Is the death penalty an effective deterrent for murderers?

I think so, get them out the way(:

But that does not mean it doesn't have a place in our world, where some people need to be removed from life, not just society.

When they are dead they can no longer murder.

I do say yes but only if the person was convicted beyond a shadow of a doubt and there was no circumstantial evidence at all too many innocent victims have died because of the death penalty because they were convicted because the evidence was too over whelming over their alibi thus getting them convicted on a crime they didn't commit

I don't think it is.

Cause they can sit on death row and appeal. If we actually killed people who got the death sentence it might work better

That is why they should die. They have no deterrent.

The soonest it's carried out certainly has a deterring effect, no thanks to our over active system of appeals. Just keep in mind that deterrence is not the purpose of executions. It is justice. A life must be given for a life that's taken. Otherwise life has no value.

They might not murder again when they're dead but they didn't think ahead very well when the committed the murders either and the questions was it an effective deterrent. To be truly effective at deterring murders, you can't just look at it more from the preventive damage control end of things.

Too many innocent people are convicted, especially in Texas.

Isn't too many murders in Texas the real problem?

The real problem is the shift of wealth to the top and it creates desperate poor and our laws help create helpless drug addicts. I would rather 10 guilty go free then one innocent condemned. Very few killers are mass murderers. In Texas to many stupid people have guns. So NO the problem in Texas is not to many murders, it is to many STUPID people.
By the way I love your picture of the bird on the pole and the water, would that be lake Washington?

That picture could be overlooking the Puget Sound in the direction of the Olympic Mountains but I'm not completely sure.

Okay, so you're against rich people, drug laws, stupid Texans and our freedom to own guns to defend ourselves from the many murderers roaming Texas that you're not too concerned about. I'd say that's a pretty typical uninformed opinion based on prejudice substituting for serious analysis of the death penalty issue. Letting 10 guilty murderers go free and threatening that many many innocent people based on the speculative possibility that one innocent man is condemned is hardly a sensible equation for justice and public safety.

I have a brother that lives on Anderson Island, ever been there?
I'm not against rich people, guns or stupid Texans, drug law's need to change.
I would still rather 10 guilty people go free then to kill one innocent. There aren't enough good cops here in Texas to catch real murders and more often than not they will accuse an innocent person and sometimes they even know.

That one innocent guy faces tough odds against those 10 guilty people set free. Sounds more like you have a corruption problem than an indictment against capital punishment.
I've been to the San Juan islands once. That was a nice trip.

Many have been proven innocent after many years in prison, some could have been executed and some were,I know of 2. The corruption problem makes the death penalty really wrong.
So never to Anderson Island in Puget Sound. I'll bet San Juan was a nice trip.

Then fix the corruption problem. Capital punishment in itself isn't wrong.

We should get rid of it two wrongs does not make a right it is barbaric.

I really don't care if it's a deterrent or not. If we don't execute those who murder then we are saying that the victims life wasn't worth the piece of crap that killed him/her.

Lots of people keep shouting about how the death penalty has deterred those executed from committing any other crime. Hate to break it to you, but that's not what "deterrent" means. That's our government deciding that it can kill its own citizens.

Deterrence is: what happened to person X makes person Y less likely to commit action Z.

Time after time it has been shown that the death penalty has absolutely zero impact on the commission of capital crimes. Pretty much nothing does, but the one thing that does have even the slightest impact is life in prison without possibility of parole, however minuscule it is it still tracks higher than the zero of the death penalty.

Also, from a practical perspective, it's cheaper by far to imprison someone for life than it is to impose the death penalty. From the moment a person is sentenced to death, the cost skyrockets.

Everything stands against the death penalty, except people's idiotic blood-lust to kill. Vengeance isn't justice, and the legal system is only supposed to deal in one of those.

The death penalty statistically does not deter crime.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.o...

Doing justice is the sole purpose of law. There's no deterring crime if people are going to choose to be criminals. The law can only intervene when a crime is being committed and deal justice when the perpetrator is caught. The question of deterrence is a false argument.

People will do what they do.

We put many people to death only to find out later on that some of them were innocent.

It never has been....But we seem to like that eye for an eye in our justice...except when we kill the innocent because they had bad defense,police,evidence or juries.

Considering that being prisoned, is worst death, from the death of the body!

No, but it sure eliminates repeat offenders...

AND No..... it would be more effective if every state did it.. and if they cut the waiting time in at least 1/2.

Doesn't seem to be.

After someone has killed somone it does not bring the victim back to life, and it rarely brings the loved ones of the victim lasting closure

It's worked great so far!


(sarcasm)

Some studies say no but that doesn't mean I am for the abolition of the death penalty it should be continued but the standards for which you can receive should be higher

It perhaps would be if they swapped the gas chamber for this...

Stop murders by committing murder? Where does this make sense?

Maybe if it was carried out faster like in the old west. Heck, if you were found guilty of murder back then, you could be hung within 3 month of the trial. I suppose if people knew that they would not sit on death row for 25 years before they were executed, maybe that would prevent some crime. What is you actually had public
executions....would that stick in your mind if you were about to commit violence? I don't know. But today, I don't think the death penalty deters killers. I personally am on the fence about the death penalty. In most cases I lean towards life in prison, but when you have people like Timothy McVeigh, then you begin to want the death penalty.

I will never believe in death penalty, unlest somebody could give me proofs that in those countries with death penalty, crime rate is lower than in the others, and I never saw that info so...

in that they will not be repeat offenders.

Because that is what they would get if it was my decision.