Weekly Debate - Death Penalty

[Outlandishh]

Hello! So we are here, and ready to with this weeks first debate :The Death Penalty. Basically, we will discuss why/why not, any country should or should not, implement the death penalty. Feel free to research to back up anything you may say, and please be respectful of others opinions, keep this thread on topic, or just post somewhere else, without further interruption, let us begin.


To start off, I'm going to state how I feel about the death penalty and why.

To me, the death penalty should be used widely all over the world to punish heinous crimes such as multi-murder, terrorism, murder, and crimes such as those. "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" is a great quote once used in the bible, which means have done to you what you do to others. It makes sense. Also, it is rather costly to a government to hold these murder's in prison, from what i've researched, it costs, roughly 18,500 US dollars to hold someone in prison for an entire year. In the US, that is the common citizen's tax money fueling their life, and they ended someone else's.

Sure, there are many other reasons for using the death penalty, and i'll leave others open for discussion.

Be respectful and like always, have fun!

 

[CaptainGinyu]

I'm really not sure about the death penalty. In some countries, if it wasn't used, it would be near impossible to keep any sort of peace. People do deserve to pay for whatever they have done. Killing them though seems a little unnecessary, I think it's more effective to let any murderer live the rest of their life with restricted freedoms such as prisons. Dying is just the easy way out...

 

[Audi]

If you kill someone with the death penalty, you are a murderor yourself.
That being said, there are many individuals who deserve the death penalty... Think Josef Fritzl.
Many prisons all around the world are overcrowded. Californian prisons have inmates sleeping in bunk beds, for three people.
Prisons in Thailand are packed to capacity, due to strict legislation.
If the death penalty was used in these situations, it could be O.K. But where is the line drawn between life prisonment adn the death sentence? Not every criminal deserves to die.

 

[CaptainGinyu]

I think there's a fine line between delivering "justice" and being a murderer yourself. Prisons are overcrowded, but I know you just can't kill them because there's too many. The more I think about it though, there's no other way around it.

 

[Outlandishh]

I'm really not sure about the death penalty. In some countries, if it wasn't used, it would be near impossible to keep any sort of peace. People do deserve to pay for whatever they have done. Killing them though seems a little unnecessary, I think it's more effective to let any murderer live the rest of their life with restricted freedoms such as prisons. Dying is just the easy way out...

Clearly not ever criminal deserves to die, but there are some who really do. And I wouldn't use the death penalty because of overcrowding, purely because of the criminals deserving it.

 

[Audi]

True that. What I am inferring by mentioning overcrowding is that there are criminals taking up space in prison, who have done atrocious things, and could warrant using the death penalty on. It would be unfair to say "Oh, that person is bad. Let's kill him."
People can turn themselves around. Not that I know, but jail is a terrifying ordeal. A few years in jail, where a criminal has ample chance to reflect on what they have done, recieve guidance, and even simply be deterred by not wanting to serve time again, can change a criminal's perspective and behaviour. We should give criminals a chance.

 

[Outlandishh]

Very good statement, but, what if its a murderer who would be sentenced life anyways?
And what about a victims family, they never get a second chance with their loved one.

 

[jvp]

The biggest problem with the death penalty is the chance an innocent person is falsely convicted, and is subsequently put to death. You pretty much have to ask yourself if it's worth putting one innocent person to death, in order to put 50, 100, 1000 etc., truly guilty people away for good. Unless of course you're so naive to think that the justice system is completely infallible and has never wrongly convicted a single person.

 

[Outlandishh]

The biggest problem with the death penalty is the chance an innocent person is falsely convicted, and is subsequently put to death. You pretty much have to ask yourself if it's worth putting one innocent person to death, in order to put 50, 100, 1000 etc., truly guilty people away for good. Unless of course you're so naive to think that the justice system is completely infallible and has never wrongly convicted a single person.

They have incorrectly convicted people in the past, and probably the future, but, I'd like to believe those numbers are going down.

 

[mdukey]

I believe there should be no such thing as a death penalty, because it's just making more deaths and one more family having to cry over their son/daughter even though they did something wrong.

End of story.