In the list above, while the "official" position may be no state sanctioned death penalty, does that really mean none exists? Using North Korea as an example, how would we really know? Besides, what other official policies result in the death of many of their citizens?

Do not misunderstand my questions. They are not to be construed to mean I am in favor or against the death penalty. This disclaimer is written for those that read things into others blogs.

Roland: In the above list - these countries DO have state sanctioned death penalty. That's why I said that we're in "good company" with them.

Sorry, I misread. Thank you for the clarification.

What an absurd way to twist a topic around a power pole.

....enjoy.

Homicide bombing is not considered a death penalty. How about cutting off body parts. Who wants to move the any of the countries that don't have the death penalty.

I don't understand your comment(s), Jon. Could you clarify them, please?

JonGreen: I like it here just fine, but the fact that Germany, France, England, Italy, Norway and Sweden do not have the death penalty would not stop me from moving there. Actually those countries have a lower rate of violent crime than the US.

Here's what I'm getting from your comments, Jon:

1. Homicide bombing is not considered a death penalty. (ok - a little strange, but ok.)

2. Is the cutting off of body parts considered capital punishment? My answer: no. It is sinister - just not capital punishment, per se.

3. Would I like to move to a country if they don't have the death penalty? Hmm - it's never been a serious consideration for me moving to or not moving to any particular country. Go on...

"I like it here just fine, but the fact that Germany, France, England, Italy, Norway and Sweden do not have the death penalty would not stop me from moving there. Actually those countries have a lower rate of violent crime than the US. "

I agree, they also have less violence on TV and nudity is not forbidden as in the puritan society we live in here. In order for the US to change it will take more than the abolition of the death penalty, its the culture in which we live in that has to change.

I am in favor of the death penalty for certain crimes, such as the abduction, rape and murder of young children. There are other crimes also. What needs to be done is to execute the convicted as soon as all appearls have failed.

I know everyone has an opinion on this, I just expressed mine.

Loomis: Is it a deterrent? Or just revenge?

Euripides,

Is this any of your business?

Is the State going to execute a person who murdered one of your family members and you want that persons life spared?

Otherwise, this is between the State and the family of the victims of murder....not you, not me.

Let the family of the murderer cry out for mercy, who do you think you are?

Sorry, Mike. You're right. Who am I to have an opinion? Who am I to question the State? I should hang my head in shame. Thanks for reminding me that there are still plenty of apathetic folks out there who could care less one way or the other if justice is made manifest.

I think a bigger evil out there than evil men is the indifference of supposedly good men. But who am I?

MikeGuber,

"What if it was someone who murdered your family; would you want that persons life spared?"

Probably everyone who has considered the moral implications of taking another person's life has asked themselves that question.

I can't presume to respond for Euripides, but my answer would have to be that I'm thankful I live in a country where there are laws to restrain my immediate desire for "eye-for-an-eye" revenge. And I'm glad those laws are not based on my emotions under stress.

Amen, Skeptic.

E & Sk,

This fundamentally sound pillar of Law and Order dates back beyond times when liberal views were allowed to intervene with the health of a civilization. With the crest of some supernatural morality on your shield you charge across the yard and cry for universal mercy and favor for those who have committed murder.

Apathetic? I’m concerned enough to step in the way of your nonsense in an effort to protect justice from falling prey to your baseless claims and whimsical belief that you have the right to step in between a father and the man who killed his child.

I am glad I live in a country where our laws are designed to remain strong through your emotional objections to them. The father is now to relinquish his honor to the State so that justice is served and for some to think themselves invited to that arrangement are delusional. The delusional numbers have risen to a point these days where now politicians sing their tunes to gain access to power, irrelevant to the public good. And here we are....

Call me old school.....kill them all.

"when liberal views were allowed to"

CORRECTION

.....when liberal views were NOT allowed to....

We don't live under Mosaic Law anymore. The death penalty is NOT a deterrent and revenge killing is about as low as a person can get.

I wont call you old school - I will call you a coward. Grow up, Mike.

Here's some stories for you to smack your lips over, Mike (try not to get too excited):

"A judge for an Islamic militant group in Somalia says a woman has been stoned to death and her boyfriend given 100 lashes for having an affair. (She was buried up to her wait and then beaten to death with stones)

Sheikh Ibrahim Abdirahman, the judge for the group al-Shabab, says the woman was killed Tuesday in front of a crowd of some 200 people near the town of Wajid.

Abdirahman says the 20-year-old woman had an affair with a 29-year-old unmarried man and gave birth to a stillborn child."

- the Associated Press

"A decade after Ruben Cantu was executed for capital murder, the only witness to the crime is recanting and his co-defendant says Cantu, then 17, was not even with him that night.

The victim was shot nine times with a rifle during an attempted robbery before the gunman shot the only witness.

That witness, Juan Moreno, told the Houston Chronicle for its Sunday editions that Cantu was not the killer. Moreno said he identified him at the 1985 trial because he felt pressured and feared authorities."

Texas - the Associated Press

During the last decade of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, white vigilantes lynched thousands of black males, sometimes with the overt assistance of state officials, mostly within the South. No whites were charged with crimes in any of those massacres.

- Is cowardly too strong a word? I don't think so.

E,

If given the chance, I'd dig a hole big enough for every violent criminal in the US to be shot and thrown into within 24 hours of their conviction.

Move over a few miles and dig another hole just as big.

And when that's full, dig another one, and another one.

Let's try that for 10 years and then we'll talk about deterence.

....and I am the one who is a coward?

You soft pathetic little man.

Yes, you are a coward.

Good day, Sir.

If I'm such a coward....why are you hiding behind the character "Euripides".

Euripides, a bit of both and then you can add to that the fact that the person will never commit that crime again.

But what does it matter to you what I think, obviously we have different points of view.

E, please try to refrain from name calling and insulting posts. I don't know who you are or if you posted under a different moniker in the past but your name calling detracts from any potential merit your post may have. You might give this some thought. People being people will always have an opinion, sometimes they agree with you like skeptic and sometimes they will disagree with you like Mike Gruber, they both, just as you, have their right to their opinion.

Perhaps you should invest your time working with your elected officials about banning the death penalty if you feel so strongly about it. Certainly a much more constructive way of spending your time. Hiding behind a computer to insult people is not cool.

Have a great Sunday

Loomis: You're right - I shouldn't have resorted to name calling. It was out of line. Lowering/debasing myself like that only discredits my own self worth and respectability.

Mike: I disagree with you but I apologize for hurling insults at you. It's a touchy subject and I lost my cool.

Loomis: I should thank you for reminding me of my folly before I sank any lower into the mire. Thank you.

Euripedes, this family member of a victim of an evil deathrow inmate that still lives 20+ years since the crime thinks you are long winded and shot sighted on this subject. The problem with California's dealth penalty is the appeals processes and the amount of time it takes from sentencing until execution.

The DC sniper has already been executed and that was 8 years ago. Our family and many others still wait here in Ca. If they're not going to kill carry out the sentence, please put them in general population where they will get their just rewards.

And for others who may try to convince me the death penalty is wrong.....save your keystrokes. Its the law of this land.

The law is subject to change, keepingupdated. Remember: we abolished slavery.

shot s/b short and kill should be deleted. I initially typed "kill the " ... you get the message, I'm sure.

Is revenge going to bring your family member back? Playing God, as with whomever hurt your family did, is always wrong. Period. You really don't want to be on his side of the street when it comes to ethics, do you?

By the way, I'm not trying to "convince" you. I'm expressing my own opinion on this subject.

I'm not playing God. Our justice system tried, convicted and sentenced him. I just want the sentence carried through in a more timely manner. When & if you have a family member go through what our's did, we can talk. Until then go try & change the law with Paul Comiskey instead of trying to "minister: to me. Justice, as currently written, will occur when this man takes his last breath in this world.

That's not justice. It's revenge. Revenge is never just.

Its the law. The current law, no matter how you choose to view it, or spin it.

So your premise here is that all laws are good? All of them? You are in total agreement with all the current laws we have?

Laws are not made with the intent of doing what is good for all people...just some people. There are only two laws that really need to be obeyed

Euripedes, I have already made my statement and I will not engage in a debate of whether the law is justified or not with you. We are at opposing views and to go down that path serves no purpose. Laws are the rules by which this country governs. If you do not think they are just, you should work to change them, not tell others they are wrong because they respect the laws.

Observer, you and I have already agreed to disagree on this subject.

keepingupdated: I'm not surprised you don't want to debate the point.

And I'm not surprised at your response.

That's against the rules, keepingupdated - you can use my remark as another remark. It's plagiarism. I believe that case was settled in the now famed Johnson vs. Yomama trial back in '87. It said: "Whereas one man may not take another mans clever remark and try and turn it around by merely rearranging the words. It's not funny and if it takes more than a half an hour to do so it becomes far too contrived, at best. Yay, let freedom ring out amongst the peoples of this fine land that no more can a reply constitute mere phrases such as, "You are", and "No, you are."

As you can see, keeping - you are clearly in violation of said legislature. I don't make the rules - but, I do accept your apology beforehand.

It should say "can't" in the first above sentence. Not can.

I can't hear you.

TURN THE MUSIC DOWN! THERE'S NO NEED TO PLAY DURAN DURAN THAT LOUD!

Keepingupdated...you will find out eventually, that the death of the person you want executed, will not bring you the closure or satisfaction you think it will. It might at first, but eventually, you will find yourself at this point again...this is one of the laws that can't be changed. It doesn't take anything away from the wrong done to your loved one, but it can mean everything to everyone, especially you, if you can learn to put the anger in it's proper place, before it becomes, if not already, revenge. I have had to do this more than once...

keepingupdated:

I can’t imagine what it is like for you to surrender your honor to the State and then be forced to sit back and watch a bureaucracy protect the evil that violated your life. Let alone, to have others with no apparent moral boundaries crash into the life you are living now and insist your motivations are unjust and empty of meaning. You have my support and respect.

Euripides, For what crimes did Russia use the death penalty? We may be a rogue nation in your narrow view. Since becoming a sovereign nation, how many citizens has the US persecuted and killed? During the last 100 years Russia was doing a bang up job, the count being about 20 million just under Stalin. It is wonderful to have a belief that makes you feel good. It is another issue that ensnares all of us that do believe in capitol punishment. Get it over with quickly. The lawyers of America are the people that prosper from any criminal action. They have really learned how to bleed the system of money by using the death penalty issue. They will move on to life without parole if capital punishment is overturned.

I don't want revenge, I only want justice. Revenge is personal, Charlie Manson got off and is still influencing in a diabolical way other "sheep". If the death penalty he received were not reversed, it would have been a relief to society instead it has become a burden. Justice was not served.

Twist and turn the words any way you want, you are trying to alter the moral compass of those that don't agree with you.

The countries you list have been in the business of killing political opponents and calling it "a death penalty".

Observer, "There are only two laws that really need to be obeyed" Maybe in a perfect world where no laws can be written.

Again - murder is never "just". Killing for revenge is not justice. Sadly, many people have a warped view of what justice is. I'll tell you what justice isn't - reward for good and punishment for bad.

We'll evolve past capital punishment someday. These things take time.

The system is flawed.

Too many people are being wrongfully executed for acts they did not commit. A wrongfully convicted person can be pardoned from prison but it is impossible to pardon the corpse of someone mistakenly executed.

A new study on capital punishment in the United States reveals that 343 people were wrongly convicted of offenses punishable by death and that 25 were actually executed. The Innocence Project has helped exonerate 245 innocent people by DNA testing, but DNA evidence is not allowed in some states.

Skeptic - You are exactly right. If I could make one new law, I would insist on government-paid, independant DNA analysis, in every death-penalty case, if available. It would be a huge step in perfecting our justice system. Problem is, prosecutors, investigators, law enforcement, courts, don't want their jobs and success rates more difficult. It is much easier for John Q Public to accept the current system we have in place, no matter how flawed it might be...that is until you or your loved one get caught up in it

Mike - I don't see people as not being sensitive to keepingupdated. If anything, perhaps they are focusing on the fact that the death penalty is not a good idea...that perhaps deciding who should live and who should die is not a good thing. There are other ways that penalize and protect...

Observer -

Don't get the idea that DNA is always reliable. Like other kinds of organic evidence, DNA is subject to degradation, contamination (both accidental and deliberate) and to misinterpretation because there is no universal standard of evaluation.

That being said, according to The Innocence Project 245 defendants convicted of serious and capital crimes have been exonerated by DNA testing. Seventeen people had been sentenced to death before DNA proved their innocence and had spent an average of 13 years behind bars waiting to be executed. The true perpetrators were identified in 105 of these DNA testing cases. Northwestern University School of Law's Center on Wrongful Convictions (CWC) documented at least 38 executions carried out on innocent people, despite compelling evidence of innocence since capital punishment was restored in the mid-1970s. The ACLU has documented 123 death-row inmates who have been exonerated just before their executions.

The DNA exoneration cases provide irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions of innocent people are not isolated or even rare events. Still, only about half of the states in the USA bother to preserve DNA evidence.

Innocent people still are being put to death by the government.

Observer,

A person who has committed murder is the one who "decided who should live and who should die".

That is why their life now hangs in the balance for it is an illegal act.

If apprehended and charged, it is a jury of 12 that will decide guilt or innocence, not some mechanical system

of levels and wheels operated by numb D.A.'s and Judges. Executing a convicted murderer is not murder, because

it is written law and legal to do so. It is that plain and that simple.

I know you have faith in a higher judgement that supercedes all human behaviors but there are humans walking this earth with us whose faith tells them to cut our heads off. In Oakland, CA in 2005-2006 there were 239 murders.....239 times someone "decided who was going to die."

We can't know how many more murders would have happened if the only penalty for the convicted was to inform them that a higher power is going to judge them someday but I'd guess the streets would be flowing with blood.

The death penalty is the ultimate punishment for the ultimate crime, it leaps revenge with ease because it is the law.

I guess I'm a Law & Order guy and need only to see this issue from the victims and their family's point of view.

Debatidies, What about "Honor Killings" ?

Jon: "Honor killing", by it's very name - is oxymoronic. The two words are incompatible.

Guy hiding out as "Euripides".....

So you must also have a problem with the "Medal of Honor"?

Don't soldiers also legally kill for the Government...so by your standards any military decorations or medals have no virtuous nature.

I think I'm figuring this all out.....thanks to the Guy hiding out as "Euripides",.....

When the moment comes, kill or be killed, fall to your oppressors feet and beg honorably for your life

in exchange for a merciful enslavement.

I thought that was the antithesis to the American way of life but your passion for these murderers is so

magical perhaps I should reconsider every single thing I have ever seen with my own eyes.

Have fun living in abject fear, Mike.

I served in the military, Mike. Did you? No. You have no concept at all of what it takes to serve our country. Let's leave the military out of this.

Fear?

Who's the one here that can't even bring himself/herself to sign his own name to his own words?

You haven't answered the question.

You take great latitude with those who disagree with your views but when you paint yourself into a corner

with grand statements about life/death, horor/shame, right/wrong, just/unjust, real/unreal, and legal/illegal you lash out

with juvenile name calling and irrelevant accusation.

If you want to refuse to see the paralles your argument has between the judicial system's protection of society and the military's protection of this country then I believe it is because it clearly refutes the premise upon which your entire death penalty stance rests. Your sideline attack on my status couldn't be more irrelevant and your rotation on my point failed.

Hmm... I thought so.

Have a good one, Mike.

I'm saying "have a good one" because for all your rhetoric - you can't possibly understand what you're talking about. Hiding "behind" the American flag isn't bravery. Standing in "front" is. Save the empty preaching for someone you can bully.

I'm going to move on.

I would move on to if I had just lost an argument so overwhelmingly as you just have.

It's called "checkmate".

It happens.

You don't have to throw the board into the air.

MikeGruber - You proposed "we can't know how many more murders would have happened if the only penalty for the convicted was to inform them that a higher power is going to judge them someday..." True, but isn't that a pretty silly example, even for you?

We also have no idea how many fewer murders would be committed if the maximum sentence was life in prison without possibility of parole, as it is in most civilized nations around the world. The death penalty certainly doesn't seem to be deterring murder around here. And it's prohibitively expensive.

According to the Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, the California death penalty currently costs the state $137 million per year. The alternative, permanent imprisonment, would cost only $11 million. The death penalty has proved no more deterrent against murder than imprisonment, so in the final analysis it will be economics if not enlightenment that will permanently abolish capital punishment in California.

Skeptic, Silly example?

No. I know there a folks out there who would like to try hugging the murdering tendencies out of criminals; they want to use love and forgiveness instead of razor wire and execution. You cut my statement short for it goes on to make the entire statement more clear;

that being...murderers do not fear threats of hell and that hope will mean more victims of this crime. Observer mentioned that "...deciding

who should live and who should die is not a good thing." I see it as the person comitting the crime against an established written law as the one deciding when others will die and killing himself in the process.

Your cost figures are just manipulated anti-DP junk but I found similar manipulation of cost studies on the pro-DP side.

The only ones making the money are the lawyers and entire system needs to be streamlined and removed from abuse. The current way in which we process our condenmed needs to be restructured and swift timely appeal and execution/retrial must be put in place. To do away with the DP because lawyers have made it more expensive is not sound judicial policy. Close that circus down, swiftly execute the condenmed, and then we can all see costs and deterrence in the light of day.