Death Penalty

"The best argument in favour of the DP is that it serves justice to the people who do wrong."- Really? So if you murdered someone let's murder you because of a mistake you made. PEOPLE make mistakes! So if I made a mistake I would want a second chance. Do not be mistaken I fully believe we need consequences for actions. However killing a person who has killed another person does not at all seem as a fitting punishment. What crime needs to be committed in order for the death penalty to take place? Murder? Rape? Arson? By arguing that even one crime deserves the death penalty, you are basically saying every single person who has committed on of those crimes deserves death. "Killing someone provides closure and serves justice." Let's say someone committed a murder and you knew who did it but his lawyer got him to walk as a free man. Now would you be okay with killing that man because that would be serving justice like you said? "Since the reinstatement of the modern death penalty, 87 people have been freed from death row because they were later proven innocent. That is a demonstrated error rate of 1 innocent person for every 7 persons executed. When the consequences are life and death, we need to demand the same standard for our system of justice as we would for our airlines... It is a central pillar of our criminal justice system that it is better that many guilty people go free than that one innocent should suffer... Let us reflect to ensure that we are being just. Let us pause to be certain we do not kill a single innocent person. This is really not too much to ask for a civilized society." Russ Feingold, JD US Senator (D-WI) April 26, 2000 "In the course of my work, I believe I have reviewed every state and federal study of the costs of the death penalty in the past 25 years. One element is common to all of these studies: They all concluded that the cost of the death penalty amounts to a net expense to the state and the taxpayers. Or to put it differently,the death penalty is clearly more expensive than a system handling similar cases with a lesser punishment. [It] combines the costliest parts of both punishments: lengthy and complicated death penalty trials, followed by incarceration for life... Everything that is needed for an ordinary trial is needed for a death penalty case, only more so: " More pre-trial time... " More experts... " Twice as many attorneys... " Two trials instead of one will be conducted: one for guilt and one for punishment. " And then will come a series of appeals during which the inmates are held in the high security of death row." Richard C. Dieter, MS, JD Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center Feb. 7, 2007 CON: "Ultimately, the moral question surrounding capital punishment in America has less to do with whether those convicted of violent crime deserve to die than with whether state and federal governments deserve to kill those whom it has imprisoned. The legacy of racial apartheid, racial bias, and ethnic discrimination is unavoidably evident in the administration of capital punishment in America. Death sentences are imposed in a criminal justice system that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. This is an immoral condition that makes rejecting the death penalty on moral grounds not only defensible but necessary for those who refuse to accept unequal or unjust administration of punishment." Bryan Stevenson, JD Professor of Law at New York University School of Law 2004