Execution is revenge. It's done to make people feel better, to give them the feeling their extracting the maximum "payback" from the criminal, to create the illusion we're doing something about serious crimes, to give us a feeling of safety in the sense that the death penalty provides some extra measure of protection against murderers.

Don't forget we're a nation in which a substantial part of the population still thinks sending our military personnel to participate in a low level Iraq civil war keeps us safe from terrorism. It's emotionally satisfying to kill people we see as threatening us.

Personally, I'm not too concerned about the humane-ness aspect of capital punishment. There is no humane way to execute a person, and a few minutes of physical pain at the end doesn't weigh heavily one way or the other.

I oppose the death penalty because I want to extract remorse from murderers. I want them to sit in jail 30 years or so and think about what they did, how it affected the victim and other people, how it wasted the life of the victim and the murderer. I want them to feel sorry they murdered, not just sorry about losing their own lives.

Exactly. It is about revenge not justice....

Arlington,

I just don't believe that many murderers sit around feeling sorry for their victims and the ruined lives of their loved ones. I just don't think that's the way the average violent criminal thinks or feels.

For one thing, the violent criminal has a big problem with empathy to begin with.

No, not just revenge.

Death penalty is used in the most extrem crimes. Not for street walking. If someone is condemmed to death. You can bet he did some seriously twisted stuff.

These people will not be nice. They will not be productive members of our neighborhoods. They have serious issues that prevent them from fitting in. These issues result in the killing people. People that did fit in. Usually someone that did nothing to anyone.

I have seen alot. Watching a person die is not pleasent.Yet these people we are putting down, and that is indeed what we are doing will repeat almost always. Studies show this. So we either stick them in a prison where they make their own twisted parady of civalization or we put them down. Pay thousands to house them or put them down.

As to the Iraq war. We went in. We took a man that used the death penalty to great effect. It works. His ruling government proved it. If we pull out now you are indeed hurting us. Right now they are working toward freedom. Working toward self-rule.

If we pull out the terrorists will pour in. Iran will pour in. Heck even Turkey will pour in. So like it our not we have to stay there for a time. Do we want to? No one wants to fight over seas away from their loved ones. We do it thou.

I have lost people I care about over there. I have a ton more going back over there, or still staitioned over there. Want to help us? Then fight this like a real war. I see comments like that and I think to myself how blindly self rightous.

In the other wars people were Drafted. Supplies sent to the people that need them, and people pushed hard for a win. We can't seem to comit like that. Too mant people with no sence of pride in their country. So those with Pride have to step forward and fight for those most unworthy of the protection and freedom we give them. We bleed, we die, and you whine it's a cival war now.

We are there. We can not leave. And to do so is to insult any of us that have walked the ground and payed with all we have to give. If we leave, they move in. If we hold it will get better. If we had more troops it would happen much sooner. But some people won't comit to it like it's a war. So we have to do it a little bit at a time.

Pardon my spelling. I'm a grunt.

How is revenge at odds with justice? The entire concept of justice is based on revenge, to attempt to make right a wrong.

The very purpose we have laws, jails and death chambers is to first and foremost exact revenge. The deterrance affect, and the ability to keep specific criminals off of the street is all secondary to the goal of justice, or revenge as you put it.

Right on! When I watch this history channel about WWII, I always can't help but think that we as a country do not have what it takes anymore. They were the Greatest Generation and sad to say probably the last that had what it takes. I don't know if it's that with 24 hour news coverage we hear about everything almost immediately or what. I do remember that a few weeks into this war most people were saying "when will it be over?" It seems our attention spans and our stomaches are small and weak. Imagine not knowing what's going on for week or months. If your loved one is even still alive? I'm not saying that it wasn't hard on them it just seems they had will to want to win.

Death penalty is used in the most extrem crimes. Not for street walking. If someone is condemmed to death. You can bet he did some seriously twisted stuff.

Really, then explain all of the innocent individuals that have been exonerated.

Those innocents who were exonerated were wrongly convicted of "some seriously twisted stuff."

If your point is that innocents are wrongly accused, found guilty and killed, it is correct. If your point is that innocents are wrongly accused, found guilty and killed for minor crimes, it is incorrect.

Find me one person who felt "bad" or "sorry for" Tim McVeigh. Even his father expressed sadness because his son was executed, but he understood why it had to happen.

Revenge is an emotional reaction - the desire to harm the individual you perceive to be the source of your pain.

Justice is an impartial meteing out of pre-set consequences with the primary goal of deterrance and a secondary goal of protecting the society in the future.

Revenge is essentially an escalating spin cycle of pain and is destructive to society. Justice is an important component of a functioning society.

QED revenge is not justice and revenge does not serve society in any way

And that lack of empathy differs from those who advocate the Death Penalty exactly how?

And if the act and the motivation of the murderer are the same as the DP advocates - exactly how does the latter differ in culpability?

What childish reasoning. Ghandi had less of what it takes than Hitler, Desmond Tutu had less of what it takes than Pol Pot. Patrick Henry had less of what it takes than GW Bush, Benjamin Franklin had less of what it takes than Donald Rumsfeld.

What nonsense. As for the "greatest generation" - I think you forget the American facists openly marching in the streets and celebrating hitler made up of... members of that generation. You forget the isolationists who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the war (some say that FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to happen to overcome this resistance).

Simply being willing to be viscious, brutal or thuggish doesn't mean "you have what it takes". If anything it means the opposite. It means that you are so weak, and believe in your ideals so little, that you are NOT willing to stand up for phrases like

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.

Instead your mantra becomes

Scalp them, kill them all, nits make lice

I'll give you three guesses which one torturing a 15yo in Guantanamo is most like.

Are you with Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, Desmond Tutu?

or are you with Chivington and Bush?

I think you're wrong that the primary reason for criminal law is to deter, and second to protect society. I believe that its first purpose is to exact punishment, for the sake of punishing a wrong. All other benefits flow from that. We used to understand that the point of criminal prosecution was to punish, hence "penal system," not "deterrence" or "protection" system.

But your post title is interesting. Tell me the difference between revenge and vengeance or "avengement." Do they differ?

The dictionary definition of Revenge is punishment meted out for an offense against you personally.

Avenge is punishment meted out in the name of justice.

Not all dictionaries make the 'in the name of justice" distinction, but they all do identify revenge as "personal".

The issue of whether criminal law is about punishment or about deterrance is an old push-me-pull-you. But the US criminal justice system derives from English Common Law which in turn derives from Courts of Equity and Courts of the Crown. Courts of the Crown were "offenses against the crown" aka "offenses against society". Courts of Equity were courts of the Church and were about moral behaviours.

They evolved into criminal courts and tort courts. Criminal Courts are crimes against society, and thus the role of the court is protection of the society and deterrance (just as the Crown Courts were).

Tort Courts are about exacting personal payment and thus are the closest to the "revenge" motive.

Revenge? No, I don't think so. Personally, I'm all for a nice, quick, virtually painless, CHEAP bullet through the brain for those sentenced to death.I REALLY resent having to pay taxes to support and pay for education and healthcare (basically, every necessity of LIFE - of which murderers deprived their victims) for the scum of the earth to have a more secure future than I do.
Florida just recently (more than 15 years after a CONFESSION) put down Danny Harold Rolling. I knew one of his victims. You can't tell me that he did not deserve to die. These murderers and rapists who have earned the death penalty are worse than rabid dogs. At least a rabid dog is the victim of a virus and putting it down is a mercy. But, just like a rabid dog, when you have these inhuman monsters that plan out an execute rapes and follow them up with murders, you treat them like rabid dogs. You do NOT try to cure or rehabilitate a rabid dog. You PUT IT DOWN. Before it kills someone you love.