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Death Penalty

I live in Britain, which as you probably know doesn't have capital punishment. How many of you are for it, and how many against? My own opinion is absolutely no, but then that's just me. The only time this came up, was in M.S. class, and I was the only person that thought it was wrong.

If you can be bothered to know what I think (I can’t see why you would). There was a case here in Britain about fifty years ago, (I can’t remember the names) two friends were escaping across a roof. They were cornered by the police, one drew a gun, the one behind (who was young (I can’t remember how young)) told the one with the gun to “let them have it”. The friend fired and killed four policemen. In court the person who shouted out was accused of egging on (don’t know legal term) and was hanged. He was later cleared, but only after he was killed. In my opinion, if just one innocent person is killed, you can’t do it.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Robert Grimm on January 6, 2010 at 9:16pm

In theory, I like the concept of the death penalty for removing people from society that we can't afford to have running around loose. Theoretically, I would like the death penalty to replace life in prison and to be expanded to cover a wider range of crimes.

In practice, that can't work. The only way it would be acceptable is if we could know with certainty that a person is guilty. Since we can't know anything outside of math with certainty, we need to abolish the death penalty entirely.

Permalink Reply by MaleficVTwin on January 6, 2010 at 9:21pm

100% in agreement.

Permalink Reply by Aiden on January 6, 2010 at 9:31pm

I fully support the use of the death penalty, and I would also like to see the death penalty expanded to cover a wider range of crimes, especially rape and child molestation.

Permalink Reply by Euan Mcintosh on January 6, 2010 at 9:34pm

And the possibility of innocent people dying?

Permalink Reply by Aiden on January 7, 2010 at 9:02am

How often does that really happen though? I'd need to see some hard numbers before I'd even consider that possibility.

Permalink Reply by Max Polun on January 7, 2010 at 9:32am

I admittedly don't have hard numbers, but there are many cases of people getting off of death row because of DNA evidence.

Permalink Reply by Stephen Turner on July 6, 2010 at 6:59am

Once is one time too many.

Permalink Reply by Robert on April 28, 2010 at 1:24pm

I am stating that even if we did know for certainty it would still be murder to kill someone strapped to a chair or gurney, helpless. Again, exactly the same as what they did.

Permalink Reply by Jared Lardo on July 31, 2010 at 7:05pm

mur·der
–noun
1. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law [...]

It would be killing and surely wrong but it would not be murder.

Permalink Reply by Susan Stanko on January 7, 2010 at 9:53am