Here in Maryland, we’re discussing the death penalty. Newly elected Gov. O’Malley has written an op-ed in the Post discussing his opposition while it’s now up for discussion in the Assembly. It’s a good discussion to have, though I disagree with Gov. O’Malley. I think we ought to have the death penalty. It ought to be hard to do, but it should be a punishment the state has on the table for the most egregious crimes.
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Why do we need the Death Penalty on the table? It does nothing to deter crime, it is applied in a racially biased manner, it cannot be done humanely, it cannot be reversed if new evidence arises, and it does not provide consolation to grieving families.
All options are not on the table when it comes to hanus crimes. Torture, for example.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
heinous, zen
Well, if murderer killed my wife or child, I’d have a hard time grasping onto the concept that they unfairly had their lives taken away while the perpetrator is allowed to breathe the same air I’m breathing.
I guess I’m weird like that.
No it doesn’t.
I think it should only be for election fraud(such as Steele and Ehrlich carried out last November), and it should be carried out immediately.
“Well, if murderer killed my wife or child, I’d have a hard time grasping onto the concept that they unfairly had their lives taken away while the perpetrator is allowed to breathe the same air I’m breathing.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’d feel the same way. But then after the state kills the bastard, I’d still be filled with grief and remorse, and my wife or child wouldn’t be coming back any sooner.
And I’d always wonder if they got the right guy.
There’s a reason we sacrifice our right to vengence by giving the authority of judgement to the state. It’s because emotional victims make for shitty judges and even worse executioners. If the Death Penalty is only required for emotional reasons, then it would be cheaper for the state to provide top-of-the-line grief counselling?
i’ve always been against the DP for the following reasons:
1) not a deterrent, as claimed. to buy that is to assume that someone who is contemplating to commit the act of murder is thinking rationally. if the DP is built for the likes of Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer, etc….what makes you think people like that are familiar with rationality?
2) cost. it costs more to put someone to death than to let them sit in a cell and rot until they die of old age.
3) getting the wrong guy. it happens. watch the Penn and Teller: Bullshit episode about the DP. We had a guy on death row awaiting execution EVEN THOUGH THE PROSECUTION KNEW THE GUY WAS IN JAIL AT THE TIME OF THE MURDER.
4) Wanna talk the worst kind of punishment? I think having to wait to die — having to live with the consequences of your actions for 50, 60, 70 years is worse for the guilty than being put to sleep (via lethal injection) like a mangy hound.
look, i’m not one of those candle-light-vigil-outside-the-prison types. A couple of scumbags took my grandfather from me when i was still a teenager. so i shed no tears for these types.
i just think life-in-prison, throw them in a cell and don’t open it again until they die, is a better form of punishment than the DP.
Not only is the death penalty used more often against people of color and the poor, it is often voted for by juries who have been misled by prosecutors. It’s implementation is racist; and it enables thuggish prosecutors to claim to be “tough on crime” when they are merely tough on the poor. The Innocence Project
has liberated dozens who would have been slain by their respective states had the project not intervened. In Maryland, three people, 1 white, 2 black have been exonerated because of their efforts (All three were not on death row).
Furthermore, as a believer in democracy, it ill suits a people to allow their government to kill them or to order them to kill others. Life imprison is sufficient, more just, and allows for the errors of bigoted prosecutors and juries to be discovered.
The one area where I completely disagree with you.
It only takes one innocent person to die for capital punishment to be wrong and the math coupled with the flawed American legal system demands that this has happened in America.
Show me a justice system that is infinitely infallible, where a wrong verdict as impossible as the Earth’s rotation reversing course and then I’d be fine with killing as many guilty of a serious crime types as you like.
Until then the civilized and democrat way should be to put them in cages for 23 hrs a day for the rest of their lives.
I completely agree with roundhead. The DP never made any sense to me in terms of punishment. The fact is death is the easy way out. Sitting in a 5×8 cell for 50 years seems a hell of a lot worse.
Drawing the line at committing physical violence against a prisoner would seem to me to be a good one. If we’re going to support the death penalty, why not just support torture? Where’s the line drawn? Torture would ostensibly bring happiness to victims’ family members, so why not put that in the mix?
How much more moral and civilized is it to jail somebody for life incorrectly? No justice system can be open and free and perfect. One thing about the death penalty, it is automatically appealed and the punishment matches the crime. No matter what, I will never believe it is not a deterrent - re te ’sane’ murderer. Zero = the number of collective people Tim MacVeigh has murdered and harmed since his penalty was meted out.
zero = “the number of people Tim McVeigh would have murdered or harmed were he sitting in jail for the rest of his natural born days”
Dugger, when we can bring the wrongfully executed back from the dead, you’ll have a point.
WELL THANKS FOR THAT CONSIDERED PHILOSOPHICAL POINT MISTER ARIFRICKINGSTOTLE
I can see it now. “JWG Dismisses Gandhi By Just Saying He’s Wrong! World In Shock!”
Significantly. Fairly obvious, really.
I don’t want to go very far into this, but some twelve years ago now, at the school I was going to at the time, we had a young girl, 13, who I’d known tangenitally as a kid, raped and murdered. When they finally caught the motherfucker who did it, it took all my willpower not to want him dead. And I didn’t even know her that well. So yes, I understand the emotional issues GravyPan mentioned. But intellectually I couldn’t reconcile it. Death is never an option. And I’m sure Superman would agree with me.
(of course, that caused a lot of trouble in the Crisis, but then he lives in the DC Universe, where real monsters genuinely do exist, and not the real one)