Twenty years ago, most politicians in both parties supported the death penalty. But today, opposition to it has become increasingly bipartisan.
Democrats have always been more wary, but now more conservatives have also become convinced that capital punishment is another failed government program. In part, that's because the legal process for such cases is enormously expensive, even though few executions are ever carried out.
“When you look at how much money we’re spending, no one looks at that and thinks the death penalty works fine,” says Hannah Cox, national manager for Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, a pro-abolition group. “We’re seeing a real escalation as far as the number of Republican legislators who are sponsoring repeal bills.”
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7 comments:
The death penalty was supposed to be used as a crime deterrent. Now, no one gives a sh*t if they spend life in prison or get the death penalty. Plus, she you account for corrupt prosecutors and law enforcement who have, on many occasions, fabricated evidence to get a conviction, many people question the whole process. And, someone on death row, costs taxpayers much more in legal fees than life in prison.
In college (some 20 years ago) I had a group presentation to give and the topic was capital punishment, there were about 8 of us in the group, all of us supported the death penalty, at first.
When we started to research, we found that the death penalty was in no way a deterrent for crime at all, and that the cost to put someone on death row was astronomically higher than life in prison.
There was also the ethical problem of the state, sentencing someone to death. Implicitly, if the punishment for murder was murder, arguably that is a paradox... the state would be guilty.
Ultimately, the death penalty really had no positive outcome save for revenge or retribution....
The entire group that had been FOR capital punishment... after researching the facts, was now against.
There have been cases where a death penalty is overturned because new evidence exonerates the accused. You can't take back death, and it's too high a price to be wrong.
I like the idea of putting murders to death but I would be satisfied with VERY VERY hard labor 12 hours a day 6 days a week. Even GOD rested on the seventh day.
How about barracks style housing for the death row crowd? The staff could go in once a week to remove the stiffs.
If they could just find a method that worked. Maybe they should bring in abortionists.
The death penalty was the only tactic we had to persuade people not to do crime. Life in prison with weight rooms, activity rooms, courts to play on and all the TV they can watch, talking to the media is a country club. Let's face it all the youth would look up to this as heaven on earth. Plus they get to vote in most states now. But the big ticket item is we the tax payers are paying for their layed back life style and it costs us more every year. They don't even have to do any manual labor like prisons used to make them do, you know clean up the highways, work on road construction, work on farms which is now replaced by over paid immigrants. I'm surprised their not doing crimes just to retire to the "good life".
Prison
is an extension of the Welfare System
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