Quote:
Originally Posted by blackmonsters
Take a few minutes and read this :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Henry_Gaskins
If you read all about his crimes and still think we should not have killed him then I'll listen to your argument.
You have to read about the crimes or your opinion is just off-the-cuff fluff.
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There are many people who do terrible things to others. They commit horrible crimes and they do deserve to die. I don't have a moral problem with the death penalty. I have a fiscal problem with the death penalty.
It costs significantly more to put someone to death than it does to lock them up for life. The reason is the legal proceedings surrounding the process. Tons of money gets swallowed up in legal fees and the court ends up bogged down hearing appeal after appeal and motion after motion.
I am also opposed to executing innocent people. Our justice system is flawed and these days we are seeing more and more cases where DNA evidence has proven people innocent. If there were a more streamlined way of processing death penalty cases and we changed our laws to take every precaution possible to make sure we weren't killing someone who is innocent, I wouldn't have a problem with.
The thing is, the death penalty isn't a deterrent. States with the death penalty don't have lower rates of violent or capital crimes. If a guy is going to kill 10 people, he doesn't decide not to do it because he is worried he will be put to death. It is a tool for political grandstanding and fodder meant to make the masses somehow feel like they are safer because their state has the death penalty.