484 Comments

No on the death penalty. No on assisted suicide. You either believe you're alone in the universe and that your life belongs to you and you alone, terribly lonely and purposeless, or you believe your life and all life belongs to the creator, which connects us all, and is meaningful. If the latter, it isn't our place to determine who lives or dies, or when.

But in addition, the US doesn't have an inquisitorial justice system. It has what is known as an adversarial justice system. That impacts how police and prosecutors approach cases, as well as witness testimony, and therefore sometimes also impacts the outcomes of those cases. That fact alone should give pause on this issue.

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If Glossip isn't guilty, then he should be free. Simple.

That said, the death penalty is absolutely just and necessary. We need a system that is as truthful as possible, people in the system who aren't concerned for their careers ahead off doing actual justice. But we also need a system in place that executes those who are guilty without a doubt (which is the vast majority of people on Death Row) quickly and efficiently.

To those who argue that the death penalty is not a deterrent, I have several things to say:

1) I don't care. Some crimes deserve death and death is the just punishment regardless whether it deters anyone else from committing the same crime.

2) If the death penalty has ceased to be a deterrent, I submit that that belief has grown as the fear of being sentenced to death and the certainty that such a sentence will actually be carried out have all but disappeared. Start sentencing murderers to death and carrying out that sentence quickly and watch how fast the death penalty becomes a deterrent again.

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If it wrong to kill someone, how can you justify killing someone?

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I also have a consistent life ethic, but (if I may pat my own back for a moment) I'm also wise enough to know that keeping murderers alive is not a consistent life ethic. Leaving people alive who deserve to die puts other prisoners at risk (my brother-in-law is a CO, and he is full of stories of things he has seen with his own eyes that would make your blood run cold). Keeping them alive puts innocent CO's at risk (If you've been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, what else can be done to you if you murder other inmates or CO's? Just tack on another life sentence?). Occasionally prisoners escape and then murder other innocent people while on the run (look it up, it happens more often than you probably think).

In short, it seems easy to say, "I'm just for life. Let's keep killers away from the innocent and that way, we aren't responsible for killing anyone or accidently killing someone who is innocent." Reality doesn't work that way. As Thomas Sowell says, "There are no solutions, only tradeoffs."

By keeping murders alive, the State gets to wash it's hands of direct responsibility for the deaths of guilty people. But when the State decides to keep a murderer alive, doesn't the State at least share in the responsibility for all the people killed by murderers who have been caught and convicted and then kill in prison, or escape and kill, or are released and then kill again?

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Finally, the way that a society punishes crime says the most about how that society values that crime and it's victims.

When a society decides that people who murder shouldn't die, then that society is sending the message that it doesn't value the lives of the innocent over the lives of the guilty. An innocent person is murdered, children have a parent stolen from them, a husband has a wife stolen from them, parents have a child stolen from them, siblings have a sister stolen from them, friends have a companion stolen from them, a community has neighbor stolen from them, and everyone, particularly the immediate family of the victim, have a future stolen from them. But when the killer is allowed family connections, friends, a future, it's spitting in the face of not just the victim, but everyone who knew a valued the victim. The killer can talk on the phone with his brother? The brother of the murdered victim has had every future phone call with his sibling stolen from him. The killer can read a book or listen to music? His victim can never read or listen to anything ever again.

When a society fails to execute people who have done things worthy of death, it is absolutely sending the message that it values the life of the guilty more than the life of the murdered innocent. It is so valuing the life of the guilty over the lives of his future victims.

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Will someone please read Crime and Punishment in this thread? Puhlease....

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Funny thing is, the anti Death Penalty squad lost allot of traction when they stopped hard labor. I'll trade a nice painless death penalty for hard labor.... making gravel out of big rocks kind of hard labor... but it will never happen in today's woke world.

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Fryhim.

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I’m embarrassed for you that you would take an obviously guilty individual and push this case because you are anti death penalty. Please look for another case that deserves your sympathy and misguided attempts to overturn his repeated guilty convictions. This is not the one.

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Bring back the death penalty, even though implementing it can never be perfect. Nothing on earth is. But there are many people still on earth who deserved to die long ago.

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This is exceptional reporting. Thank you so much, Ms. Subramanya. Is there a petition anywhere we can sign?

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It's easy to agree on who should be executed- The child molester and murder. The problem is our legal system is an adversarial system.

*Many, People are unable to afford adequate representation.

*The system is comprised of people that aren't very smart but "I know I'm right he has to be guilty"

Look at those cases because of DNA alone where the person is exonerated. First, most of the defendants are poor, and or the prosecutors where a Joke. Cases riddled with inconsistency, fabrications and out right misconduct.

Some people shouldn't live. But I don't trust our government on making that decision.

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Kill the Death Penalty!

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"J.J. Humphrey, a Republican state representative who supports capital punishment, told me all the DAs and other state politicos who built their careers being tough on crime are to blame for refusing to admit they got Glossip’s case wrong.

“People can’t have faith in the system. That’s what tears down your country, and this is as corrupt as it gets—to take a person’s life to further your political career. That’s what’s been done in Richard’s case.”

Narrator: Richard.....is white.

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Hey....did you guys know that if a cop has a heart attack while beating/assaulting you - you can be charged for murder?

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"The Free Press": Working Hard to Rehabilitate White Murderers.

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ALL HANDS ON DECK!

We must save this white one from execution.

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I'm here for all the TFP "The Government can't do anything right" commenters....making an exception for the death penalty.

Lol.

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