Your opinions on the death penalty

I'd generally agree to people having a chance at retaliation to suffering. It can be very satisfying, when you know for sure, that the person with the interests in hurting you or those you care about is no more.

The question, I think, is more about the kind of action one has to make to receive the death penalty. Fear of death is one of the fundamental human fears. I think we should make full use of such powerful motivator.

I don't really have a definitive opinion at the moment, but i am leaning more towards being against the death penalty.

Firstly, i would just dislike the idea if my government had the power to legally kill its own citizens as a punishment for a crime. For sure there are people who i can easily say deserve to die and people who i wish were dead, but if apprehended, i believe no matter what your crime is, you have the same legal rights as anybody else does. I believe in "innocent until proven guilty".

Secondly, where does the line go? What crime constitutes a death penalty? What do you have to do that instead of getting life in prison, you get the death penalty? How is this line justified logically? Because honestly, there are many cases where in my opinion, the worst punishment for the crime is simply letting them die of old age. There are crimes where the intent is to die at the apprehension, but they are caught alive. If a school shooter who kills 10 students is caught alive, i honestly think the best punishment for him is to rot in prison for as long as he is alive.

Thirdly, the only reason we should kill a human being, is in self-defense, in my view. Killing an already imprisoned person does not qualify into the category of self-defense.

I'm not against it, but I think that prisoners can be used for a better purpose, such as a labor force. Once you kill them, that's that, ut by working to help better people's lives on the outside, it will be a win-win: they don't die, and we have 'free' labor.

Because even slavery is better than death! How humane of you....

Tbh, it totally depends on the situation. Random murderer? Probably not. Mass-killing psycho does Dallas? Well, I'm pretty sure the system screwed that person over and he/she deserves it.

Either way, I do tend to be against it since ethically speaking it's just the most hypocritical thing ever.

Maybe my post came out the wrong way, haha. I mean, of course, there should be hospitable living conditions and what not, but not a 24/7 on the job always. Maybe they should be....accommodated in some fashion, but I wouldn't want any human rights to be taken away from them, well, except for the places they can go, they'd still be able to do other things.

It's just that they're there for a reason, being they can't 'function' properly around others in the 'normal' world, they would need more supervision in an optimal setting. No reason to really kill them, unless it's one of the more extreme cases, dealing with the death or deaths of others.

When a person is put to death in the US, around 2 million dollars of the tax payers money is spent. Around the same amount is spent if the prisoner is in jail for life, however at least with that, the money is being spent at smaller increments. So I'd have to say that I'm against the death penalty not only because its a moral contradiction, but because it is unbenificial to the economy.

$2 million?! Jesus! I didn't know that.

Upon doing some of my own reading it seems that it is indeed between 10 and 20 times cheaper to keep a prisoner alive rather than executing them. But if some legal changes were made to the way the judicial system operates, it would be much, much cheaper. The system as it stands is biased against the death penalty, so naturally law-makers have made it so there has to be a massive amount of support for an execution to actually happen.

As for my stance on the subject, I'm not AGAINST the death penalty, but I don't like the idea of it being used too much. Perhaps only cases with concrete evidence AND proof that the subject cannot be reformed (extreme clinical insanity, maybe). But both of these are grey areas, so I know my idea wouldn't cut it. Please don't make any laws in my name.

I'm against the death penalty. Hate to bring down the religion hammer but I don't like the idea of another human deciding whether or not I die. I already don't like the government as it is (even though I know it has importance). I feel like taking the life of another human is something reserved for a God. Like I said I hate to bring down the religion hammer but that's how I feel about it honestly.

Personally, I don't think human life should come "cheap". If they're going to go through with putting someone to death, it might as well cost a lot of money to do it.

Putting someone to death for a crime isn't something that anybody should do lightly but I am for the death penalty for murder and murder only on the condition that there is a deterrent effect. Even if only one life is saved per death that is still a worthy trade in my opinion. Now if it turns out that the deterrent effect has less than a 1 to 1 ratio then it would no longer be worth it at that point.


I can understand why some people don't like the death penalty but it isn't the only place in which people are making life and death decisions. Lets take cars for example. There are ways to make them safer than they are currently but the question is how many resources do you use to make it as safe as it can possibly be and how many people would be able to afford such a car? While big executives in the auto industry may or may not know that they are making life and death decisions in such cases it doesn't matter because they are.


The death penalty is one of the most if not the most visible example of life and death decisions but regardless such decisions are made all the time for various reasons, most of them being economic like in the example of cars.

"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". I don't think there is any reason aside revenge in its purest form to agree with death penalty over life imprisonment. If you're up to it for practical reasons, then you're more up to forced labor or for mechanisms to motivate voluntary labor inside prison rather killing the prisoner. No, I don't think you win anything with revenge aside fulfilling negative feelings.

I personally think that death penalty applies for certain circumstances. Recidivism of severe crimes should result in the death penalty and petty crimes should obviously be a light slap on the wrist.

The severe crimes imo (in Australia only) would be the most serious indictable offences, although certain crimes imo also should be included as serious such as sexual offences (eg. rape or serious sexual harassment). Just personal reasons here though.

I think the death penalty is stupid but more because of the execution (no pun intended) of it nowadays.

If a person kills twenty people and clearly did it and clearly does not deserve to live, then he gets the death penalty. Which means he sits in jail for forty years before he is finally executed. How, then, is death a deterrent?

Aside from that, there's also the fact that a lot of times, people have been sentenced to death despite being innocent. DNA testing and better evidence has, several times, proven that a person on death row was innocent of the crime. Killing that person would have been the same as killing as innocent person. With such a possibility existing in the legal system, is it safe to have the death penalty?

I did some research back in college, and states that don't have the death penalty have less murder rates than states that support it. A number of factors could come into play with this result, my hypothesis is that the more populated a certain area is, the more crime. Whatever the case maybe, one thing is clear: The death penalty is NOT a deterrent to crime.

I am torn on this.

There are people on this earth, that if they did not exist the world would be a better place.

Also keeping them in prison for life is a huge expense for taxpayers. Executions are a good way to fixing the problem. (that sounds insensitive, but I already don't think they should live)

However, mistakes are sometimes made, and an innocent person could be murdered in the name of justice.

That doesn't refute a deterrent effect.

It does because it tell us that nobody wants to pass all their live in the jail. Those who does death penalty eligible crimes always expect to never get caught, or they don't care about living anymore, so they suicide after certain point. If you really want to improve the deterrent then you have to improve police, detective and prosecution's job along reducing suicide rates. The only thing I've see that death penalty is actually useful is in using it as an extortion tool to make the criminal talk about corpses places and crime details, as their lives is all they have to lose after got caught. Sometimes it saves a whole trial in an agreement with the prosecution, too.

I know it doesn't, that is why I said there could be many factors that could explain it. However, you can't dismiss it as a possible refute without backing up your own claims.

First off I've never said the deterrent effect was for sure. Second I provided links a page back.



So....... the people who commit murder are committing suicide?....... Huh?