Why I utterly reject the death penalty.

[MohRokTah]

I admit it. I used to support the death penalty. I've changed my mind for a simple reason.

The justice system of the government of the United States of America, and of the several States that comprise this nation, must be above those murderers who it must punish.

Any time that the death penalty is applied at any level in this nation, the entire nation is dragged down to the level of the murderer and becomes no better than the murderer.

Yes, every last person living in this nation becomes just as evil as the person we choose to execute the moment we execute them.

And for that reason, the death penalty is never a reasonable option,

[Warpy]

1. I just knew it would make the whole situation worse

if the murderer had been murdered in my name. I wanted him to die in prison, unable to do it to anyone else (he'd been suspected in 2 other similar murders). I was 16. I got my wish.

Now all these years later, I have not changed that opinion. I am against the DP.

Fortunately, the state I live in has agreed with me.

[Jgarrick]

2. "Every last person living in this nation becomes just as evil". Really?

So everyone in the US from a newborn babe to a hundred year old in a nursing home somehow becomes the embodiment of evil when a murderer is put to death?

[MohRokTah]

4. Yes

The government is the collective of all people.

When the government sinks to the level of a murderer, we all become murderers from the newborn babe to the centenarian, we all become murderers become of the collective WE THE PEOPLE.

When you kill in the name of WE THE PEOPLE, we all become murderers,

[awoke_in_2003]

23. Yep, we sink to their level. nt

[MohRokTah]

7. I am a murderer.

I am a murderer because my government which is comprised of me and everybody else in this nation, chose to murder a murderer.

Yes, I am a murderer.

[Jgarrick]

41. Since murder is a horrible crime, how long a prison sentence should you suffer?

[malaise]

37. Yes n/t

[Supersedeas]

44. that appears to be the message as harsh as it is

[avebury]

3. Just as important is the fact that the death penalty

is a bell that can never be un-rung if you happen to execute someone who is later proven to have been innocent. Supreme Court Justice Scalia has stated in effect that later proof of innocence is not sufficient reason to not execute someone who received a trial by his/her peers. How could anybody approve executing an innocent person?

If you believe in the sanctity of life you cannot then cherry pick who deserves to live and who deserves to die. I am 100% anti death penalty because it diminishes us a civilized society. If you read the comments on the local news websites on tonight's events in Oklahoma you would be appalled at the how blood thirst and vindictive people are. I think that if Mary Fallon had allowed the prison to air the execution on TV, people would have watched it. They don't even realize how close their behavior and attitudes line up with Sharia law at times.

[MohRokTah]

8. Agreed, but that does not alter the point.

When the government murders a murderer, every last person in the natin becomes a murderer of the murderer.

IT doesn't alter the fact that WE THE PEOPLE have committed collective murder.

[Major Nikon]

24. You don't have to go to a red state newspaper website to find those types of comments

They are right here on DU.

[avebury]

27. And that is really sad.

If you believe in the sanctity of life that does not give you the right to then cherry pick who deserves to live and who deserves to die. This is the 21st Century and the US is still locked in the barbaric practices of the past. The US attitude on the whole subject of criminal justice is barbaric. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. There are other countries (Norway for ex.) who have a totally different approach to criminal justice and it is a whole different world. Norway doesn't even have life sentences. But they also have different perspectives own society, how people relate to one another, and don't focus on destructive attitudes. One might say that Americans have managed to create our own hell on earth. i.e. guns rights are valued more then child safety/life, the wealthy profit at the expense of the masses, erosion of civil liberties/rights, and so on.

[Major Nikon]

29. I agree, but I have numerous other reasons for opposing the death penalty

1) The DP is discriminatory and is applied disparately to race, gender, and class.

2) The US has the means to imprison murderers for life which makes the DP unnecessary to segregate murderers from society.

3) Life in prison without parole is cheaper than the DP.

4) The idea that the DP gives victims' families closure is flawed. Life in prison without the possibility of parole gives them closure. The DP extends their suffering for years if not decades awaiting final punishment. Most criminals sentenced to the DP die in prison anyway.

5) Killing a criminal victimizes innocent family members of the condemned.

6) There is no crime deterrent benefit to the DP.

7) The standard of guilt is not absolute and our system of policing and prosecution is not without flaws which insures innocent people will eventually be put to death.

Any one of these reasons by itself would be reason enough to do away with the DP.

[avebury]

34. I agree with all of your points. nt

[Loudly]

5. Can you support a length of rope in the hands of every incarcerated person?

And a sturdy overhanging pipe or beam?

Doesn't every incarcerated person deserve an opportunity to opt out of the system entirely?

[MohRokTah]

6. No.

Serving the rest of your life with no possibility of parole in a 3' by 5' grey-green cell is enough.

That is punishment. No easy way out.

[Loudly]

9. You are one cold-hearted muther.

[MohRokTah]

10. It's far more humane than death. eom

[Loudly]

11. I defy you to spend a week in gen pop and say that!

(If it was your first week of a life sentence.)

[MohRokTah]

12. I have participated in a prison ministry.

Life as punishment is punishment.

Death is release from responsibility.

[Loudly]

16. Life is suffering in that situation.

Death is relief, and if a personal choice is without responsibility to you and me.

Life is an expense (real money) to the public. Am I allowed to say that?

If you don't think death is a relief, just look at the Fedex shooter today (Tuesday).

[MohRokTah]

19. No justice is served by allowing a criminal to take the easy way out.

Life.

No compromise.

[Loudly]

20. Is that a torture chamber of punishment by assault from other prisoners?

Is that what you think is fitting?

Am I to incur the cost of room and board for the convicted AND the cost of his security?

You need to think this through a little more.

There is NO repeat NO political support for the well being of the incarcerated.

So is torture your preferred methodology?

Please. Re-think choice on behalf of the incarcerated.

[whopis01]

28. If suicide is the easy way out and life is the punishment

then how do you argue that life in prison is more humane than allowing a prisoner to take their own life?

[Warpy]

26. They don't need rope.

A twisted and knotted sheet will do. So will their prison clothes. Shoot, you can make a rope strong enough to support a human body out of TP.

The fact is that few of them want to die although the means are readily available. I would greatly prefer humane incarceration as a public safety measure to make sure they never do it again.

[morningfog]

35. I believe in the right to die. I am anti-DP.

I also believe that the state has a duty to prevent the suicide of those in its custody. The reason being, suicides in prison are often the result of untreated mental illnesses and/or poor conditions.

Most people, even prisoners serving life, don't want to kill themselves.

I will add that I am also anti-life without the possibility of parole.

[Boreal]

13. Agree, agree, agree

but not on the "every last person in this nation" part. We aren't a hive, we are all individuals and I have always opposed the DP. I'm no more responsible for it than I am for invading Iraq.

[MohRokTah]

14. Sadly, you bear responsibility for both.

We the people made a decision and acted on the decision.

We the people bear all of the responsibility for that decision.

We, as individuals, must accept that responsibility and act upon it to alter the opinions of our fellow citizens in order to redeem ourselves for our collective decisions.

It's the only way to atone for our collective sins against our brethren.

[Boreal]

15. Nonsense

That's as stupid as original sin.

I also don't live in a DP state, so there's that, too.

[morningfog]

33. We all live in a death penalty state: the United States.

It is still permitted at the federal level in all states. It is still permitted under the US constitution. Whether you admit it, you still own it to some degree.

[alittlelark]

17. I have the same opinion from a different viewpoint....

....who am I to judge?

Lock up the freaks for the rest of their years... but I, and our society have no moral authority to 'judge them'... much less KILL THEM.

Plus...way too many have been proven innocent after their 'death penalty' judgement.

If they are guilty let them lives their natural lives w/it hanging like a stinking trout around their necks.

If innocent......

[flvegan]

18. It's revenge, not punishment.

An exceptionally emotional response embraced by idiots.

[JDPriestly]

21. My reason is kind of a different point of view of your reason, MohRokTah.

I don't want to kill anyone. Therefore, I don't want to ask anyone to kill someone in my place. I don't want to be a murderer and I don't want to ask someone to murder in my stead.

My reason is basically the same as yours, except I apply the principle very intimately with myself. I don't want "to be dragged down to the level of the murderer and become no better than the murderer."

[awoke_in_2003]

22. I, too, once supported the death penalty...

then I realized it was not justice but vengeance.

[needledriver]

25. Any society which arms its police with lethal force

has already fully accepted death as an instrument of justice.

Whether that death was executed by a highly stressed individual making a splt second judgment, or as a result of a trial by a jury of the accused's peers, society as a whole still owns a measure of that execution.

Police kill innocent bystanders. This is no less a tragedy than the state killing innocent inmates, yet we tolerate the societal cost of street level law enforcement while clutching our pearls and wringing our hands over the idea that imposing a sentence of death somehow lowers us as a whole.

We're already lower. The death penalty rides around on every police officer's hip. If your conscience demands that you advocate for the disarmament of police as well as the elimination of the death penalty, I applaud your moral stance.

If you are not willing to deprive the police of the tools they need to preserve public safety, you have no moral justification to deprive the state of the tools it uses to promote the same ends.

[morningfog]

30. Your position is not logical.

First off, let me say I oppose police being armed with deadly force as routine. And am absolutely opposed to the death penalty, without exception.

However, your position that one has to be anti-arming if cops to have sufficient morality to oppose the death penalty doesn't make sense. Police are armed for more reasons than to administer justice. Indeed, the only justified use of deadly order ever, in my opinion, is to prevent immediate death of another. That has nothing to do with justice or the death penalty. It has to do with exigency. Police use of deadly force in exigenr circumstances is not at all similar to execution after years on death row.

[needledriver]

42. So what you're saying is it's ok for the state to kill somebody

before they kill someone else, but it's not ok for the state to kill somebody after they kill someone else.

My point is that your moral authority is defined when you say it's ok for the state to kill somebody.

[morningfog]

43. The only time a use of deadly force is ever justified, by any person, state or otherwise,

is when it is to immediately prevent a person from killing someone.

Your point is silly. You are suggesting that the only morally pure position is all or none and you fail to see the difference between stopping a gunman on a rampage to save lives and executing someone who has been neutralized and incapacitated for decades in an act of vengeance.

[aikoaiko]

31. The death penalty is not murder because it is not an illegal killing by definition.

And I'm still fine with it under strict conditions.

[MohRokTah]

32. By that description, the Holocaust was not murder because it was not illegal.

German law allowed the Holocaust to happen legally.\

It only became illegal ex post facto.

Definitions are fun.

[aikoaiko]

36. Was anyone charged with murder, per se, in connection with the Holocaust.

Real question, not snark.

[Major Nikon]

39. I'm sure some were, most weren't, but this is nothing but a red herring to your original point

Which was that state sanctioned killing is technically not murder because it's legal under the law.

The idea that the state gets to decide who can be killed, ergo the legal definition of murder is not met is a circular argument.

Our system is not and never will be perfect. The standard of guilt is not absolute. The police and investigators can and do lie and make mistakes in their investigation. Prosecutors, judges, and witnesses can and do lie and make mistakes in the course of justice. Regardless of how perfect we attempt to make the system, the statistical inevitability is that if you terminate enough criminals, eventually you will put innocent people to death. Most reasonable folks would equate killing innocent people to murder regardless of semantics.

So the only real question is how many innocent people are you willing to kill/terminate/murder/socially uncouple/whatthefuckever in order to preserve a system which has zero benefit to society and is fundamentally flawed in a number of different ways?

[Jgarrick]

40. +1

[Tommy_Carcetti]

38. Exactly.

I couldn't have said it better myself.