Is the death penalty acceptable deterrent or just barbaric?

Should the death penalty be handed out by jurors or left to the Judge?

Is the death penalty an acceptable act in todays society by those who still execute criminals?

What are you views on the death penalty?

On one hand too many people have been executed following a tainted conviction. ONE mistake is a mistake too many.

As unpalatable as it is to see a killer avoid the same justice that he/she meted out to another, it is safer to be able to overturn a wrong verdict where the convicted is still alive to benefit from it.

Furthermore, in some cases the politicians and media put the police under intolerable pressure to solve a crime, without even knowing or caring how difficult it may be to do so with sufficient evidence to arrest. It encourages the police to make a hasty judgment and maybe concoct evidence, just to get themselves off the hook on which they should have not been placed in the first instance.

On the other hand, they did the crime shouldn't they pay for it as in; eye for an eye, take a life forfeit your life?

Is there any justice served in taking an innocent life, or a guilty life whoever may be responsible for it?

Has the prison system become so complacent and easy with mod cons and hotel style of accommodation that conviction fora crime is seen as an extended holiday not as punishment for the crime? Hard labor is a thing of the past. Now it is more like living in a top hotel, all mod cons thrown in.

Would bringing back harsher regimes make the crime rates to drop off. Harsher does not mean torturous in this case. That said is 12 hours hard labour chain-gang style clearing ditches in the sun with water given in set breaks than on demand be a form of torture?

It's unjust and unjustifiable.

There is no justice in it or the moral equivalence that "an eye for an eye" implies, it's simply small minded revenge.

Even if we were to assume any moral merit in taking the life of a killer we'd have to consider the aggregate effect on ourselves, on society as a whole - "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind".

The job of executioner creates a problem in itself. Surely anyone that actively wants to do it is exactly the kind of person we would be trying to get rid of in the first place and since we would have made the position we too would be undesirables. Who kills us?

There is the practical element of course, and I can see the apparent value but I believe that to be false (or, at least, overshadowed) as well. We only have to look at the crime rate of the United states (state by state so as to compare those that do and those that don't have the death penalty) to see that it doesn't work particularly well as a deterrent.

Put on top of that the imperfect nature of the judicial system...

Let alone it not being anyone's to give, to willingly hand over the ability to kill more people to the powers that be worries me. We need a society based on respect, not fear. I mean, we already allow for murder through military action, do we really want to degrade our already broken society any further?

To postpone morality as it suits is to entirely negate its value.

tl;dr - It's murder.

In certain cases I think that he or she, who has killed should be put to death. How ever I would draw the line here in that this would be in a case of where there is no doubt of the action committed by the killer. In front of witnesses or proved utterly and completely that he or she committed the murder. If there is reasonnable doubt of whether he or she is guilty or not , then the sentence should be commuted to life. But life in the sense that that person never ever leaves the prison walls.
Modern prisons often give prisonners better living conditions than those outside! That should change! They are there to be punished , not in a holiday camp!

Furthermore, in some cases the politicians and media put the police under intolerable pressure to solve a crime, without even knowing or caring how difficult it may be to do so with sufficient evidence to arrest. It encourages the police to make a hasty judgment and maybe concoct evidence, just to get themselves off the hook on which they should have not been placed in the first instance.
This should stop. Several times here the police has been pushed to find a guilty person and have messed up the job. The police should be left to get on with the job and not have power hungry politicians breathing down their necks, or Newspapers calling for blood.

I agree, there are laspses in the law where the innocent are pushed through as guilty in order to have somebody there to blame, rather than let it be known the killer/s are still loose and time and money are not avialble to hunt them further.

Which I always thought was why the saying justice is blind is so apt. What the law doesn't see won't harm it.

I for one think it should be brought back. although Turnips's comments does make one think and raises an interesting debate in itself. As i have to confess that i have said before that i would happily be the executioner to the likes of the previously mentioned killers and the likes.

Quote:

The job of executioner creates a problem in itself. Surely anyone that actively wants to do it is exactly the kind of person we would be trying to get rid of in the first place and since we would have made the position we too would be undesirables. Who kills us?

However, with some killers out there (i.e Brady, hindley, huntley ect) surely they do deserve the death penalty. Yes the justice system is far from perfect, however forensics is getting better and better (certainly a lot better since the death penalty was last in effect). But there is bound to be a screw up at some point and someone put to death who is later found to be innocent.

But it is so annyoing with the crap sentences that are handed out these days to serious offenders, all because they can't afford to over crowd prisons. I am all for the offenders spending the rest of their lives locked up, but that is if life meant life, and all the perks of being a prisoner in the UK didn't exist.

I suppose what i'm trying to say is that those who do kill do deserve the death penalty IMO (and not a humane one either), but the justice system being safe enough to have the death penalty in effect is another matter, and i don't think it is.

Could you explain why they 'surely do deserve the death penalty' - the morality of it?

For me it is because of the suffering they caused to their victim, but also to the family that is left behind. The family that are left behind not only suffer of finding out their loved one has gone, but how they died. Often a very sick and disturbing end. But their suffering goes on for the rest of their own lives. And no amount of prison sentence will ever compensate for that. Granted in many cases executing the killer does not compensate for their loss either, but some do get some (call it what you want, comfort, satisfaction, or sense of justice from knowing their loved one's killer is no longer living. I personally would want them dead if i knew that they would be free after x amount of years. Maybe if life meant life then i wouldn't want them executed.But that is not the case in this day and age.

I mean after what some of these murderers, rapist ect have done, why should they deserve to live anyway. Maybe it's not so much a sense of "an eye for an eye", but more a case of what right does the killer have to live?