If someone tries to kill me or rape me or do something terrible to me I wouldn't have a problem with killing them. If I know someone is planning on doing these things to me.... I don't have a problem with killing them. If they are planning on doing it to someone I know... I don't have a problem with killing them. I don't believe in Revenge or Justice but I believe in practical application of preventative survival. Take someone out if they're going to do you harm and don't leave them around to take revenge on you and yours.

As this applies to government action we can see it is different in that most government Justice programs are public matters. To enact a Death Penalty enrages a part of the population and puts all those wrong doers in a DO OR DIE position.

It's tricky...

Thats alright, if you kill someone as an act of self defence. But capital punishment is a legal matter. Say for example a man committing the perfect crime, may actually be let off, due to lack of evidence, when he according to the law "deserves to die". But on the other hand, circumstantial evidence might get a person a Death sentence. Its for this reason that capital punishment is wrong. The sentence is not given out based on moral values, but based on a trial in court and technicalities do matter.

Also lawyers try to get Capital punishment for the people they prosecute, not because they believe in the capital punishment, but because they like to sensationalize the case and get as much of press exposure as possible.

Its for these reasons I am against Capital punishment. You cannot alleviate the pain of passing of a loved one, by avenging their death. Especially not through law.

I think the death penalty should be for people who killed on person torture the people that killed multiple.

The death penalty should be more widely used. With murderers and rapists crowding up the jails, the death penalty would save us so much money. No need for that expensive lethal injection crap. Just put a bullet in their head. It can't cost much more than $1

Hmmm this is a hard one for me I believe in a few things all different and all maybe contradicting the other i believe i actually agree with the thought of a murderer being murdered but it should be by the family of the person he murdered. For raP#sT males should get it removed and females should have a similar fate i am still not sure all the way on them there are many things that happens everyday that are by law punished but the thing i believe in most is that the offense should be punished by the person offended or there family as they see fit.

yes capital punishment should be used and used more often as apollo said. we dont need to put them in jail just for them to come out and possibly commit the same crime. also, i believe we should go back to when found guilty the offended family should decide the punishment, not the judge/government.

You are not even considering possibilities like acquittals, circumstantial evidence working against a person in a trial, appealing to a higher court etc. You are not considering the possibility that a widely talked about criminal case, might be used by the lawyers for their own publicity, and for that reason, a prosecutor might push for a death sentence. You are assuming that whoever is in jail is guilty, which is not the case ALL the time.

Saying that the death penalty should be more widely used, is mostly a knee jerk reaction to a crime you vehemently oppose. I do hate Rapists and murderers, but the best way to punish such people is to give them a life sentence. Doing time, is much more difficult than dying. BTW putting a bullet through a persons head etc, might be easy for you to say. Would you be willing to pull the trigger on a guys head, just because he is a rapist? Do you have it in you? I dont. I can never do that. Even if the guy before me is a horrible person. A lot of people would feel the same way. Secondly firing squads etc are painful ways to die and that's why they use lethal injection which is painless (supposedly).

And Jacobie you are not thinking when you say torture people. Remember when someone is tortured, the torturer will go through the same traumatic experience as well. That will be a messed up situation and the country will be a rogue nation then. Not a civilized one.

i say it is right to murder the murderers. some prisons across the usa are getting overcrowded they need to start lethal injection. some say its "inhumane" yes its inhumane to kill someone with poison after they probably brutally killed 7 people with a knife and raped people.

punishment is justice for the unjust

The death penalty itself actually costs more than imprisoning somebody, because of all the legal proceedings that must take place before the penalty is carried out- Someone has to be pretty much completely proved to be guilty for the death penalty, not merely beyond any reasonable doubt. Besides, if someone who has been executed is proved by new evidence to be innocent, you can hardly give them a large compensation cheque and let them go, can you.

(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ju ... tion-costs)

IMO, the death penalty is effectively state sanctioned murder, and is it really a punishment for the individual in question? Surely life in prison would be worse, as they have to consider what they have done, rather than having a quick, painless end.

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
-Gandhi

what if the person wants them to kill him? then what do they do? if they dont he will probably kill himself