<font color = lightgreen>I cannot disagree that miscarriages of justice occur; unfortunately they are part of life. However, could we let 1 murderer go free to save 1 innocent? How many might the murderer kill?
Was he a threat? He was a convicted murderer, thus I feel he was a threat. Others might feel differently, to which I must ask, "How do you know he is not a threat anymore?"</font>

<font color = lightgreen>No one murdered anyone here, except Mr. Beazley's murder of Mr. Luttig. This was an execution, not a murder. True, someone died, but the connotations are completely different.
I agree that two wrongs do not make a right--I teach that to my own son--but there must also be consequences for one's actions; in this case, the State decreed that the consequence was death by injection.</font>

<font color = lightgreen>Even if individuals do not have the right to kill others (and certainly we do not), society must have that right. A society, a nation, is like the human body--your body has the "right" to rid itself of infection; so, too, must society have the right to remove that which would destroy it. If not, the society would die.</font>

My thought has always been this: I think that those sentenced to death should be used for the testing of new drugs/ products. We kill and abuse countless innocent animals to test drugs before they are made available to the public. What better way to test something for use on humans, than to test it ON a human?

I like this idea. I like it a lot....

How about we also kill them in a way that damages their body very little, like a bullet to the head or a cut throat, and then donate their bodies to medical science and their organs to whatever people might be in need of a transplant? I like that idea too.

hmmm, that's not such a bad idea.

was he a threat ? Why don't you ask that question to the familymembers of the person he killed ?

i agree with azred. Some criminals don't deserve to live or get a second chance. For instance that ted bundy guy, i like to compare him with a tumor, if a person has a tumor he goes the the hospital and has it removed or cut out of his body, nobody wants to live with a thing like that.

Your whole defense for him keeping his life is based upon his ability to smoke?

Say he could smoke, drink, and buy guns. Would he then be more guilty of his crime? Would he then deserve to die?

I'm afraid you're not making much sense.</font>[/QUOTE]I am making infinite sense - 18 is when you are considered responsible enough to make decisions for yourself - which is why everyone under 18 is not allowed to buy cigarettes, vote, gamble, etc, etc.

Yet this person was tried and convicted as though he committed the crime at 18. Tried as an adult.

So, we can convict him and execute him as if he were 18 years old, however he was still, at 17, unable to receive any of the benefits 18 year olds get - simply because he wasn't considered responsible enough.

So, if all of a sudden we're going to pretend kids are adults and execute now, then we must give them the benefits adults have - it can't work both ways.

I hope you retain the same conviction when a loved one is pumped full of lethal drugs due to a crime he or she didn't commit.

Not really, you're killing someone who isn't a threat to you. If it were self-defense I would have no problem with it, but the man was already locked up and the key was thrown away. Since he didn't even try to escape in all this time, I doubt he was going to if he had to sit in that cell for 70 years.

The death penalty is pure murder - the only difference is that it is state-sponsored. If we kill people for killing people to show that killing people is wrong, we become complete and utter hypocrites and we lose any moral authority.

Why do you even bother teaching it to your son? You obviously don't believe it. The consequence could have been life in prison without parole, but no, they had to go one step further and kill him, which is obviously unnecessary and just a way of getting revenge.

That is a ridiculous argument - just take a look at our European friends (and pretty much any civilized country other than the USA) for proof that society lives just fine without the death penalty.

So, society has the right, based on planted evidence or whatever, to arrest you, convict you, and execute you for a crime you didn't commit, and then after you're dead and they find that they were wrong, they can just turn to your family members and say "oops, sorry"?

To all you wonderfully civilized people who want executions immediately after the person is convicted - the waiting period is so that evidence and suchlike can be reviewed, so we can make damn sure that the offender was guilty. Granted, we probably still kill a few innocents, but it's a lot fewer than would be killed under your system.

If in the near future your system is implemented, and a loved one is executed immediately after the trial (even though they were innocent), and you can stick to your guns and still support your stance, come talk to me then.

And to YOU, wonderfully inexperienced one... when YOU have a loved one murdered and the murderer set free because of your beliefs, come talk to ME then.
I have had 1 family member, and 2 wonderful friends murdered. One young lady was stabbed to death by her husband, with multiple stab wounds in her BACK. But because of people like YOU, he was set free. He went to her families home, and shot her brother, before being gunned-down.
People like YOU are responsible for his death.