Your Opinion Of The Death Penalty...

[Chvyblzr1972]

Sleep in a tent? Are you crazy or do you just want them to be able to walk the streets at will? I want some concrete and steel between violent offenders and the rest of the world.

I believe he is talking about the Tent City Prison in Arizona. They are surrounded by walls and fences, they just live in non climate controlled tents. The food is not all that great either. I saw something on the Discovery Channel on this prison and they had like a 23% return rate which was alot better then the return rate at a regular style prison

[YALE]

Do you h ave any info backing that up? I am not doubting it but I am curious as to what the cost difference is from execution/housing them for 20 years.

Post number 20 is what a cursory google search yeilded. Ironically, the legislation that was designed to streamline the appeals process (and it has, you basically only get one appeal now, without it becoming a civil rights trial or something crazy) has led to stricter requirements for trying someone with the intention of seeking the death penalty. It actually costs more to conduct the trial than it would to simply lock them up.

[BP]

I guess I'm the only one here against it.

I'm against it. We aren't gods, we shouldn't be deciding who lives and who dies. That being said, I'm all for watching a bunch of child molesters fighting crack dealers to the death in a ring for sport. Then take the survivors and send them to SE Asia with metal detectors and use them to clear out mine fields.

Hey if they die it's god deciding, not jurors. In the mean time they are giving back to society with some great entertainment.

[03trubluGT]

Feeding and housing them for 20 years is way cheaper than executing them, and in my opinion, a way worse punishment.

Then we need to quit giving them gyms, cable TV, college educations, etc. and start making them work/self sufficient.

[YALE]

Then we need to quit giving them gyms, cable TV, college educations, etc. and start making them work/self sufficient.

Making incarceration cheaper still makes my argument for me. If it's cheaper to lock them up because you took all those priveleges away, it's even cheaper than trying folks for the death penalty. Again, the trial is what's expensive about the death penalty. The link I posted said the Lubbock court spent an average of $3000 per case when it sought life in prison, as opposed to $1.8 million on a death penalty trial. Life in prison is about a third the cost of a death penalty trial, all told. That said, I only googled that because I'd heard similar statistics before, and that was the first thing I found. If someone has some other data, I'm all ears. There's a citation on their, "facts sheet," that says Texas spends an average of $2.3 million per death penalty conviction, but that's from 1992! FYI, that's counting the total cost of those trials, divided by the number of convictions.

EDIT: I'd like to point out that because the expense of the investigation is driven by policy, you have to include all the trials seeking the death penalty that didn't result in a conviction into the average cost per execution. While this increases the average cost per execution, the cost wouldn't exist without the policy, so it's a valid estimate.

[jluv]

I believe that if you kill an innocent person on purpose, then you should be killed, too. And it's ridiculous to let them sit for years before it's done.

I also think that one innocent person put to death by mistake is one too many, and completely unacceptable. If we can't get it right, we shouldn't be doing it.

So, make sure we got it right, and then kill them swiftly.

[Stunter Bob]

Eye for an eye. Its only fair

[Chvyblzr1972]

Feeding and housing them for 20 years is way cheaper than executing them, and in my opinion, a way worse punishment.

Lets put this in perspective. A box of cheap bullets at wal-fart cost 24 bucks for 100 rounds of 9mm. Thats 100 inmates on death row. How is that cheaper then feeding them for 20 years. You can't feed 100 inmates for 20 years on 24 bucks.

[YALE]

Lets put this in perspective. A box of cheap bullets at wal-fart cost 24 bucks for 100 rounds of 9mm. Thats 100 inmates on death row. How is that cheaper then feeding them for 20 years. You can't feed 100 inmates for 20 years on 24 bucks.

Once more, the execution isn't the expensive part. The trial with the intent to execute is.

[asphaltjunkie]

I think we should use them all for authentic movie stunts. Making a movie and have a scene where a guy falls out of a plane? Want to make it look real? Grab a death row inmate and shove him out the door!

[Broncojohnny]

I'm all for it.

But I think that if there is a chance that DNA evidence can exonerate someone then the test should be done, it should be federal law. I get really pissed off when I hear of cases where prisoners are demanding a DNA test and prosecutors are arguing against it. The entire process should be in pursuit of the truth, not in pursuit of some lawyer defining his career. I believe there are plenty of people in that part of the legal profession who deserve worse than death.

For the most horrible crimes we should bring back drawing and quartering and burning at the stake. If you kill children and the evidence is there that you did it then you should die in the most horrific and barbaric manner possible, you should beg for death at the end.

[clevelandkid]

Last year, we executed 46 criminals, nation wide. 46 out of appx 2.3 MILLION people who are currently in prison, or 7.2 MILLION people who are in the system.

You mean to tell me that only 1 out of every 57,500 people in prison deserves to be put to death?

The system needs to be fixed so that clear cut cases are processed immediately, and that criminals or executed quickly and cost effectively. Look at the AZ shooter..... Every body knows what happened there, plenty of witnesses, plenty of evidence, hell - he was caught w/ smoking gun in hand.

Why is he still alive, at an expense to the tax payer? I think it would be very easy to justify taking him out back and shooting him, today. There would be no public outcry over his death. There are plenty of cases where the evidence is overwhelming - it should not take years or decades to process them.

Other criminals that should be put to death are the ones that will be too old to add any value to society when they get out. Why put somebody in for 30 years, have them get out at 72 and retire to a nursing home?

We need to reduce the prison population dramatically to save some money and to send a message. If a criminal thought he might get the chair by Saturday if he does a drive by tonight, maybe he'll think twice.

[46Tbird]

I'm a little more OT than NT on this one. I'm for it.

But there should be two requirements: 1) the victim's family to petition for it, and 2) either DNA evidence or an admission of guilt. We HAVE to make sure we're executing the right guy.

[svauto-erotic855]

I believe he is talking about the Tent City Prison in Arizona. They are surrounded by walls and fences, they just live in non climate controlled tents. The food is not all that great either. I saw something on the Discovery Channel on this prison and they had like a 23% return rate which was alot better then the return rate at a regular style prison

The tent city in AZ is a county jail and most people are there doing very short sentences (1 year or less) for minor offenses. For the most part no one there is trying to escape. Prison on the other hand is where we send people who have long sentences. To control inmates you have to control their movement. A prison made of tents will not do a good job of controlling movement with out adding more of what drives up the cost of housing inmates. Union prison guards are the most expensive thing in the whole prison system.

I have a problem with the death penalty because of the bureaucracy that is our legal system and I don't trust the people who run it. I know a man who tried death penalty in Dallas County who openly admits (after a few drinks)to trying men who he knew to be not guilty of the charge; he regularly got convictions against innocent men. He brags that anyone can send a guilty man to his death but you have to be a bad mother fucker to get an innocent man the needle. A TV movie called "The thin blue line" was made about one of his cases. A case needs to be pretty cut and dry with the accused not denying the crime for me to trust the outcome of a capital murder trail.

[Blackpony]

So, fuck due process? What if you were wrongly accused?

We need an express lane for DNA confirmed killings and child molesters.

This^^^ Allow me to get a little detailed, if there is without a doubt that person is guilty, see previous post for steps..