I personally believe that IF they did do it it was not an act of murder ,just idiocy . Perhaps they thought they could get the children out before it got out of hand and misjudged how unpredictable and how fast fires actually are . Like you said there are reasons why they could of done it but i refuse to believe that it would intentional to harm any of the children . Poor kids though
Death penalty is very outdated and unfair . What happens of they convict the wrong person ? Also how does this actually teach the guilty a lesson?Easy way out in my opinion.
You think putting someone in a cell for 30 years wrongly is OK? You think any wrongful punishment is OK?
All miscarriages of justice are bad, but by taking away their life you punish them with the ultimate irreversible price. 30 years IS reversible if it hasn't been completely served. If only 3 years has been served, the other 27 have been saved. With death you banish any possibility of reversing the sentence and paying compensation.
The death penalty should only ever be considered if the evidence is irrefutable that a particular person was guilty (like the nutter who murdered all those teenagers recently). Too many have gone to prison for stuff they didn't do and if we had a death penalty..then too many would die for stuff they didn't do. In fact it used to happen in the past before we got rid of it. Being pardoned posthumously is pretty crap.
In the case of wrongful imprisonment, if we carry out immediate and cheap execution, the person has no further chance to defend himself. If we put him in a cell, he at least has access to his attorney, books, and other resources to continue arguing his case. I would argue that this is the difference between imprisonment and execution. While from a broad level they both equate to lost time, the distinction lies in what the person chooses to do with that time (and what we choose to allow them to do). A person in prison for 15 years may have lost 15 years of his time. Or, he may choose to get a diploma, learn a skill, or provide some other function. A dead person has only 1 option - continue to rot.
If I was given the option of life imprisonment or the death penalty, I'd take death any day. With all I've been through so far I don't find the prospect of suddenly not living being all that daunting, but I know incarceration for that length of time dehumanises you, and I fear that far far more than death.
That's an interesting idea. If someone is sentenced to a certain length of prison time, should we give them the option to choose death instead? Unless we expect the person to commit suicide, it raises the question of who takes on the responsibility to perform the euthanasia.
of course. I don't believe for one moment those parents intentionally killed their children. should you be saying such a thing
This may be toeing the line, but you're such a heel that I bet if the shoe was on the other foot, I'm sure you'd love to walk all over them. Feel free to sock it to me for that comment - or worse, give me the boot altogether! He kids, he kids.
I'm amazed at how many people, even intelligent, awesome people I respect completely, can honestly state they support the death penalty. Death penalty is nothing less than inhumane, inefficient, unnecessary and impossible to correctly apply. 1. Death penalty is in no way equal to being locked up for 30-40 years (not even innocently). At least after those years you can walk free once again. @Spec: you always seem to automatically assume that the prisoner dies right after the end of his sentence, which [EDIT]Not being able to leave the prison for the rest of your life [/EDIT] makes it indeed, from a rational point of view, seem like an even worse way to go than just immediate execution -- I said "seem" because taking away freedom still doesn't equal death nor endless suffering, people can find happiness and a reason to exist in the most unlikely of places, even in a prison cell, I firmly believe. However, about people that will get out of jail after those years and live on, don't they deserve the rest their completely free life? EDIT: Maybe I understood it wrong and you were talking about life imprisonment. 2. Most arguments people make "pro-death sentence" are somewhat like "That monster killed/raped/raped then killed children, etc., that kind of lunatics should be put six feet under so we can sleep safe."[Often not written down as politely as I did] These kind of arguments are entirely emotional. Emotion is almost the opposite of ratio. Reason is the only way to find the truth. End of argument. 3.The argument of "what if an innocent man dies?" has been discussed about already, so I will not go any further into that. 4. Capital punishment is impossible to correctly apply in laws. I know Spec said that morality doesn't have anything to do with laws (in which I find some truth indeed), but humanity can't live off (some) Morality. Our society is based on a firm system of rules. Sometimes they're unfair, sometimes they're not, but they are what holds everything together. So, I'll make a little thought experiment: Let's say we want to make a law which states when death penalty is fit. First problem arises, how many people would one have to kill, molest, rape, or whatever to recieve a death sentence? Just for the sake of an exemple, let's say: 2 murder and 5 rape. What if some nut has killed 2, but only raped 4? Can he just sigh and say "phew, that was close"? Murder often happens in a moment of extreme emotion, nearly "by accident" if you will (not meaning to be disrespectful), would such a murderer also be killed? What if someone killed 80 people, he still gets the same punishment as someone who killed 5, is that fair? OK, maybe putting down an exact number is a stupid idea and pretty unrealistic, how about making a commitee that has to decide whether the criminal dies or not. Who will be in this "Commitee of Death"? Who is deserving to decide about one's life and how to end it? Who would even want that responsibility, or be able to handle it? Capital punishment simply can't be put into a firm law at all. 5. Death penalty has no purpose. It simply doesn't achieve anything beyond some sort of vengeance. It doesn't scare off people to commit crimes at all, as proven by many statistics, and thus serves only as some obscure kind of "Justice", a means of temporary gratification that doesn't solve anything at all. 6,7,8,... One last thing: while I'm completely against capital punishment, I'm not completely in favour of the current imprisonment system either. Personally I think much more people should be in a mental institution and get psychological help instead of spending their days in a cell, and others can spend their time in prison studying to get a (better) job later, when they're free (or just to learn about the world and everything. We badly need more smart people.) (Sorry if what I've written down here was confusing, hazy or clumsy at times, but my knowledge of that fine English language of yours is not nearly refined enough to make all the nuances I'd want)
and the killers and rapers of children - who have `fun` in prison , get qualifications , watch sky and have free gym membership - then after 15 years walk out ` free` - the children they raped and killed dont go free. hang them
Indeed, the children don't go free, but would they go "more free" if the guy who killed/raped them were dead? I think not. A trauma is a trauma, and once you're dead you're obviously dead, but one more killed man won't solve any of that. Wikipedia tells me these are the countries that officially hang people: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Mongolia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Palestinian National Authority, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt, India, Burma, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, South Korea, Malawi, Liberia, Chad, Washington in the USA Aside from maybe Washington, is there any other country in that list you'd want to live in?
