this is about punishment/protecting soceity, rainier. punishment/protecting IS allowed by the constitution.

Emotional punishment. Living day to day with the pain of being a victim.

While those who get the DP are let off easy (IMO), it does help with the over-crowding of jails and saves the tax-payers money. I don't want to pay for a killer to have a roof and three squares a day.

We also seem to be talking a bit about punishment. Is it the intent of prison to be a punishment or is it to rehabilitate???

I am all for televising executions.. Let the people see what happens when you do wrong.

how is killing the murderer going to bring that person back? i do understand that there is something to be said for victims families feeling that justice has been done though.

Good, we're on the same page. The argument that we shouldn't execute people because killing is wrong is no different than saying we shouldn't imprison people because imprisoning people is wrong. Both are different when the state does it. Find a better argument for your position!

it's both.

btw, to help with overcrowding, we'd have to make MANY more crimes DP-eligible as far as the % of inmates goes.

So, where do you draw the line? When is someone considered unable to be rehabilitated (like Lindsey or Britney)? In those cases where rehabilitation isn't going to happen why don't we cut our losses and give them a needle?

I don't disagree with the overcrowding comment...

:Personal Barbarian Theology:

Murder is wrong and killing is wrong. Warfighters, LEOs and others sacrifice both their lives *and* their souls to preserve the lives of others. That is why their sacrifice is so very precious, and not to be asked lightly. Those who are religious simply commend judgement of their actions to God.

Killing another human being carries an essential 'wrongness' that you just feel deep in your bones. Even when society says that act was justified, you're not going to do the happy dance. For people who take on the responsibility to protect or defend others, they take on the responsibility knowing that they may have to carry that weight.

:end Personal Barbarian Theology:

I agree - closure.

IMO, the death penalty is wrong and immoral.
We are not to play God and judge who lives and who dies.

how about bringing back federal parole or focusing on mandatory minimums....that might help rather than the DP

i have included the "cruel and unusual" argument, rainier.

but as far as your point about why states do it versus why people do things, the state has a purpose in doling out punishment and the person does not (well, not legally). because it is different when the state does it, it should serve as a paradigm.

sounds an awful lot like hitler...

"We are not to play God and judge who lives and who dies"


And neither is the person that committed murder. What about the whole eye for and eye thing?

the person is in prison for the rest of their life!

i'm all ears for alternatives to the DP.

Ouch! I would say the difference is that my position is to give the needle to criminals, not innocents.

go live in the middle east then where this is the law.

Actually, it's quite the opposite. In terms of overcrowding, not nearly enough are actually executed each year to make a differnce in overcrowding.

And in terms of cost savings....costs much, much more to have someone sit on death row. Between the mandatory by law appeals, the appeals by the criminal and their supporters (whose lawyers are paid for with gov't funds), the special care and isolation of the inmate for their proctection...it is cheaper to have them serve a 60 year life term.

but it is the similarity that is so scary: wipe "imperfect" people off the face of the earth.

If you believe in the Code of Hammurabi, then you can go for an for an eye.

But...Jesus preaches forgiveness and compassion.

Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. Not us.

If by "imperfect", you mean cold blooded killers, then [censored] yes! To look at these animals as "imperfect" is to look at the world through rose-colored glasses!

That man raped, tortured and killed a 75 year old woman!! Well, nobody's perfect! PLEASE!

Well then we should do away with the entire penal system then... Since it is not our place to judge..

couple of examples of true stories of murderers murdering again for you:


In 1985, 13-year-old Karen Patterson was shot to death in her bed in North Charleston, S.C. Her killer was a neighbor who had already served 10 years of a life sentence for murdering his half-brother Charles in 1970. Joe Atkins cut the Pattersons' phone lines, then entered bearing a machete, a sawed-off shotgun, and a pistol. Karen's parents were chased out of their home by Atkins. Karen's mom ran to the Atkins home nearby, where Joe then murdered his adopted father, Benjamin Atkins, 75, who had worked to persuade parole authorities to release Joe from the life sentence.

When Katy Davis observed three strangers outside her Austin, Texas, apartment, she walked away. Returning later, she was attacked and forced to open the door by Charles Rector, on parole for a previous murder. The men ransacked her apartment, abducted her and took her to a lake where she was beaten, gang-raped, shot in the head and repeatedly forced underwater until she drowned.