ok.. so your saying that if some one came up and "killed/raped/ate" (possibly in that order) your loved one you would be perfectly content with that person getting just a slap on the wrist and let back out into society??

you my friend have lived a very sheltered life.

Guess what... no one on death row is getting a slap on the wrist and being set free. They're staying in fucking jail where they belong. But please, don't let that fact get in the way of your death parade.

I love capital punishment threads. This is ALWAYS the first defence. Oooh... what if it happened to you! Gah.

Of course if it happened to someone I know I would want the person to suffer. But that's an irrational, emotional reaction and that is NOT how you base laws, especially criminal ones.

so my tax dollars pay to give them 3 squares a day, an exercise and education program, cable tv and whatever the hell else they want?

screw that. kill em and give the money to schools and teachers so that maybe alot of the miscreants we have now will learn to respect the law and elders.

There's no moral justification for killing guilty prisoners either.

um...

A death penalty case always costs more.

There also have been numerous people freed by DNA. If just one innocent person is put to death it isn't worth it. Plus I think living in a cage for the rest of your life is a fate worse then death.

You killed my father, prepare to die.

Oh... you're one of those guys who thinks prison is all sunshine and lollipops. Right.

You are seriously misinformed.

Prison "benefits" are few and far between and are there as much to keep inmates controllable as to rehabilitate them - ask any veteran prison guard if you doubt this.

They aren't watching HBO, they are watching a few heavily censored channels. They aren't using stairmasters, they have some basic weight plates and a yard fenced with razor wire they use for an hour a day if they've been good. They don't get "whatever the hell else they want".

If you think prison is a country club, I invite you to spend a mere 3 days - 72 hours - in a state or federal prison, then tell me how you think it would be to spend 10 years or more there.

Prison educational and work programs help inmates get GEDs and other useful basic skills that help them employed when they get out, so they don't go back to jail, saving "your tax dollars". Think welding and line cook, not Princeton MBA. After all, it's cheapest in the long run to have ex-prisoners become responsible members of society and not sent back to jail, right?

As noted above, death penalty cases cost far more than imprisonment. How many innocent people need to be put to death to justify the punishment?

sooo.. by your reason, ol "chucky" manson should be let out into society cuz lord knows hes gonna run right off and be a baptist preacher..

Keep changing your argument and maybe you'll find one that makes sense, but I don't think the rest of us have that much time to waste.

No death penalty does not equal Manson on the streets, no matter how much know-nothings want to make it seem so.

Seriously. People act like getting rid of the death penalty would cause the doors on all our prisons to fling open, letting black people and mexicans run rampant through suburbia, raping and pillaging and shitting on bald eagles everywhere.

Give me a fucking break. The only thing that would happen if we got rid of the death penalty would be that people wouldn't die by the state's hand anymore. In cases where felons are up for the deatlh penalty, but instead get jail time, it's usually at least one life sentence without parole. They aren't going anywhere. They're probably dying in jail. The only difference is that we aren't killing them.

And even if they don't die in jail, who's to say that they don't deserve to be set free after 30, 40, or 50 plus years in prison? I mean... if we're too afraid to set prisoners free after they serve their sentence, doesn't that reflect really, really badly on the performance of our "corrections facilities?"

The purpose of jail isn't to lock people up, throw away the key, and forget about them until they die. The purpose of jail is to keep prisoners segregated while we reform them into valuable members of society, then let them out. I think people forget that. People seem to think "once a felon, always a felon." That seems unfair. If someone has broken the law, went to jail, done their time, and been set free, then shouldn't we at least give them a chance to try again before we judge them?

If that isn't the case, and jail really is just a fucked up holding tank where we throw away people who break the laws, then we need to re-think the nature of jail itself. Because that isn't that it's supposed to be.

I hear Jail and Prison thrown around interchangeability a lot recently and there is a difference. Jail is where people are held for one year or less. Prison is when someone is confined for more then one year. There are other differences but that's the basic.

Dude, that was fucking poetry.

Thank you.

You can't actually believe that they're just going to let people free do you? Please tell me you don't HONESTLY believe that.

How are you interpreting people's opposition to the death penalty as them wanting to release violent criminals "out into society?"

Not only is this "argument" for the death penalty completely preposterous, it's not even relevant--Charles Manson isn't on Death Row.