Death Records Now

instead of cheering high numbers.
why do conservatives consider Texas’s record amount on death row inmates as a win?
they beat every state at the record amount of murderers. that’s a pathetic lose you people are proud of. whichever state has the record amount of abortions certainly isn’t getting any cheers from the left. that’s a tragedy. that’s why we want to provide social programs. so people wont have to resort to murder and thief just to make it to the end of their life.

My opinion has nothing to do with conservative v. liberal arguments. It is based on the death penalty system in action:

For the worst crimes, life without parole is better, for many reasons. I’m against the death penalty not because of sympathy for criminals but because it isn’t effective in reducing crime, prolongs the anguish of families of murder victims, costs a whole lot more than life in prison, and, worst of all, risks executions of innocent people.

The worst thing about it. Errors:
The system can make tragic mistakes. In 2004, the state of Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham for starting the fire that killed his children. The Texas Forensic Science Commission found that the arson testimony that led to his conviction was based on flawed science. As of today, 138 wrongly convicted people on death row have been exonerated. DNA is rarely available in homicides, often irrelevant (as in Willingham’s case) and can’t guarantee we won’t execute innocent people. Capital juries are dominated by people who favor the death penalty and are more likely to vote to convict.

Keeping killers off the streets for good:
Life without parole, on the books in most states, also prevents reoffending. It means what it says, and spending the rest of your life locked up, knowing you’ll never be free, is no picnic. Two big advantages:
-an innocent person serving life can be released from prison
-life without parole costs less than the death penalty

Costs, a surprise to many people:
Study after study has found that the death penalty is much more expensive than life in prison. Since the stakes are so high, the process is far more complex than for any other kind of criminal case. The largest costs come at the pre-trial and trial stages. These apply whether or not the defendant is convicted, let alone sentenced to death.

Crime reduction (deterrence):
The death penalty doesn’t keep us safer. Homicide rates for states that use the death penalty are consistently higher than for those that don’t. The most recent FBI data confirms this. For people without a conscience, fear of being caught is the best deterrent.

Who gets it:
The death penalty isn’t reserved for the worst crimes, but for defendants with the worst lawyers. It doesn’t apply to people with money. Practically everyone sentenced to death had to rely on an overworked public defender. How many people with money have been executed??

Victims:
People assume that families of murder victims want the death penalty imposed. It isn’t necessarily so. Some are against it on moral grounds. But even families who have supported the death penalty in principle have testified to the protracted and unavoidable damage that the death penalty process does to families like theirs and that life without parole is an appropriate alternative.

It comes down to whether we should keep the death penalty for retribution or revenge in spite of its flaws and in spite of the huge toll it exacts on society.

One only has to check out Bush’s record as Governor of Texas to see his own preference for death over life. During his tenure as Governor, Bush presided over a record setting 152 executions, including the 1998 execution of fellow born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who later led a prison ministry. Forty of Bush’s executions were carried out in 2000, the year the Bush presidential campaign was spotlighting their candidate’s strong law enforcement record. The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen reported in October 2000 that one of the execution chamber’s "tie-down team" members, Fred Allen, had to prepare so many people for lethal injections during 2000, he quit his job in disgust.

Bush mocked Tucker’s appeal for clemency. In an interview with Talk magazine, Bush imitated Tucker’s appeal for him to spare her life – pursing his lips, squinting his eyes, and in a squeaky voice saying, "Please don’t kill me."
My point is the mocking behavior. that is just cruel

I am 100% for the death penalty for aggravated murder and brutal rape.

However, that does not mean that Bush did not abuse his power as governor by acting like "Hangin’ Judge Roy Bean."

Nor does it mean he is right to be so hypocritical about pretending to be "pro-life" to get the votes of the religious right while being so cavalier about the lives of adult human beings both in Texas and Iraq.

Nor is he right in playing to his political base by professing to "protect the rights" of undifferentiated stem cells at the extreme cost to living, breathing human beings who are suffering intolerably from unspeakable diseases.

Nor is he right in manipulating the truth (lying) in order to pursue a war that he vowed to wage even before becoming President, costing the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqi’s, and causing the deaths of over 3100 brave young Americans, more victims than died during the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which he claimed to be avenging.

Bush does not care about human life any more than he cares about that record number of Americans living in poverty, whose programs he has consistently cut in order to pay for tax breaks for his wealthy friends (and to give a pittance to the middle class, in order to secure the votes of the more gullible among them).

With the possible exception of James Buchanan, George W. Bush is by far the worst and most devastating President ever elected in the United States. The destruction he has cause to the United States in power, international prestige, internal division, and our economy will take decades to repair.

Unfortunately, at least 3,100 young Americans will not be here to see that happen, victims of a President who professes to be "pro-life."

The Death Penalty, you hear the word and instantly your mind starts wondering about it. The Death Penalty is know as the worst punishment, or charge, to get. The punishment is Death. The death penalty is very rare, but since the 1980’s, it has became more and more common and more than 1000 people have been executed. The question you might first think about is… How do they kill them? The most common method is the lethal injection. A chemical that is released into your body that will instantly kill you. There are some other rarer methods known as hanging, electrocution, gas chambers, and a firing squad.

Many people go against the Death Penalty, this is for many reasons. One of the reasons is that it breaks the rule of the 8th amendment of the Constitution of No Cruel or Unusual Punishment. The Death Penalty can be thought to fit in with this and can not. It is Killing a person, but some people think they deserve it. Another reason people disagree with the Death Penalty is that killing a person is killing a person. They Say no matter what the person did, they are still a person and that doesn’t give you a right to kill them. But there have been about 18,000 murders in the US a year, and some people think that there needs to be more executions.

What I think? I think the Death Penalty is one of the things that I am really disappointed about. Im just a boy, but I know lots of stuff about this topic. So I do not and will never support the Death Penalty. My first reason why is that it is killing a person. Sure they are Mass Murderers but still 2 wrongs don’t mean a right so that doesn’t mean we have to kill them because the government killing them is basically the government murdering them.
People say that it cost to much money to keep inmates in prison for life, actually that’s not correct. Studies show it cost more to execute someone. Is the lethal Injection really painless. First of all, they aren’t 100% sure what it feels like because they can not test it. But studies show that people can go through an extreme amount of pain during the procedure. It usually depends on the person. You see there are three main parts in the lethal injection. There’s the anesthetic like material that is said to make you feel nothing, there’s the poison like material that kills you. And finally there’s the material that doesn’t make you move at all. Science says that over 10% of the Lethal injections the US has done the inmates where most likely going through an extreme amount of pain but didn’t even feel anything. It happens in sugary sometimes, it looks like there asleep but there fully awake feeling everything.

Here are some facts I made from researching…

••In the United States, about 13,000 people have been legally executed since colonial times.
••By the 1930’s up to 150 people were executed yearly. 2 Lack of public support for capital punishment and various legal challenges reduced the execution rate to near zero by 1967. The U.S. Supreme Court banned the practice in 1972.
••In 1976, the Supreme Court authorized its resumption. 3 Each state could then decide whether or not to have the death penalty. As of the 2002-OCT, only the District of Columbia and 12 states do not have the death penalty. The states which have abolished executions are typically northern: Alaska, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin. However, seven jurisdictions have the death penalty but have not performed any executions since 1976. They are also mostly northern: Connecticut, Kansas, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, South Dakota and the U.S. military.
••The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that whenever a sentencing jury has the ability to impose capital punishment, the jury must be informed in advance if the defendant would be eligible for parole.
••Almost all states have an automatic review of each conviction by their highest appellate court.
••There are a number of federal offenses that can lead to the death penalty. About 21 prisoners are housed in death row at the federal Terre Haute, IN facility. One was executed in 2001. This was the first federal execution in 36 years.
••Texas holds the record for the largest number of executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Virginia has executed a larger percentage of its population than any other state over 1 million in population.
••As of 2002-JAN-1: From 1976, when executions were resumed, until 2002-JUL-1, there have been 784 executions in the US. About 30 to 60 prisoners are currently killed annually, most by lethal injection. About two out of three executions (65.6%) are conducted in five states: Texas, Virginia, Missouri, Florida and Oklahoma. Texas leads the other states in number of killings (256 killings; 34% of the national total). There were about 3,690 prisoners sentenced to death in 37 state death rows, and 31 being held by the U

Great! You have done a lot of research and you are obviously a compassionate person. I agree with you 100% and wish there were more people like you in the world who do not believe in the death penalty. I live in England where fortunately the death penalty is outlawed.