument, the thing is that in many cases, if the criminal is so bad to have committed such crimes, they're not going to regret them at all. They're just going to be happy to get to live. That's why the things should be dealt with on case-to-case basis. And you guys can say the opposite all you want, but I believe the death penalty is a major deterrent.) Justice, is this case, is death. This guy does not deserve to be breathing, to be living, to be smiling right now. And he is.

You can say that's opinion. What somebody deserves is always going to be opinion. But if you want justice, you need to have every option on the table. And guess what? In my country, and in most of yours, the way somebody is legally punished is by opinion. By the opinion of a jury. So yeah, opinion does decide punishment and justice. And if you want justice, as I said, you need to have every option available.

My whole big thing in politics is always small government. Small government and freedom. Justice in my country is decided by a jury of peers. If a jury of 10 random people unanimously decide that justice in a certain case is the death sentence, they should have the freedom to decide this. That's the deal, plain and simple. It's not up to the Feds to decide what's justice; it's up to the people.

Hey Blink, so I noticed you just elaborated your argument with some good stuff, ironically right at the same time that I also elaborated. I'll probably get to it later (I have to get off the computer) but I noticed one little thing that I couldn't let go.

If you care about civil liberties and want fewer murders, the answer isn't to use the death penalty - it's to ban guns.

Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh. Really?? Ahh. Can we start a separate thread for that?? Pretty please? I'd love to get on to that.

I just watched this story on CNN and searched this up to see what you think. Basically, these two sickos followed a woman and her 11 and 17 year old daughter home, tied them all up, demanding 15,000 dollars. The father came home and was immediately tied to a post in the basement. The mother went out to the bank to get the money and while she was gone, the freaks raped the 11 year old, beat all of them, then when the mom came back, raped then strangled her and set the house on fire. The mother, 11 year old and 17 year old all died. These sick messed up freaks are being tried right now and might be the subject of the death penalty. Do you think they deserve it?

Blink wrote:(updated)


If you care about civil liberties and want fewer murders, the answer isn't to use the death penalty - it's to ban guns.

Basically, these two sickos followed a woman and her 11 and 17 year old daughter home, tied them all up, demanding 15,000 dollars. The father came home and was immediately tied to a post in the basement. The mother went out to the bank to get the money and while she was gone, the freaks raped the 11 year old, beat all of them, then when the mom came back, raped then strangled her and set the house on fire. The mother, 11 year old and 17 year old all died. These sick messed up freaks are being tried right now and might be the subject of the death penalty.



Rapists and murderers dont always use guns.

jasminebells wrote:Rapists and murderers dont always use guns.

No, and it was a passing remark. I was pointing out that the death penalty as a deterrent doesn't work to bring down murder - your story supports this. But banning guns would be far more effective because the most common murder weapon in the US would be made much harder to get!

And calling them "sickos" is again a way of extracting emotive responses in order to blind rationality. No, I don't believe that they should be executed. I think they deserve to be locked up in a prison until they die.

Blink wrote:

jasminebells wrote:Rapists and murderers dont always use guns.

No, and it was a passing remark. I was pointing out that the death penalty as a deterrent doesn't work to bring down murder - your story supports this. But banning guns would be far more effective because the most common murder weapon in the US would be made much harder to get!

And calling them "sickos" is again a way of extracting emotive responses in order to blind rationality. No, I don't believe that they should be executed. I think they deserve to be locked up in a prison until they die.

If we ban guns then stories like the one I posted above would become more common. Instead of the relatively quick and painless shot to the head, people would be stabbed (We can't exactly ban knives), beaten to death, etc because unless we put every single person on Earth into a clear steel ball for all their lives, the murder rate will never be 0%.

I say dump them all at the Kerguelen Islands with camping supplies and some food, and leave them to deal with each other.

And no one touch my guns.

But the Islands have at least 50 scientists on them at all times, year round. Now we don't want 50 more murders do we? Plus, the criminals would probably turn to canibalism since killing is what they're so good at.

Then you take off the scientists and let the criminals on.
If cannibalism happens... it's their problem. If they decide that they'll actually be reasonable, good for them.
Let them deal with their own crap, once we get them there it's not our business anymore.

Most of these people are US citizens and I'm pretty sure this would bring up tons of controversy. People who are in jail are treated well. They are fed, bathed and clothed, they have roofs over their heads and can take quality classes. I think that we shouldn't fund the jails as much; use the money for something worthwhile, like our schools.

Yeah, I know.
The 'drop them off in some remote, desolate island and then leave them to chill' idea would sadly never pass, but it doesn't stop me from believing it'd solve the problem: not killing them (because it is not our place to judge of a man's right to life, however horrible the crime), but not making them a charge to everyone else either.
Of course, as you said, not that many people would agree.
As for the jails, well. It's always a hard balance, because we can't treat them like animals (there are basic human rights and if we want to keep them from doing harm we have to keep them somewhere), but it is true lots of funding get siphoned off to that. At the same time, look at some countries' defence/armament budget, and just goggle at the amount of money used for that too. You could at least argue that some of those inmates that take classes can come out of jail and become good members of society, which is something that you can't just ignore.