Constantly we hear that America is the only "advanced" country who still employs capital punishment. So what?

Punishment for crimes should be more for deterrence than for vindication. But we have lost that focus and we have gutted the purpose of our penal system. Examples of countries who retain that focus abound in the Middle East where punishments are swift, severe and any pain inflicted consequential. In these countries there is deterrence. They all enjoy very nominal crime rates making us "advanced" countries look like criminal factories in comparison.

Hollywood and the computer entertainment industry glorify crime and sterilize pain and death. Our justice system goes to extremes to defend people known to be guilty. Criminals are overtly and overly protected even before they commit their crimes and they know it.

Just consider this very issue and this thread. Only the worst of the worst criminals get the death penalty in our country. We have 2nd and 3rd degree murder We also have levels manslaughter rendering lots of ways people can kill another and not get the death penalty. Then those that do get convicted of 1st degree murder get boatloads of appeals, automatically. Now we're wringing our hands over the fine points of their ultimate execution. Good grief.

We are social animals. That is the bottom line. If there's is an element in our society violating its rules and harming members then we have the right to defend the whole against them. Societies who do it aggressively demonstrate that it acts as a deterrent keeping the level of behavior in that society within acceptable boundaries. We don't and crime is out of control.

If even one innocent person has ever been executed, then the death penalty is an injustice.

If there is ever any risk that an innocent person could be executed, then the death penalty must be abolished.

The death penalty is not a deterrent to murder. This is statistically as well as socially true.

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Sadly, you don't know the facts. Capital Punishment has never shown to have a more detering effect than life w/o parole. You make a comparision between the Middle East societies "alleged" lower capital crimes because the punishments are so severe. Well if this correlation is corret, then by your reasoning the states with capital punishment should experience less offenders. This too is wrong. The highest capital crime rates occur in states with capital punishment. The facts are there, if people simply were to investigate them because your intuition and your comparision fails.

But the death penalty is much cheaper for the Taxpayers.

Plus he will not repeat !

More deterrance ?

Try Castration and a Slow Garrote in Public .

Just the opposite, the death penalty is more expensive to taxpayers.

In the course of my work, I believe I have reviewed every state and federal
study of the costs of the death penalty in the past 25 years. One element is common to
all of these studies: They all concluded that the cost of the death penalty amounts to a
net expense to the state and the taxpayers. Or to put it differently, the death penalty
system is clearly more expensive than a system handling similar cases with a lesser
punishment.

I, for one, don't care that it costs more to execute someone. Sometimes you get what you pay for. That one criminal will not do it again. Saving everyone time and money in the future. Did they factor in the recidivism rate when they were calcuating the costs? I would even go further, if you're caught in the act. Immediate death to you, why waste court time when you've got the bloody knife in your hand! If there was real justice you'd get the same punishment as your victim anyway. Oh the lethal injection hurts! Crybabies! Maybe you should have thought about that while you were raping and killing your victims! I don't care if it's uncomfortable for the criminals. I thought one of the components of the "cocktail" was anesthesia anyway. Heck if we wanted to be more efficient as a society, we'd put the criminals out and harvest their organs for people who need them. Who said criminals were "good for nothing"?

"Why waste court time when you've got the bloody knife in your hand"?

Seriously?

This pretty much invalidates your entire opinion. I can concoct hundreds, if not thousands, of scenarios in which someone will look guilty in your eyes and yet be completely innocent. In fact, the writers of the various CSI and Law & Order franchises do (did, I guess) this every day.

You can't execute innocent people. We do it all the time in this country. That has to stop, and if it means more sadistic murderers end up in prison for life, I am completely fine with that.

Ever hear of life in prison (with no possibility of parole)?

I personally know a number of capital appellate lawyers. In almost all cases on which they work, their goals at best are assurances of due process (usually resulting in a re-trial for various missteps during the original trial) and/or a commutation of the death sentence. Rarely, are they working to free someone--and, then, only those that have been wrongly convicted. Recidivism doesn't even play into it. If someone is a threat to society, then, by all means, lock them up for life.

Recidivism for LWOP is essentially non-existant (ie it cannot be measured or costed in any way) - so it still holds that LWOP is much much cheaper than the death penalty.

As for "crybabies" - the murderer could argue the same thing - hey the victim is dead, no use crying over spilt milk. OH you mean that how another human being was treated is of importance to you? Gee stop being such a crybaby.

Lastly - "caught in the act" - I'll leave you with immortal words of Bob Marley

I shot the sherriff - but I swear it was in self-defense.

I have watched the appeals process (via the news media, not the best of sources, but much of their material was lifted word for word from the lawyers' briefs) and the only thing I can say is that in Tennessee, at least, the death penalty provides a good reason for "Don't let 'em take you alive". You can let the cops kill you now or the courts kill you eventually (since your court-appointed attorney will be incompetent and you will not have an opportunity to appeal the errors he made). This seems to also be the case in Texas and I suspect in most other southern states. Things may be different if you can afford your own lawyer -- but how many people have a spare couple of hundred thousand lying around to pay a lawyer? I also don't know about the "liberal" north -- maybe appeals really work there (note: "appeal" means "reconsideration", not "automatic reversal").

Jon Miller

For those who doubt these statistics visit nations .com and examine the data. The U.S. has about the highest rate of crime, number of prisons, rates of murder, etc....you name it. Middle Eastern Arab countries have about the lowest crime statistics. Punishment as a deterrence does work. Punishment that is horrendous enough, well understood and publicly done lets everyone know exactly what will happen if they commit crimes. They chose not to commit crimes because they are terrified of the punishment. Oh darn.

The more we baby our criminals the more we encourage others to pursue criminal activity. We have cultivated a subculture of criminal activity that incorporates prison terms as an accepted minor hazard of the lifestyle. They're not sorry they did the crime. They are sorry they got caught committing the crime and plan to do better the next time around. If they had lost a hand as punishment for committing that crime they'd be damn sorry they did it and would never consider doing it again.

We have it backwards. It works a lot better the other way around. Those charged with crimes should be considered honest (not innocent) and made to testify in their own defense. If they are being honest their own testimony will provide them the opportunity to tell the truth and be acquitted of the accusations. As it stands we allow professional liars (attorneys) to use any method to defend any person of any crime while we pay for those costs. Why? This is not 19th century justice. It is time to reform the justice and the penal system for the sake of our children and this country.