<p>Have you not been listening to like 20+ posts in this thread alone that state the facts that ONE IN SEVEN PEOPLE ON DEATH ROW HAVE BEEN PROVEN INNOCENT AND AQUITTED (if they were still alive) and in SEVERAL CASES, the executed was proven innocent (as with the guy in Texas who was executed for killing his best friend or girlfriend but it turned out to be a suicide as they found a video of her hanging herself AFTER they executed the supposed "killer"?) after their death? They were proven, with cold hard evidence to NOT be the killer, but they were already dead...How many more times do I and other people have to state this for you to understand it?</p>
<p>You and the government are shedding the life of an innocent person - MANY innocent people who were wrongly convicted - through the death penalty for some reason - probably this misguided reasoning that it's OK to kill innocent people if a) it saves you money on taxes and b) if some guilty people are killed along the way too. </p>
<p>And it doesn't reduce crime. Where are your facts? Prove your statement, if you can. Murders don't kill people with the intention of getting caught; they kill them because they think they can get away and not be punished. </p>
<p>Study after study has found that the death penalty does not in fact deter crime. In states that have the death penalty, more people are killed than in states without it. The USA has the most murders in the Western World and yet we are the only country in the West that has the death penalty.</p>
<p>----></p>
<p>But first, to dispel some myths that the proponents of the death penalty hold dear. The death penalty does not deter crime. Numerous statistical studies have discovered that the death penalty does not affect homicide rates. The studies that have shown otherwise have been consistently invalidated in terms of statistical technique and accuracy. These data are convincing to most criminologists, though all statistical studies must be taken with a grain of salt as they can never fully prove causation, only correlation, and even the most advanced of statisticians may not be able to account for the full range of sources of alternate causation. Thus, we are summarily left with this dilemma: if we accept the statistics, then the death penalty does not deter crime, and if we do not, then there is no evidence that the death penalty deters crime. Since it is an irreversible punishment, there is a significant burden to have compelling* proof that capital punishment has value as a deterrent otherwise it has no practical advantage**. (Other than the fact that once the sentence is carried out, the murderer can never kill again but a life sentence without parole does the same exact thing.)</p>
<p>*The highest constitutional standard, as applied by the Supreme Court in death cases. </p>
<p>**All punishments are designed to deter crime, but capital punishment is advocated as the most effective deterrent because of its final nature. Yet at the point that there is no proven deterring quality, it has no practical advantage over another punishment like life in prison without parole. </p>
<p>---></p>
<p>Most murders are not sentenced to death; those that do receive the death penalty are usually the ones that have poor representation, and are convicted with little to no credible evidence, the prosecutions suppression of exculpatory evidence, improper jury instruction, mishandled cases, and non-credible witnesses (some of which have even been convicted for perjury). Many on death row have eventually been proven innocent with DNA evidence, confession of another as the killer, and on account of the perjury (or sometimes, the guilt) of the main prosecution witness. Death cases are different because once a mistake is made, it can never be reversed. Human life is never an acceptable cost for a mistake. Even the loss of a single innocent human life, no matter how despicable, totally outweighs the justice and emotional relief afforded the victims family and friends provided by the death penalty. As Gerald Kogan, former Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, said, If one innocent person is executed along the way, then we can no longer justify capital punishment. Frame this in the fact that, *[f]or every 7 executions486 since 19761 other prisoner on death row has been found innocent. *</p>
<p>---></p>
<p>And finally (the previous were excerpts from one of my poli sci papers, btw), I think the Civil Rights Acts of 1864 and 1964 are perfectly just laws. It's a critical step to moving toward eliminating racism - as much as possible, since you can't change individual mindsets - and absolutely critical in stopping the cycle of poverty that you condemn minorities to without it...</p>
<p>I believe racist hiring/firing policies are morally wrong, but I don't know about you. What happened to equality, people? As "fundamental" as "freedom of contract" is, I think the Constitution and Declaration of Independence would agree with me on the fact that equality is one of THE most important American values, superseding "freedom of contract"....</p>
<p>Last time I checked, the Declaration of Independence read this:</p>
<p>"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."</p>
<p>Not this:</p>
<p>"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created with the freedom of contract, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."</p>
<p>The emphasis is mine, of course.</p>