<p>Their stance seems a tad hypocritical to me.</p>
<p>I'm not one, but I think the reasoning is that a fetus is innocent while a criminal is not. Or something like that. But I agree it is hypocritical.</p>
<p>In the book of genesis, God mandates the following," Whosoever sheddeth an innocent mans life, the murderers life shall also be shed."</p>
<p>An unborn fetus is an innocent living being.</p>
<p>I don't really have a stance on the death penalty, but Scarletleavy is right about the source of the "split value." Innocent lives v. people who are dangers to society = way different ends of the spectrum.</p>
<p>Personally, I guess the death penalty doesn't really make sense. You might as well just have people who are in prison for life doing something useful, like community service. How does killing them solve anything...?</p>
<p>What happened to the stance that "every life is sacred"?</p>
<p>that is always echoed...and yet no one ever says, "except criminals, terrorists, etc"</p>
<p>Pro-choice
Against death penalty :)</p>
<p>lavendercloud: maintaining a criminal alive in prison costs WAY more than his work output. i vaguely recall it may be as much as $50,000 PER criminal PER year.</p>
<p>Yeah, it's unfortunate that it costs so much to keep people in prison. However, I have heard that litigation costs for the death penalty may be up to $1 million, higher than maintaining the criminal for 20 more years. So when it comes down to money, the death penalty is not necessarily at an advantage.</p>
<p>However, giving a person a chance to make something useful out of their life seems a far better alternative than killing them.</p>
<p>I believe the $1 million figure is way inflated by those who are against the death penalty. In fact, they are precisely the same people who caused the cost to be larger than what it should be. Think about it-how the hell can a death sentence cost $1 million? A dose of euthanasia costs... how much? The $1 million figure probably counted the complicated legal fee and national attention for some specific trials. The solution to the problem? Make death penalty a much simpler process. If someone is convicted and found guilty, just kill him the next day. This way the cost may be cut down to a one time fee of $1,000 per person per EVER.</p>
<p>Pro-Life and Pro-Death Penalty....they're called Republicans. They usually don't have much of a defined stand on anything</p>
<p>If you do away with the appeals process are your willing, Bobert McCloud, to take the risk that an innocent people will be executed?</p>
<p>If it was your son or daughter, would you still support no chance of appeal and immediate execution?</p>
<p>momofaknight, ask your self: how many hungry children/AIDS patient in Africa can you save with $1 million dollars?</p>
<p>also, if one is found guilty, of course there should be immediate punishment. if the verdict system is faulty, reform the verdict system and not the execution one.</p>
<p>Momofaknight is right. It's not always easy to know whether someone is innocent or guilty. Your suggestion is quite inane.</p>
<p>It's true that the legal fees for all of the appellate courts, etc. for a prisoner on death row cost more than would life in prison.</p>
<p>Here are a few statistics from Amnesty International (while obviously this organization is biased in that it wants to abolish capital punishment, they cite their sources for these stats):
<a href="http://www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/cost.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/cost.html</a></p>
<p>The number is hungry or AIDS infected children in Africa has no relevance to this discussion
It is unlikely that any $ saved in our prison system would be then shunted to AIDS relief or any other human service venture for that matter</p>
<p>The execution of one innocent individual by our the government is nothing more than state sanctioned murder and not worthy of the high ideals/morals upon which our country was founded. Since there is no way to be 100% certain, then the death penalty should be abolished</p>
<p>momofaknight, your logic does not take into consideration that this is NOT a perfect world. there are bound to be injustice no matter what as long as we can all think and act. the goal, then, is to MINIMIZE the injustrice. one can propose to abolish prison terms using the similar argument, that some innocent people would lose freedom. whether death or life in prison, some innocent people will be implicated. however, if we get rid of either, chances are some real criminals will get out of prison (legally or illegally) and commit crimes again, possibly rape or murder. now, as a mother, how would YOU feel if you daughter or son was raped or murdered by a criminal that would otherwise be executed by death penalty? while i agree that the probability of such an event is quite low, it is still a possibility.</p>
<p>Yeah, it's unfortunate that it costs so much to keep people in prison. </p>
<p>It costs less to keep someone in jail for life than to have them killed.
"The cost of the apparatus and maintenance of the procedures attending the death penalty, including death row and the endless appeals and legal machinery, far outweighs the expense of maintaining in prison the tiny fraction of criminals who would otherwise be slain" (Draper 46).</p>
<p>
[quote]
It costs less to keep someone in jail for life than to have them killed.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>actually, the last time i checked a bullet costed $1.</p>
<p>Heaven forbid if my child was killed or raped or whatever I would be devasted, however nothing would ever atone for that loss and further violence in the form of execution on my child's behalf would only further
deepen my sadness</p>
<p>I would not advocate for or desire the death penalty for a person who had harmed a member of my family. I advocate a true life sentence
for those found guilty of such heinous crimes.</p>
<p>^^a true life sentence that costs society billions of dollars per year that could potentially be put into the education system, thus producing more civilized citizens</p>