pedophiles/child molestors, cold blooded killers, people who kill and plead insanity go ahead and kill them all.

no need to care for people who do this world no good and I sure as hell would not waste more money trying to control them further into dong "productive" activities.

fk wasting money on them in prison already. fk wasting money taking care of them trying to get them to help this world.

they are a bad soul and their mind is forever corrupted. Rid them and move on.

but like some said, it must be proven they killed or acted like a sick fk. I know how some people think they saw something right when they're wrong and screws over the accused person.

 

everything in this post, +1 !!!

 

I really don't understand the intense focus here on the race card. Race was just one bias linked to those receiving the death penalty. Pitts also mentions gender and class biases, as well as the lack of a deterrent effect. All are irrefutable facts not opinions.

Pitts' essay was an opinion piece supported by facts. Thus far, most of the opposing opinions posted in this thread lack similar support by facts. Nonetheless, this is a very emotional issue, so I do understand views on both sides.

When evidence for murder is clear cut, then the debate is simply one of opinion with respect to whether the death penalty or another punishment is appropriate. Pitts' essay primarily addresses the many cases where clear cut does not apply, although he also makes his general stand against the death penalty clear. The point is that, if the evidence is ambiguous, do we really want to make cheap, rash life-or-death decisions when the accused may be innocent?

 

No, we leave all of the childish and rash decisions to the adolescent . And I base my reasoning off of logic. I am neither for or against the death penalty, I didn't give life to the person, so I don't have the right to take it.

 

I think race is a valid point in Pitts' argument. It may not exist in every case, but it exists in a lot of them.
Think about it, if you had your car stolen, and there's two groups of witnesses around, one group claiming some skinny white 19 year old stole your car, and another group claiming a ripped black 25 year old stole your car, which are you most likely to believe stole your car. It's an underlying issue in a lot of cases.

About the public executions... that's just barbaric. What about all the young children who may witness it? How do you know that they will understand that the intentional statement made by the execution is to show that there will be no mercy for murderers and other extreme criminals. They might totally miss the point of it being to teach them not to murder, and instead do exactly the opposite, because the children may see that it's okay to execute someone as long as you have a reason for justifying it within your own standards. According to Jean Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development, children cannot understand hypothetical situations or abstract ideas such as what is wrong and what is right and why that is wrong or right until the Formal Operational Stage, which begins at age 12 and continues onward throughout life.

I do support the death penalty, but only if there is concrete undeniable proof.

 

**** it we need some more Hitlers' and Stalins'. J/K

 

^ I've seen 19 year old skinny white punks who think they're hard steal cars, and i've seen them be completely innocent, normal kids. I've seen ghetto black guys beat the **** out of people for drug money, and i know a black guy from Chicago who is in his 30's and going to college because he finally got out of the hood and he's sick of it. Thats a personal option to take race into consideration. To OP, I don't think anybody was pissed off and freaking out about him puting the race card before all the other reasons, but i think it's more than a coincidence that an african american writer decided to put that first.

And as for public killings, i think it's a mute point, i don't think the U.S. is gonna up and reinstate public deaths for every murder case in the company, but if it were to happen, keep the kids inside. They can look up worse **** on the internet.

And to the OP, i've mentioned it twice before, on cases where the evidence isn't clean cut and he MIGHT be innocent, don't kill him. Yes, keep him alive in jail, that makes sense. But cold-blooded murderers that have been proved guilty? Do you really want them alive still? Aagain, like me and quite a few others have said such as the post right above this ^ i support the death penalty if there is undeniable proof. I don't think anybody has said "if he was accused and not proved completely guilty, kill him anyway". So when you say: "The point is that, if the evidence is ambiguous, do we really want to make cheap, rash life-or-death decisions when the accused may be innocent?" No, we don't want to make those decisions, nobody ever said anybody did in the first place.

 

I mistakenly used the word "you" in my post when referring to race. I meant to say:
"Think about it, if someone had their car stolen, and there's two groups of witnesses around, one group claiming some skinny white 19 year old stole the car, and another group claiming a ripped black 25 year old stole the car, which do you think the person is most likely to believe stole your car. It's an underlying issue in a lot of cases."

I'm not saying everyone thinks this way, I am trying to point out that a lot of people do think this way, and that's a problem. When people say that they don't think this way and dismiss it as an issue, they aren't thinking about the fact that there are many people out there whose subliminal schemas associated with a particular race negatively affect their ability to judge in a non-bias way.

 

Personally I would rather be put to death than spend life in prison without parole. But thats just me.

 

+1

I'm sure that you know that anyone can actually watch people get eaten alive on Youtube.com? FACT

Worst case, make the viewing age 18, so restrict the presence of minors in a surrounding area. People are murdered and sentenced to death all the time. All cases are different, that means that not all penalties can be the same.