Tonight, Texas will perform its first execution of 2019.
This man was convicted of killing a Cop during a robbery.
[chron.com]
What is your opinion on executions?
Are you for or against it?
There are several reasons to oppose the death penalty:
The main issue that I have with capital punishment is that I don’t feel that it’s a power the government should have. When people support the death penalty, they don’t realize it but they’re supporting the theoretical possibility that it might be used on they themselves.
Once a criminal is arrested, what happens to them says little about them but much about us. How shall a decent society behave?
Most countries in the world have discontinued executions. All European countries have discontinued it. The U.S. has Saudi Arabia, China and Iran for company in this barbaric practice.
not allowing the death penalty for murder allows inmates to kill guards with impunity
So, you want to kill them for a crime yet to be committed in the future.
@dare2dream it's called "deterrent" last I checked all crimes have a punishment for crimes that havent been committed yet...check the statutes
@lerlo It has been settled among the experts on both sides of the death penalty issue that the DP is not a deterrent. We have the death penalty but lots of murders still happen.
@dare2dream and exactly how many of those "experts" interviewed someone who said I didnt kill someone because I didnt want to get death penalty? None. Don't believe everything you "read." We have lighthouses to keep boats from colliding. Do we know if they work? We don't get rid of lighthouses because we can't prove the negative. Far from "settled" that's like saying it's clear
@lerlo But research could easily be done to see if the number of boat wrecks decreased after the light house began functioning. Likewise, they could compare murder rates between states that do & don't have the death penalty, or see if a state's murder rate goes up or down when its death penalty laws change. But from what I've read, the death penalty is so seldom used, & decades after the crime when it is, that the possibility of being executed is not likely to be a big factor in someone deciding whether or not to kill another person. Of course, that line of thinking could also lead to the conclusion that we need to execute a lot more murderers....
@Carin no research will help prove the negative, that's why they call it deterrent. But it's clear that an inmate serving life could kill a guard and get no extra penalty--sometimes punishment is the object...and any guard not killed because the inmate didnt want to die for killing a guard is just a bonus.
@Carin and if you think loss of privileges is equivalent to a guard's life then we think differently. I'd love to see you tell that to the face of the widow or widower of that guard. In that instance, you'd get life for the first murder and then if you kill a guard in prison you get a time-out
@lerlo I support the death penalty.
I'm down the middle when it comes to death penalty. It doesn't necessarily deter murder. The person executing the death penalty is technically committing murder. There are serial killers that should probably get the death penalty as opposed to spending the rest of their natural lives in prison.
@maturin1919 : As we have seen in politics, you can make anything legal. Just change the law first.
@maturin1919 is abortion considered a legal or illegal murder?