My initial reaction to the death penalty question is that I would just as soon string up a villainous killer or rapist on the spot. However, the more I learn about the way our "justice" system operates, I realize it is incredibly fallible, and hundreds of people are wrongly convicted. And then I think about what it means to put another person in charge of the planned, deliberate process of killing people, and on a gut level, I can't see that as a positive, as no actual value is gained for society by creating deliberate killers. Not that life in an isolated cell appears to be a positive, either. This is such a difficult issue, one that I truly can see no right answer for. I voted in you poll against the death penalty, mainly on the fact that I know it is misapplied to innocent people. If there were some actual value to it, I could support the increased cost to the State of following through with the death penalty as opposed to lifelong prison. But I fail to see what value we gain.
My initial reaction to the death penalty question is that I would just as soon string up a villainous killer or rapist on the spot. However, the more I learn about the way our "justice" system operates, I realize it is incredibly fallible, and hundreds of people are wrongly convicted. And then I think about what it means to put another person in charge of the planned, deliberate process of killing people, and on a gut level, I can't see that as a positive, as no actual value is gained for society by creating deliberate killers. Not that life in an isolated cell appears to be a positive, either. This is such a difficult issue, one that I truly can see no right answer for. I voted in you poll against the death penalty, mainly on the fact that I know it is misapplied to innocent people. If there were some actual value to it, I could support the increased cost to the State of following through with the death penalty as opposed to lifelong prison. But I fail to see what value we gain.