Too many wrongful executions especially Afro-americans. No capital punishment.

I'm hesitant to support capital punishment because of the potential to kill an innocent. However, I believe there are some behaviors so harmful to others that the perpetrators deserve death.

I don't trust the ability of the government to have power over a person's life or death. Plus people are being exonerated by DNA all the time...when will we stop and look at that?

I can not vote because this is not an on-off deal. The problem that rich people and celebrities may get away with murder while the poor get fried. Is not to my liking. I don't like guns and yet there is a 9mm and a shotgun where I live in Vegas for self defense and target shooting mind you. My son likes to take his girlfriends target shooting with his mother... he, he, ha. She is one hell of a shot but... this subject is not a joke. Our judicial system is not meant to be equal and fair to all. And is not. Some crimes deserve the removal of that person off this plane where we are now. How are we going to do it?

While I wouldn't want to see all the "bad guys" wiped out unnecessarily , I do believe that certain extreme offenders should be gone. (pedophiles, mass murderers etc.)

And to save a lot of fuss, I'd like to see the guillotine put into service again - "chop"

No, under absolutely no circumstances whatsoever.

Here in the UK we don't have the death penalty. I beleive we have a far lower crime rate and a much lower homicide rate so the death penalty is not acting as much of a deterrent in the US. I'm not in favour of taking anyone's life under any circumstances. I might think differently had I been a victim of certain crimes but I would hope that even then I still wouldn't want anyone killed

Studies have been done that indicate that capital punishment is not a deterrent. The justice system is flawed and in some cases corrupted hence The innocence project.

I would prefer we found an alternative but I don't see it happening. Right now we keep the worst offenders in with those that aren't. We keep prisoners that either will not or can not be rehabilitated. When I say rehabilitated I mean those that are most unlikely to be repeat offenders. We have a very broken system and I don't see anyone really trying to fix it.

I wouldn't have problem with CP if all those sentenced to death were the Charles Manson(s) of mankind.

No from me. We're not responsible for making life (in general, not our own kids) so I don't think we should be destroying it.*

*fetus doesn't count because it's not an independent "life" by itself

As long as there is the chance that an innocent person can be executed, I stand firmly against it. DNA is not the absolute prove-all, and evidence can be faked, hidden or corrupted. Besides, I just cannot understand the logic that claims, "you killed someone. Our society absolutely abhors killing. So as punishment we're going to kill you." Murder, state sanctioned or not is still murder.

I definitely believe some acts warrant the death penalty. I am even more convinced that human/government/legal institutions will never be capable of administering justice consistently fairly, and therefore they have no business meting out the ultimate punishment when they will sometimes get it wrong. Besides honest mistakes, there is such rampant bigotry and corruption in the system that it's shocking.

We need to be more like Norway, where the "correctional" system actually rehabilitates people, rather than hardening criminals further and saddling parolees with so many hurdles that it all but guarantees their return to crime and to prison like a revolving door.

100% against. Interestingly its abolished in 141 countries against 56 that retain it, not that all of those use.

I love life, I just love living things, I do not kill snakes, I do wildlife rescue, I am trained in emergency treatment of domestic animals, I take in homeless kids. But I am in favour of capital punishment. We have a couple in our prisons that should not be alive, mass murderers whi kill for the thrill. Someone who walks around shooting everyone they see, chasing down two little girls so he could shoot them with an automatic weapon. We put down savage dogs, anything that is a threat to humans and their safety. I do not believe a human life is any different to another mammal. I don't mean going all out with executions, but there are some cases where I wish it wold happen.

I don't want my country to kill people in my name. War is a conflict where people die. Death Penalty is just legalized murder. And it doesn't seem to alleviate the crime rate, so it doesn't serve any purpose but revenge and bloodlust, which is what we put people in prison for in the first place, right?

When the CP subject pops up among friends / relatives I instantly think of the movie "Twelve angry men" and in the character played by Henry Fonda.

You can not make people Un-dead if it was later proven they were innocent. Yes, innocent people are put to death all the time. Check out the Innocence Project. I do not believe in state-sanctioned capital punishment. I also don't believe most people in prison should be there. Keep the violent ones there to protect society, I agree. Sex criminals and serial killers do not belong on the outside until there is some advance in science that will cure them. Educate and train the remaining population. Provide them a way out of the lifestyle choices that got them imprisoned in the first place.

Capital punishment is illogical. Killing is wrong, we can all agree on that. If a person kills another person and societies response is to kill the killer then society has committed the same crime as the killer. Two wrongs don't make a right. Society should not be advocating murder by engaging in it. I believe that is one reason why states which allow the death penalty have higher murder rates. it sends the message that life is cheap rather than sacred.

Also, wouldn't it be a more fitting punishment for the killer to waste away in a cage until the end comes naturally, slowly, painfully? And it's cheaper to keep someone locked up for a lifetime than it is to execute.

Pro capital punishment is an indefensible position to hold. It's shocking to me that a group of people who seem to pride themselves on evidenced based beliefs and logical thought would have a split this close on this topic. How depressing.

State sanctioned murder.

No from me.

I have to take the stance that the deliberate killing of another human cannot be justified. The cognitive dissonance starts when something happens close to home that you can believe you can justify killing someone - the difficulty being that everyone will draw the line at a different point.

I believe in justice, not retribution.

I can't give a rigid yes or no. There are cogent arguments on both sides. I do believe that some horrible criminals do not deserve to live. Theodore Bundy, Timothy McVeigh, pedophiles who have raped many children. I think CP should be used for the most heinous criminals. Make sure there is very strong evidence before applying CP. I have heard of innocent people getting CP and decades later, DNA evidence proves they did not do the crime.

There are certainly people that the world would be better off without. But killing people seems wrong to me no matter who does it. (That's not to say that there are no circumstances in which I'd kill someone.)