I'm not going to judge. I just want to understand why when there are examples of people exonerated or even wrongly executed.

There are far too many executions where evidence is questionable at best. For that reason alone, in almost no circumstances do I support the death penalty. In addition, the evidence of its discriminatory application is overwhelming. The evidence that bad lawyering results in many death penalties is pretty strong. The geographical distribution of application of the death penalty worries me: states that seem to put less value on human lives are also the states that apply the death penalty most often.

The case of the Petit home invasion in Cheshire, CT, does give me pause, however. There is no doubt whatsoever of the guilt of those two men, murderers of three. Their crimes were heinous. If the death penalty were ever warranted, this is a case. Prison without possibility of parole may be a crueler punishment than execution, as one of the defense lawyers has already argued when fighting the death penalty. Arguing for a crueler punishment struck me as an inappropriate argument for the defense.

A question that troubles me is whether the very brutality and senselessness of their crimes is itself evidence of insanity. At some point I have difficulty separating that degree of insanity from evil. I am not one who thinks that psychiatry or psychology helps us a great deal on this matter. I also do think that transformational repentance is a possibility in such a case. Maybe even the cruelest among us deserve a chance at that.

Not I. Not after more than 100 death row inmates have been exonerated by DNA.

Death penalty is kinda final, know what I mean?

Yes I do. I support responsible reforms to the system to attack the reasons why there are wrongful convictions.

Not me. But then I've always opposed the death penalty; the discovery in recent years, with the help of DNA evidence, of the numbers of wrongly accused on death rows, has only reinforced that for me, and only somewhat tangentially. For me, it's about power, basic human rights, and fallibility in civilization. Not the specific fallibility of justice miscarried, but our fallible natures, institutionalized.

Broadly speaking, the kinds of crimes heinous enough to warrant the death penalty in most people's minds, are either "callously criminal" (like slaughtering a family during a home break-in) or "deviant". In the former case, I think it is incumbent on civilization to restrain, not indulge, the local community's feelings of revenge. In the latter case, even if "responsible for their actions" in a legal sense, disturbed individuals should be helped if possible, and if not possible, put away safely.

There are many more factors to this discussion -- sanctity of life, moral law, gun rights, worldwide cultural norms, the horrendous state of our (U.S.) criminal justice system and especially prisons, racial discrimination, etc., etc.

You opened Pandora's box!

What kind of reform would prevent innocent people from being wrongly executed?

The only kind of reform which would prevent that IMO is the ability to see the past through time machine or ESP.

You ask such hard questions!

Note how integral this question has been to the development of human civilization through its laws and norms. It is one of a class of human rights questions but is perhaps the most difficult. The crimes of rape and murder are themselves violations of human rights. Is it appropriate to punish a violation of human rights by what some or many consider to be another violation of human rights? (I am less clear about treason.) The word "humane" is deeply intertwined with how we approach the question of crime and its punishment or rehabilitation. It even works when we describe our relationships with animals, even though they cannot commit crimes, for they are also subject to execution.

Most developed countries do not have the death penalty. That is not proof that they are right, but it is a hint that we need to open this question once again.

The problem started early. Although "the Ten Commandments" have a long history before the story of Moses, the Torah (Pentateuch) shows the problem in a stark way. Soon after a (mis-translated) injunction "Thou shalt not kill," the Law starts prescribing a very wide variety of offenses for which execution is justified or mandated, many of which appear barbaric to us today. Leviticus is particularly bloody. We have been wrestling ever since with this issue.

That's your opinion, which in my opinion over-simplifies the issue.

I favor a system that, to begin with, limits the application of the death penalty to only a limited class of first-degree murders. Only a fraction of the death sentences that are currently handed down would qualify if I was King of the Supreme Court. I also favor heightened evidentiary standards at the trial level, and increased scrutiny at the appellate level, for the proof required to make a case death-eligible. In my opinion the root cause of our inflated death penalty numbers, including our too many wrongful convictions and too many overturned sentences, is an over-reliance on sheer eyewitness testimony. That factor combines with a severely underfunded justice system that deprives defendants of quality representation by competent public defenders, and rewards prosecutors and trial judges for seeking/imposing death sentences in an irresponsible manner and not being held accountable for their mistakes after the fact.

I think the system is broken. But you didn't ask whether I think the system needs a massive overhaul or is deeply flawed; just whether I support the death penalty in principle.

I think the death penalty should be applied only when the "beyond a reasonable doubt" is proven by physical evidence, like DNA, not just eyewitness testimony. We have had 2 cases near me recently where the suspects were offered that the death penalty would be taken off the table if they revealed where they'd dumped the bodies and I'm OK with that.

Edit: Well lookie! I agree with poutine!

No death penalty, drastic reduction in amount of solitary confinement (torture), a new emphasis on rehabilitation instead of incarceration, release of 90% of prisoners imprisoned on drug related offenses and hard drug cases referred to mental health authority. New clinics for hard drug addicts set up to provide them drugs, rehabilitate and undercut South American crime lords. Unilateral military action in Mexico whenever we deem fit to kill manufacturers of cocaine.

Umm, isn't that the death penalty with no trial? (And I suspect the manufacturers are still in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, where the raw product is grown. In Mexico they just have distributors.)

Point No. 2:
This reminds me of busting only the prostitutes and allowing the johns to walk free.

In both cases, some suggest that punishing those who create the supply but not punishing those who create the demand is a bit unfair.

If Americans would stop purchasing illegal drugs, we wouldn't need to do anything to the manufacturers or distributors, because they'd be out of business.

I'm in favor of it for Osama Bin Ladin.

I don't view it as "death penalty with no trial", I view it as war.

Ok, lets say "large scale importers".



I think that's a false equivalency. Prostitutes by and large prostitute themselves because of mental health issues (addiction), so my idea (one shared by the city of Vancouver and other Euro cities) is that stopping the flow at the top and treating the illness can actually reduce the need for addicts to prostitute themselves. For me this isn't an academic conversation as i've witnessed a turn-around in the poverty stricken East Site of Vancouver when this approach was adopted.

We already, in theory, do just this. While there are still a very few non-murder crimes on the books, cases such as Kennedy v. Louisiana seem to indicate that no non-murder death penalty passes constitutional muster.



If there is any actual benefit to having a death penalty, limiting it so drastically that only a fraction of death-eligible cases actually receive the penalty reduces or eliminates any benefit. One's chance of getting death for even a heinous murder is so remote it loses any deterrent effect.



However, your suggestion is that we maintain heightened procedural cautions, and in fact, even increase procedural and evidentiary hurdles to the death penalty, the result of which will be vastly increasing the cost of each death penalty, while at the same time, achieving far fewer applications of the penalty. This would virtually eliminate any benefit of the penalty, while costing about the same.

The only really strong argument for the death penalty is one I reject: the Kantian retributive justice concept that certain crimes are so heinous that not administering the ultimate punishment is failing to do justice. I prefer the utilitarian analysis: the death penalty is inefficient and cannot be justified based on cost/benefit analysis.

It costs too much to achieve too little, and your solution proposes to make it cost more and deliver less.

I concur with Loh. I am not morally opposed to it, but I am financially opposed to it.

I do pity those who have to work in the prison system with some of the more outrageous and disgusting murderers, though.

Of course, we could always give them 100 & 10 in 100 & Leavenworth.

That's never going to happen, and we need to stop punishing the rest of the world for our nasty habits. Of course, if we legalize, then there won't be any illegal drugs. I admit that while I think we should do this immediately for marijuana and most of the hallucinogens, we should probably move slowly and with due deliberation on anything like heroin or cocaine.

Prohibition has failed, has never worked in any society in history, and can be expected to continue to cause more harm than good into the foreseeable future. The only true beneficiary of our current war on (non-patented) drugs is the prison-industrial complex.

I used to support the death penalty but on studying this case while in school

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Evans

I completely changed my mind. Nothing is certain, unless you have a confession, (sometimes suspect) video tape of the murder, unimpeachable eye witness testimony, there is no absolute certainty in a conviction. There is always the possibility that an innocent person is going to be executed. We must never execute an innocent person. There is no excuse for that. None.

I have read stories of child abuse, rape and murder and sure, my mind goes to the inevitable "fry him" mentality, it is a natural human reaction on listening to the details of the murder of a child. However, I think that we get it wrong more than we get it right and it behooves us to err on the side of caution. The death penalty should be taken off the table. There are too many mistakes, too many corrupt prosecutors, too many mistaken witnesses, too many screwed up lab tests. The death penalty is not the answer.

Or maybe human nature reform. It will always be thus.

I do not support the death penalty, never have. We cannot say with any moral authority, on the one hand, Thou shall not, while we are doing it on the other hand.

There are too many errors. The more we learn about how memory works, the more we realize that even eyewitness testimony isn't always accurate.

I often wish death and dismemberment upon certain people, but not seriously.

OTOH, I'm not all that upset at the assassination of bin Laden.

In some extreme cases I believe that a death sentence could be deserved. But if I had to be the one to pull the switch, or push the drug, I couldn’t do it. Even if they had been caught (doing whatever) red handed. The only thing that could possibly cause me to take another person’s life would be if someone had “terminally” harmed one of my children. In that case I could probably dismember the bastard with my bare hands.

So my question to those that do support the death penalty is, could you be the one to personally carry it out? Could you look another human being in the eye, and then take their life?

Personally Yes, Judicially No. Saying "yea" to spending the rest of there life in a cell "Yes"

How does the expression go? "Better to be judged by 12 of your neighbors than to be carried by 6 of your friends."

In self defense, or defense of another, I could look another person in the eye and take his life. I wouldn't think twice if it was necessary to prevent a greater evil. I think any parent would say that.

Does it mean would I like it? Or that I would I sleep like a baby at night? I don't know.

But do it? Absolutely. If necessary.

Barring the circumstances you describe, (and even then, I would hope not if time had passed) like you, I couldn't be the one to do it. Though I believe there are crimes heinous enough to deserve it (like Toll's example), I'm against the death penalty on principle and especially as it operates in practice.

OTOH, I have two very liberal friends (husband/wife psychologists) whose work includes training prison guards in crisis intervention. While they used to be against the death penalty in all circumstances, their views have changed. They point out that "lifers" in states with no death penalty have nothing to stop them from killing other prisoners and/or guards. That they've had more than a few "up close and personal" encounters with some of these folks undoubtedly colors their viewpoint.

Complicated issues don't always admit to black and white answers.