I'm against the death penalty.

I also have to ask, do we still have democracy, or just the illusion of democracy that big business and the plutocrats behind them let us have?

Maybe I've been listening to John and Adam for too long, but reading Daniel Suarez Daemon and Darknet (German title, I think the English title might be Freedom(tm)?), it was like reading a memefest from the news networks!

It's a start.

Is that because we do not have a democracy when those that we vote for can decide to ignore those that voted for them?

So we better not put anyone in jail or fine them because there may be some innocent

In other words if a persons view differs from yours, their viewpoint is invalid and therefore you can ignore them without regard and impunity.

Sorry if I believe that if someone commits premeditated murder and society has decreed that capital punishment is the fitting punishment then it should be. Well actually I'm not sorry.

With rights come responsibilities. I personally believe that you cant have one without the other.

The death penalty is never appropriate. If we had the death penalty during the seventies and eighties it would have meant the deaths of countless innocent people like the Birmingham Six. Then, the Cardiff three, who were picked because they were black. At least with a life sentence you can at least make amends afterwards, that is not possible with the death penalty.

Agreed; whilst I do not have a moral problem with the death penalty as a concept, I would take a very strong opposition to it actually being instigated as a practical reality, especially given the state of the UK legal system.

Two Words: Punitive Coma!!

No - firstly, if we do reinstate the death penalty*, then I take it that the people who want it are of a mediaeval vengeance mindset. Fine, good. We should accommodate them.

Firstly, executions should be public. None of this doing it behind closed doors in prisons - public squares and parks could be used for executions. People should see what death involves. What killing looks like. I watched a programme on Channel 4 many years ago about the death penalty in America, and one of the people who knew the actual mechanics of the processes involved in killing a person said that the human body is very hard to break, and being sure that it’s done cleanly and painlessly is very difficult. He said that he didn’t know if someone going through the lethal injection process felt any pain. It’s a one way journey - you can’t self-experiment. So, public hangings are the order of the day, and those who signed these petitions should get front row seats.

Secondly, there seems to be a call for various kinds of murderers to be executed. A lot of this seems to be various forms of emotive sensibilities - killing children and police officers. If we are doing a sliding scale of death for various kinds of killers, then we, again, need to look back in history to find out that there was indeed a sliding scale of killings. If you were lucky, your head got lopped off. If you were unlucky, you were hanged, drawn and quartered. Again, I propose that this method of execution is added to the roster of state sanction deaths, and that these more emotive murders are met with this punishment. Again, people who want it get front row seats. Possibly with their heads fixed forwards and their eyes taped open so they can’t not look.

This is all fiction, and the idea of returning to a mediaeval state where death and mutilation is the answer to crimes is long gone. What I would love to do is poll those who responded to these questions and ask them if they felt that the justice system in places like Saudi Arabia is one we should adopt. Flogging, stonings etc. are par for the course there, as well as public executions. If you asked those poeple if we should base our legal system on Sharia Law, and adopt the punishments meted out, I wonder how many would be so keen.

* And now for the asterisk. We can’t reinstate the death penalty anyway. Part of being in the EU and other conventions we have signed up to stop this. We would have to pick apart a hell of a lot to even be in a position where we could start to put the processes in place to enable it to happen. I would expect that if we did start executing people on village greens that we would lose a lot of trade, good will, friendship, etc. with a lot of countries.

It also disqualifies us from being able to extradite people from abroad, as many countries will not extradite when the death penalty is an option.

The only "responsibility" I have is to conduct myself in a way that does not harm or impact upon other people. Anything else and you can keep it.

Capital punishment is nothing more than state-sponsored murder.

Nope, as murder is unlawful, thus state capital punishment can not be murder as it would be lawful.

You can put what legal trickery in the way that you like, I intend to call a spade a spade.

for anyone or group (gang) break/illegally enter my home/house, i will give them the death penalty
if they kill me then i want the death penalty for them ...

Hmm not the most reasoned argument - I assume you are infavour of locking people up in jail - if so and following your reasoning you should be locked up for life just to show that you support it and accept that occationally innocent people will be locked up

There'd be none left...maybe it's not such a bad idea after all