So, what do we think?

[santaslittleunicorn]

lethal injection

Do you agree with the death penalty?

My primary thought so far, is, why has it taken 25 years?

Surely a death penalty should be executed (apologies) asap?

eyebrows or no eyebrows

I don't approve of the Death Penalty either, although I completely understand how the families of victims would want to see it used, a mixture of helplessness, anger and immense loss I suppose. The problem for me is that A} unless I am mistaken, I do not see any evidence that the use of it has had a deterrant factor in Countries such as America; B) It makes you a hypocrite and indeed a murderer yourself; C) There is always a risk of it's use on innocent people- it has happened, it will happen again; D) Life imprisonment is a lifetime sentence; death is a sentence for the innocent family of the offender who are left behind; E) It seems to be the punishment of choice for right winger types who believe themselves to be Christians, yet appear never to have heard the phrases 'Thou shalt not kill', 'Judge not lest ye be judged', 'He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.'.

gills or no gills

You will be amazed to learn I too think it's wrong.

look at this- child executions in America

I think that capital punishment is wrong, just wrong. I don't doubt that if something awful happened to someone I love I would want to kill the perpetrator but that's very different to state-sanctioned murder.

Maybe Tricero has it right when she says we shouldn't bother with suicide watch, though if murderers are free to take their own lives then that leaves no possibilty of them confronting their sins and perhaps giving much needed information re the whereabouts of bodies or what actually occured. Will Ian Huntley ever tell what happened to those two girls, I wonder?

To add my two pence worth on this particular case, after reading his autobiography (Stanley 'tookie' Williams- Redemption) my thoughts were always that he was convicted of a crime and he should stay in jail but what good would it do killing him? Surely it would be better for the anti-gang campaigns to let him live and carry on his work. As he once said 'teenagers don't listens to adults because they don't understand, well I do and I've been there and I can tell you why it is wrong'.
He was also nominated for 6 nobel peace prizes for his anti-gang work!

I am very much against the death penalty, in any circumstances. IMO there are two main arguments against it, a moral one and a practical one. Not everyone may agree with the moral one, but it's hard to argue with the practical one.

The practical reason why the death penalty is a bad idea is that it is impossible to get it right 100% of the time. Even if it looks 100% certain that a particular person committed a particular crime, can we be sure that there is no scrap of evidence that has been overlooked, no shred of unfair treatment in the trial or interrogation of that person which would render their conviction unstable? If someone is wrongly convicted of an offence and serves time for something they didn't do, that's bad enough. They might argue that no amount of financial compensation can make up for their loss of liberty; but at least we (society) can apologise and try to make up for the mistake. But if that person is dead?

And this leads into the moral argument for me. What kind of society is so secure in its own permanent 'rightness' that it can put people to death without stopping to wonder whether there might perhaps be some mistake? That confidence smacks of totalitarianism to me. I don't believe that it's ever right for a civilised society to commit what is essentially an uncivilised action. 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' is simply over-simplistic as a way of administering justice. People can often be rehabilitated. But even if they can't, let them stay in prison for life, let them be removed from the civilised society which would not want them as a member. But don't let the civilised society stoop to their level.

Can I quote a little section of a poem, as another thing to think about on this subject, suggesting that perhaps life may be a worse punishment than death?

(Eichmann was the Nazi responsible for the 'Final Solution', who once said that he would go to his grave laughing at the thought of the six million Jewish deaths on his conscience. The poem was written at the time of his trial in Jerusalem. He was put to death.)

taken from For Adolf Eichmann (Primo Levi)

Oh child of death, we do not wish you dead
May you live longer than anyone has ever lived
May you live on, sleepless, through five million nights
And may you be visted each night by the pain of each person who saw
Closing behind him the door which allowed for no return
And darkness falling around him
And the air crawling with death.

The only way I would oppose the death penalty is if life really meant life imprisonment with no possibility of release, which I don't think it does in this country.

Do not agree with the logic of taking a life for a life.

Do not agree with the Death Penalty.

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saadia - it does in the state involved. The clemency would have meannt this man would have sent his life being bars, with no parole options.

IMO, the death penalty is barbaric and does not belong in the civilised world. It is a legal murder. IMO murder is always wrong. Surely we have moved on from "eye for an eye"?

I do agree with harsher prison sentences, and tougher conditions, than we currently have though.

There's enough reasonable doubt that this bloke actually did it, for me to feel very uneasy about this execution.

One of the reasons Schwarzeneger rejected the plea for mercy, was that Tookie never expressed remorse - in other words, he refused to say he did the murder.

After 25 years and knowing that an admission of guilt would probably buy you your life, the fact that he stuck to his guns (as it were) and refused to say he did it and express remorse for it, makes me wonder. The American justice system doesn't have an impressive record on miscarriages of justice and the death penalty guarantees that a miscarriage of justice can't be undone.

I am against the state taking life, but if a victim's family carried out a private revenge for the murder of their loved one, I have to say I wouldnt blame them (unless they got the wrong person of course, bl*dy careless that would be). Clearly these 2 views are rather opposed, need to do some more thinking to rationalise them.

I have never agreed with the death penelty for the simple reason that there is no justification. The courts are set up for justice - not revenge. Under what circumstances can we justify taking anouthers life. If we kill them for killing aren't we lowering our selfs to their level? And then there's the only too real aspect that it could be a wrongful conviction.

I watched a documantry a while back on the death penelty in Texas. They had a catholic prison govonor who said was meeting the pope. When the producer of the film told him the pop was against the death penelty he said "Well, I respect him, but on this issue he's wrong". So much for defering to Rome.

They had a pole on Sunshine this morning. According to that 85% of the British population want the death penalty to be brought back in. That's scary!

I think a lot of people want the death penalty brought back in because they see horrible murderers being sentenced to life and the judge saying they will have to serve 15 years, when they're 25.

I suspect that if life meant life, not 15 years, support for the death penalty would decline quite dramatically. However, the costs involved with that would be huge - the number of murderers around now, compared to when the death penalty was abolished, is much much greater.

Bloss... surely that depends on what translation of the Bible you are using. Personally, I don't know what the original text says, but certainly the Latin Vulgate translation says 'non occides', that is, 'do not kill'. Would need someone who could go back to the original texts to tell us for certain though....

(Though my opposition to killing isn't actually a religious one, so how you translate this verse doesn't change how I feel about the death penalty personally.)

Sorry... I should parp myself really, but it does bother me that you say you are a Christian, but also that there are plenty of crimes which you feel merit the death penalty.

Did Jesus not teach forgiveness? What about turning the other cheek? What about the thief on the cross to whom he promised entry to paradise (not a murderer, OK, but a 'common criminal')? I don't think that Christianity teaches that we shouldn't worry about trying to live well and get things right in this world because God will make it all OK in the next. Should it not, rather, be our duty to try to make this world as perfect as possible (as much like Heaven as possible, if you like) while we are here. Even St Augustine, who was hugely pessimistic about this world and all that it stood for, still believed that human beings should try to live well within their earthly society (as long as that society didn't coerce them into actions that were incompatible with Christian beliefs).

OK OK... I will shut up now!

Not wanting to turn this into a religious debate but it depends where you look in the bible. In the old testiment it says "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" and therefore persumably a life for a life. But the new testiment say "turn the other cheek"

Even if you look at the translation as "Thou shalt not commit murder" it still depends on your definition of murder. Is it not murder just because the state says so? Are they, or we, qualified to make that definition?

Will go away now.

exactly jinglellbells. I agree with you totally.

Gemglebells, I don't want to turn it into a religious debate either, because for me the death penalty doesn't need that justification to make it wrong... and I'm not even particularly religious. However, in answer to your question about different parts of the Bible saying different things, there are instances in the gospels of Jesus breaking the 'old' Law (... can't remember exactly now, something about picking corn on the Sabbath...???), the point of which is that his 'new' law overrides the old one. (Which is why, for example, Christians don't have a problem with eating pork.) I don't know if that means, though, that Judaism would be more accepting of the 'rightness' of the death penalty. Would be interesting to know....

Gemglebells, I don't want to turn it into a religious debate either, because for me the death penalty doesn't need that justification to make it wrong... and I'm not even particularly religious. However, in answer to your question about different parts of the Bible saying different things, there are instances in the gospels of Jesus breaking the 'old' Law (... can't remember exactly now, something about picking corn on the Sabbath...???), the point of which is that his 'new' law overrides the old one. (Which is why, for example, Christians don't have a problem with eating pork.) I don't know if that means, though, that Judaism would be more accepting of the 'rightness' of the death penalty. Would be interesting to know....

Sorry for double post. Overly sensitive touchpad.