VGC Debate/Poll: The Death Penalty

[elprincipe]

Tyrannical said:

elprincipe said:
For those of you who seem to think it's cheaper to execute someone (as if that is a reasonable argument anyway), here's what you need to know: it's not. Read here:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty

The main reason it costs more is because of court costs, which are astronomical because of the exhaustive appeals process demanded by the death penalty. You could argue that we should streamline the appeals process, but that is a decidedly uncomfortable argument for most since we already have had people freed from death row due to new evidence (or reexamination of DNA evidence) proving them innocent.

This is just another one of the anti-death penalty lies. Don't be fooled by them.

They wouldn't let you execute someone caught red handed, on tape, with 50 eye witnesses,and DNA evidence,  and a signed confession without the same length appeal.

It is more expensive because the death penalty opponents made it that way. They added unnecessary apeals and processes for the purpose of making the death penalty too expensive.

They just love to talk about cherry picked cases where "oh noes, he could be innocent" and never the cases where the amount of evidence is 100%. How about those we hang those 100% guilties within two weeks of the guilty verdict?

Well, since we have, as I stated in the earlier post, freed a fair number of people off of death row because new evidence was found proving them innocent, I'm not sure I share your description of "unnecessary appeals and processss."  If, after all these "unnecessary" things, we have still found innocent people guilty, I'm certainly not for reducing or eliminating them, unless you have a more foolproof system, which I doubt.

You are certainly not a lawyer if you think it's that simple, having a lot of "100% guilty" cases (disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer either).  Did you know sometimes people confess to crimes they didn't commit?  Perhaps police were able to extract a confession under interrogation from someone who didn't commit the crime?  It has happened, you know.  It's happened many times.  Under your system those innocent (maybe stupid/naive/whatever, but innocent) people are put to death.  Where is the justice in that?

Personally, not even taking into account my moral objection to government putting people to death, I would prefer to keep a million guilty people alive behind bars than to have any reasonable chance of executing an innocent person.