Quote Originally Posted by yvonne View Post
Bring it back yesterday!!!It'll stop all the sick bastards ever thinking of raping kids.May i add that all the druggies and waste of skins who choose to sponge off tax payers money and cause a pain in the arse for other normal citizen be sent to fight for queen and country,that way their can fooking die for a good cause.....waste of fucking skins!!!!
But is it a good enough deterrent? I've not seen any research or evidence to support that fact that the death penalty is any more of a deterrent than jail.

Secondly, how would you turn druggies and spongers into soldiers? If they can't be arsed finding a job, how are they going to physically cope with being forced to kill for a living? Is being lazy deserving of being forced to carry the responsibility of ending another man's life? Then of course you have to question the morality of war and decide whether or not Iraq and Afghanistan are what you would deem as a good cause.

Questioning the morality of the death penalty is interesting it itself. First and foremost DNA evidence often isn't sufficient enough to convict somebody of a crime. Circumstantial evidence and statistical evidence also needs to analysed. The bad thing is, this evidence is analysed by a jury; a jury who often don't have the necessary skills to correctly analyse statistics. Incorrect convictions have occured in the past, whereby innocent people have been sentenced to death.

Even assuming the Jury have correctly analysed the evidence, statistical evidence is only as good as the statitician who has formulated the probabilities of person X being guilty. A case a few years ago in the UK is an example of this. A woman was sentenced to prison for allegedly smothering her two children 2 death. The statisitcal evidence suggested that there was a 1 in 73million chance of both babies dying by natural causes. This had a profound effect on the jury and they found her guilty. On appeal, it emerged that the statistics were wrong. There was infact a 1 in 130,000 thousand chance of 1 baby dying from natural causes/cot death. In cases of child death, the odds of a 2nd child from the same household dying was only 1 in 60. Given the amount of babies born every year, probability suggested that there are bound to be a few double cot death incidents every year in the UK. She was released on appeal a few years later. If the death penalty was in force, she'd have been killed.

That's the problem, no 2 convictions are ever the same. There is always variables in every criminal case.

In cases where there is absolutely no doubt (if that's possible), then the idea of the death penatly takes on new ground. Does killing the guilty, erase the memory of the crime? Does it reverse the effects of the crime? Who has the power to decide to end somebody's life? Does that person then become a murderer? Will he be given the death penalty?

The idea of my post is not to dismiss other people's opinion. The Death Penalty is always an interesting point of debate. Opinion is divided. I personally think it's barbaric and has no place in civilised society. With that said, neither do murderers and rapists etc...that's why they should spend their time in jail.