Lets have a heated debate. Death Sentence: Yes or No

[Herne Hill Seagull]

Chances of a wrong conviction are now very slim. Its not the 1960s anymore.

Would you want a wrongly accused friend or relative to take their chance on a 'very slim' possibility? The only acceptable 'chance' if you're to have capital punishment is zero, which is simply not going to happen. I agree with Tooting, it's an enormously emotive issue, and any argument based on morality alone will look pretty weak when faced with a bereaved parent, say.

However, there are also parents out there who have been bereaved wrongly by the state - I'd suggest the arguments pro-capital punishment would look pretty weak faced with their grief, too. That particular blade cuts on both sides....

 

[tedebear]

when I say life I don't mean 6 or 7 years with the chance of getting out in 4. I also believe that they should not get "perks" that prisoners these days seems to get. They are in prison for a reason and not to get the latest technology or gyms to while away the hours. Nothing annoys me more than these prisioner right groups. If the tax payer has to foot the bill to keep them there the less they get the better. Give them plenty of spare solitude time to reflect on what they have done. Prison should be a deterent .

Completely agree - what is all that about! Life means life and prison means hard work reflecting on what you've done, not being able to run your drug cartel or catch up on eastenders in the comfort of your prison issue lounge chair!!

 

[Barnham Seagull]

Yes!

If the evidence is water tight, and for murder only not manslaughter.

 

[Franks Wild Years]

No, never. If you believe that taking someones like is morally wrong then how could you sanction a state taking someones life ?
Either way its family and loved ones who are left with the unimagionable grief following someones death.
Add on miscarriage of justice and the examples of say the USA where it doesn't seem to act as a deterant, all adds up to no.

When it comes to crimes against humanity does it not question our own humanity if our only answer is to kill someone?

Saddam should rot for the rest of his life with no privilages reflecting on the misery he's caused other people.

 

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

By commiting some of the most heinous crimes such as paedophilia (and I dont mean someone shagging a 15 year old) im talking about the recent **** who stole that kid from its bath and committed horrendous acts

As far as im concerned they have forfeited their right to live.

Society is too liberal these days.

 

[Meade's Ball]

How can anyone decide which murder is foul enough to warrant the slaughter of it's wielder or which rings the bells of the nation's demented enough to make them silenced by the doer's death?

It's like saying any rapist ought to be raped in reply. Although, i would watch a repetitive rapist get shoved in a room of amorous badgers, blindfolded and each private, desperate humpworthy quadruped sprayed with an attractive cologne. The rapist would have a badgerwomb with a view scented and dangled in his midriff for the whiskerer to penetrate.

 

[jonny.rainbow]

No.

I also don't buy into the "let'em rot" psychology.

Prison isn't just about punishment, it's about rehabillitation. If a person can change their attitudes and morals in such a way during their sentence, that they can offer something to society, rather than be a blemish on it then why keep them behind bars?

 

[Gritt23]

There are some crimes that you hear about, where I can't help think the perpetrators are so sick and dangerous, that the thought they could be back on the streets one day, just makes me feel so angry.

If life really did mean life, then perhaps I'd feel differently, but as it is, some people should be facing the death penalty.

 

[Brovion]

Totally, utterly 100% opposed for two main reasons

1 - 'Unsafe convictions'. These DO still occur. To name but two current ones: I'll put money on the fact that the man convicted of killing Jill Dando (Barry George) didn't do it. Likewise the case against Michael Stone (convicted of killing Lin and Megan Russell) isn't looking too watertight any more.

2 - Moral grounds. I don't want to be part of a society that believes killing people is justice. I want us to move on from the Old Testament view of crime and punishment.

 

[magoo]

Defo yes!!

and televise it with the lottery and have celebrity executioners!

 

[Man of Harveys]

No country has the right to think itself as civilised if killing people is part of its judicial process, IMHO.

 

[NMH]

Who's business is it?

I'd have to say that first the trial should be fair and correct, then the person should be sentenced in a way that is deemed suitable to the people that person has wronged.

 

[Buzzer]

Never - how can you sentence to death someone you find guilty of crimes against humanity?

It's perverse.

 

[Bad Ash]

No.

I also don't buy into the "let'em rot" psychology.

Prison isn't just about punishment, it's about rehabillitation. If a person can change their attitudes and morals in such a way during their sentence, that they can offer something to society, rather than be a blemish on it then why keep them behind bars?

So would you like the job of judging whether a man who has murdered and raped in the past had changed his moral code and should be allowed back into society?

 

[BensGrandad]

the Guildford four .

They were GUILTY no question or doubt it was a cock up by the prosecution that got them off on a retrial.

 

[Shegull]

They were GUILTY no question or doubt it was a cock up by the prosecution that got them off on a retrial.

How can you be so sure

 

[Herne Hill Seagull]

They were GUILTY no question or doubt it was a cock up by the prosecution that got them off on a retrial.

Even if that were the case Gramps (and I fail to see how there can be 'no doubt' given the admitted pre-trial cock-ups, but that's another argument), said cock-up could be made the other way round and an innocent executed.

 

[Shegull]

By commiting some of the most heinous crimes such as paedophilia (and I dont mean someone shagging a 15 year old) im talking about the recent **** who stole that kid from its bath and committed horrendous acts

As far as im concerned they have forfeited their right to live.

Society is too liberal these days.

I think its a foregone conclusion that everybody is sickened by these kinds of crimes but if I was the family involved I would feel far more satisfaction knowing that they were suffering hardship with a life sentence hanging over their head and the very real possibility that they would never see the outside world again. Visting rights should also be severely curtailed. Hanging or the like is too good and too quick for these kind of people. At the end of the day if their life is taken they know nothing about it and are "at peace". Make them suffer is what I say - just like they made their victims do

 

[Robot Chicken]

 

[BensGrandad]

I knew police officers who were involved in the case and they all agreed that the reason that the courts found their convictions unsafe, note they were never found to be not guilty, was due to the evidence given by the then Chief Constable of Surrey Sir David McNee, later to be Chief of the Met whose evidence was not reliable but all other police officers connected with gave good evidence. These particualar officers told me directly after the case that they would 'get away with it' on appeal after they had heard McNees evidence.

The police have consistently said that they were not looking for anybody else after the retrial. They were convinced and still are that they got the right people but our justice system let them off.