Capital Punishment
Transmission
Join Date: 2003-03-12 Member: 14456Members
Join Date: 2003-03-12 Member: 14456Members
in Discussions
While capital punishment has been abolished in the majority of the civilized world, 38 of the states in the US still practice it. Currently, there are over 3500 people on the death row in the United States awaiting execution, even though for many of them, it won't come for many years, if at all.
I live in Canada where the death penalty is not present, and I was discussing with my friend why it hadn't been done away with. I'll post my own ideas on the death penalty later, but I'm wondering if anyone has anything to say in support of capital punishment, and any reasons against doing away with it completely.
Discuss.
I live in Canada where the death penalty is not present, and I was discussing with my friend why it hadn't been done away with. I'll post my own ideas on the death penalty later, but I'm wondering if anyone has anything to say in support of capital punishment, and any reasons against doing away with it completely.
Discuss.
Comments
You can't expect these things to vanish overnight, I guess.
I don't think capital punishment has a great influence on the crimes it warrents, but I'm not particularly up to scratch in that area. A link to a viable study would be appreciated.
If you look at this list of countries that support the death penalty, you'll see that the US shares that list with, from what I can see, 0 western democracies and 1.5 first world country (Japan and South Korea, although I don't know if South Korea is 1st world):
<a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_death_penalty_worldwide' target='_blank'>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_death_penalty_worldwide</a>
It seems that the civilized world has declared it immoral.
Frankly, I think it should be banned. I don't see any reason to keep it. It harms society to use the death penalty instead of life imprisonment, both economically and diplomatically (other countries don't like our stance towards it at all and won't extradite terrorists or other criminals to a country where they would face the death penalty).
I also don't see how it's more cruel and unusual to execute a child than it is an adult. It's cruel to kill someone regardless of their age.
Here are some other wikipedia links of interest:
<a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States' target='_blank'>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punis...e_United_States</a>
<a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment' target='_blank'>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment</a>
You can't expect these things to vanish overnight, I guess.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The US Supreme Court ruled on March 1st that any crime committed while a minor (under 18) can't be sentenced to death (<a href='http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/01/scotus.death.penalty/index.html' target='_blank'>CNN story</a>) (<a href='http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/03/lazarus.death.penalty/index.html' target='_blank'>CNN editorial</a>). The previous minimum age had been set at 16 years old by a Supreme Court ruling in 1989.
Pedophiles and child murderers are declared metal incapable and are sentenced to prison in mental institues. Then, after some years they are transferred to minimum security or released because they show "great progress" and rape or kill anotehr child. Such an incident happed just recently.
Murderers get 15 years. (thats called life sentece here...) and so on.
Like I said, in my eyes, there are crimes that deserve to be punished by the death penalty, so in general I would be inclined approve to fatal punishment....
BUT...
Legal systems are only as good as those who enforce it and those are people like you and me. Men fail, and it is not justificable to entrust someones life to the will of others, especially not to jury men consititng of common people that most likely are biased simply because of the nature of the crime the defendant is accused of. I also despise the fact that the descision about life and death is highly dependent on the quality of the lawyer you can afford and whether the governor wants to profile himself as a hardliner sending the highest possible amount of criminals to hell in order to make life safer.
I would not hesitate to execute someone who shot 4 people in a courtroom before dozens of whitnesses, like that guy a couple of days earlier, but in most cases, you cannot rule out doubt.