| McDonaldsGuy said: I also find it funny you complain about the cost of the death penalty being irrelevant. The reason the cost of the death penalty is so high is because of appeals - according to you, life without prison is worse than the death penalty. If that were true... THEN WHY THE HELL ARE SO MANY MURDERERS APPEALING THEIR DEATH PENALTY SENTENCE?!?!?! |
Okay, so you really went on a tangent. I don't care about the history. I don't care about something Locke said.
I'll address a few of your points though:
-Prison rape is not a myth. I never claimed that it happened everyday and I never claimed it happened to everybody, but it does happen and it isn't really uncommon. The statistics vary quite a bit, but saying it is a myth is ridiculous.
-"Prisoners prefer Life in Prison": As I stated, that is the case in some cases, and in other cases the prisoner prefers the death penalty. There is also a fairly high occurence of suicide in prison. While the prison system does need to be ammended, prison still isn't really a nice place. On top of that, death is an out from punishment. Lethal injection is a painless procedure. Additionally, finding cases of prisoners who prefer death isn't exactly difficult. A quick google search should give you at least a few. Using absolutes like "always" just weakens your argument because you are simply wrong.
-"Cost due to appeals": I've already explained why appeals exist. Its difficult to rationalize standing behind a position where you want to both get rid of appeals and increase the standard for a Death penalty verdict...
I actually find it sort of funny when you talk about innocent people on death row who have been set free right after talking about how horrible the appeals system is.
-"Life without parole set free":
Debra Gindorf - Let out essentially because of mental illness. Seems like the death penalty would be a bigger bastardization of justice here.
David Sweat/Richard Matt - Wasn't exactly set free and will likely be caught soon
Cornelius Lewis - He actually got off from death row and is getting life imprisonment instead from the sources I found.
-"No innocent person has ever been executed": Typically cases are closed when the suspect is dead and appeals are over. However, statements like this
“If you look at the numbers in our study, at how many errors are made, then you cannot believe that we haven’t executed any innocent person – that would be wishful thinking.”
surrounding a study stating that 4% of those on death row are innocent sort of invalidates your statement (Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/28/death-penalty-study-4-percent-defendants-innocent )
-"Life without prison is even better according to you": What? Either your logic centers are malfunctioning or there was some typo here...
-"Why are there so many appeals if death is better than life?": Well for one, some degree of appeals are actually mandatory. For a multitude of reasons, appeals occur regardless of the input of the prisoner. On top of that, as I said, there are some who prefer life and some who prefer death.
-My conclusion stands...even if you choose to dispute one part of this that at best is arguable, the reasons for the death penalty are extremely lacking:
"In the end, the death penalty isn't better for the victims, it isn't better for the victims families, it isn't better for the falsely accused, it isn't really worse for the truthfully accused, it isn't better for the taxpayer, it isn't better for the country's image, it isn't a better deterrent (according to many sources including the ACLU and 88% of criminologists) and it is morally questionable....so whats the point?"
