Outdoor Adventure USA

Death penalty repeal to go before California voters

http://news.yahoo.com/california-measur ... 36508.html

Wouldn't it be more expensive to house these inmates for life in our already over-crowded prison systems? There's a guy still sitting on death row who killed my wife's 3 year old cousin, along with four other women. I know we don't want to see this repealed.

I don't agree with the idea that the DP is any sort of deterrence to murder or other atrocities. I think that if somebody gets to the point that they're actually planning on killing someone then they're not really weighing the consequences of murder. I think capital punishment is 1% deterrent and 99% punishment. I'm not really sure where I stand on the whole issue, but if somebody murdered one of my loved one I'm pretty sure I'd want the DP instituted on that person's face!

There's such an emotional attachment when it comes to this issue. Arguments of wrongful conviction come into play and that's a scary prospect. I wouldn't want to be the guy on a jury who had a hand in sentencing a guy to death only to find out later that they were innocent. I couldn't live with myself. Sometimes a crime is so bad and so ugly that people can't help but want to find an answer, convict someone no matter what and I guess that's a problem I see. The decision to take a human life is a heavy one and as humans its hard to take emotion out of the decision making process. We can't keep our feeling out of it.

IMHO there is right and wrong in this world and there are those who do deserve to die. The DP isn't about the person being put to death, its about us as a society legislating vengeance. These criminals may deserve to die a horrendous death and in many cases lethal injection is probably way too humane for most of these monsters. However, do we deserve to be the ones to kill them? With that said if someone harmed any of my loves ones, I'd answer most definitely yes! This is certainly a tough issue on both an individual and societal level.