Pew: Less Than Half of Americans Now Support the Death Penalty

[The_Doctor]

A shame. I favor the death penalty strongly.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

A shame. I favor the death penalty strongly.

Me too but it's understandable.  It's used so infrequently it's not an effective deterrent any longer.  Oh well, life goes on (even for those who it shouldn't go on for).

[OneJ]

Step 3: Ask the criminal if assissted suicide may be the answer for him or her.

I don't see how this is different from the death penalty, unless you are an Edo-period samurai who thinks "being ordered to commit seppuku" is more honorable or whatever than being executed neat.

I thought about that.

[Meclazine for Israel]

How accurate are these data?

Really, after what we saw in the election, there is a clear deviation from reality in these polls and it anything, most polls are taken by liberals for pro-liberal arguments.

So I would take that graph with a grain of salt.

If the country is becoming more right wing, which it has thanks to Trump, then the opposite would be true.

[Goldwater]

How accurate are these data?

Really, after what we saw in the election, there is a clear deviation from reality in these polls and it anything, most polls are taken by liberals for pro-liberal arguments.

So I would take that graph with a grain of salt.

If the country is becoming more right wing, which it has thanks to Trump, then the opposite would be true.

Not that I'm saying this poll is necessarily accurate, but it's entirely possible for the country to move right-wing in some aspects and left-wing in others.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Well that's true. I wish we had the death penalty in Australia.

[Bojack Horseman]

In 1830, a woman in Detroit was murdered, and the accused was the victim's husband. He was quickly tried, convicted, and hanged publicly for everyone to watch in downtown Detroit under the laws of the then-territory of Michigan. Five years later, another man made a deathbed confession to the crime. Religious leaders, newspapers, and townspeople alike decried the spectacle, and eventually the Legislature listened.

In 1847, my home state of Michigan became not only the first state in the union, but also the first English-speaking jurisdiction in the world to abolish capital punishment in response to miscarriages of justice. In 1962, Michigan wrote a new constitution, and Republicans and Democrats alike voted together to enshrine in our constitution that Michigan will not have the death penalty.

The arguments in favor of capital punishment only make sense if you don't put any thought into them. They say it reduces crime, yet states with the death penalty have higher murder rates than those without. They say it's a deterrent to murder, but nobody sits down and thinks, "Boy if only my state didn't have the death penalty. If we didn't, I'd blow that guy's head off!" They say it saves the taxpayers money, and yet life without parole is tens of millions of dollars cheaper in the end.

We'll never know the number of innocent people who were convicted and executed before the advent of DNA that would have set them free. We do know that hundreds of people sat on death row for years until technology caught up before their appeals were exhausted and were exonerated by newly-available testing.

Then they start screaming "THINK OF THE VICTIMS!!!!" Well what about them? When there's extreme emotions involved, there's not a tree tall enough to hang him from. The justice system is supposed to be the cooler head to prevail in intense situations to deliver a fair and just outcome, not to stoop to the anger-fueled desires of the victim or their families. One of the reasons our prisons are so crowded and such a financial drain is because victims get a say in sentencing and parole. If someone who committed a murder has been incarcerated for 25 years and in that time been rehabilitated and is deemed no longer a threat to society, why should the victim's family who's never going to think rationally be able to veto his parole? Multiply this across multiple cases across multiple states, and it adds up.

I oppose capital punishment and while there's not a state south of the Mason-Dixon line where it will ever be illegal, I think more and more states will come around on this issue and end this failed experiment once and for all.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Interesting post Wolverine and thanks for the great history lesson from michigan. Enjoyed the perspective.

I have one about Tasmania in Australia, but that is another conversation.

As someone once told me on these forums. It is the United STATES of America, not the United States of AMERICA.

So Michigan certainly does have a valid part to play in this debate.

You tend to imply convicted felons are imprisoned for a duration that is excessive.

In Australia, we have the opposite problem.

A lot of serious crime is commited by persons with previous jail time.

So either they are not being imprisoned long enough or they arenjust learning their craft in prison.

This is particularly truw when it comes to crimes of a sexual nature.