http://www.opposingviews.com/questions/should-the-us-abolish-the-death-penalty Opposing Views - Should the U.S. Abolish the Death Penalty? http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/america-is-not-a-rogue-state Only a handful of countries still execute more prisoners each year than the U.S., including countries such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.  Is this the company that we want to keep? Amnesty Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:22:44 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/america-is-not-a-rogue-state http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/support-remains-strong-in-america What Mr. Marquis conveniently leaves out here is the option of LWOP (life without the possibility of parole).  This sentence is now an option in most states, and when presented with this option the majority of Americans consistently support... Amnesty Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:22:44 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/support-remains-strong-in-america http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/more-money-to-put-police-on-the-street-is-the-real-deterrent “It is likely that somewhere in the range of 5 to 18 innocent lives are saved per execution,” claims the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. Any study that claims to have formulated results so specific as to tie a number of executions to a... Amnesty Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:22:42 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/more-money-to-put-police-on-the-street-is-the-real-deterrent http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/the-death-penalty-is-not-a-deterrent Do you feel safe in downtown Detroit? You shouldn't be. Beyond the obvious specific deterrent of executing a killer so he can't kill again, the most recent studies (since 2000) come from a broad base of economists and non-idealogical scientists. Joshua Marquis Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:06:55 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/the-death-penalty-is-not-a-deterrent http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/justice-shouldn-t-have-a-price-tag As someone who has tried both capital and non-capital murder cases, as well as defending similar cases, I can say from direct knowledge that the costs of capital punishment are directly related to the amount of due process given the defendant. The... Joshua Marquis Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:06:52 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/justice-shouldn-t-have-a-price-tag http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/innocence-on-death-row-rarer-than-rabies In discussing capital punishment, words matter. But the idea that death row is "riddled" with innocents is ridiculous. There is not a single case in the modern era of capital punishment (since 1976) where a person executed has turned out to be... Joshua Marquis Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:06:44 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/innocence-on-death-row-rarer-than-rabies http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/america-is-not-a-rogue-state Many democracies maintain capital punishment, not the least being India and Japan. The death penalty was abolished in Europe and Euro-centric countries because the European Union made abolition an absolute prerequiste to membership. Polls of most... Joshua Marquis Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:06:25 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/america-is-not-a-rogue-state http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/support-remains-strong-in-america What Amnesty International is not telling you is that polling done on capital punishment shows that consistently 65 to 85% of Americans support capital punishment in some cases since the mid-1970s. Support peaked in the 1980s, decreased slightly to... Joshua Marquis Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:06:25 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/support-remains-strong-in-america http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/more-than-3-people-are-exonerated-from-death-row-every-year As of July 11, 2008, 129 people have been exonerated from US death rows since 1973.   That’s an average of over 3 per year who have either been pardoned, had their charges dismissed, or been acquitted on retrial.   Three men have... Amnesty Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:05:19 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/more-than-3-people-are-exonerated-from-death-row-every-year http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/the-death-penalty-is-not-a-deterrent Where would you feel safer?  Somewhere in Maine or Vermont, or somewhere in downtown Houston, Texas?    Because, while Maine and Vermont do not have the death penalty (and have two of the lowest murder rates in America), Harris... Amnesty Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:05:00 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/counters/the-death-penalty-is-not-a-deterrent http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/the-idea-that-many-people-on-death-row-are-innocent-is-nonsense One of the most pernicious urban legends perpetrated by those who oppose capital punishment is that innocent people have been executed and that there have a large number of exonerations. Exoneration means innocent and while there is no question the... Joshua Marquis Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:47:59 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/the-idea-that-many-people-on-death-row-are-innocent-is-nonsense http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/how-many-innocent-victims-are-too-many There has never been any doubt that capital punishment is a specific deterrent. The killer who dies cannot kill again, but in the last decade a series of academic studies have shown that executions mean less murder, less innocent victims. This is... Joshua Marquis Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:47:54 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/how-many-innocent-victims-are-too-many http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/the-american-public-is-moving-away-from-the-death-penalty Public support for the death penalty is diminishing in the U.S. - roughly half the U.S. public now prefers life without parole over the death penalty as the best punishment for the crime of murder. As evidence, annual death sentences in the U.S. Amnesty Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:47:49 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/the-american-public-is-moving-away-from-the-death-penalty http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/the-death-penalty-costs-more Every study has shown that a death penalty system is significantly more expensive than a system in which the death penalty is not an option.  The greatest costs associated with the death penalty occur prior to and during trial, not in... Amnesty Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:47:45 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/the-death-penalty-costs-more http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/the-death-penalty-makes-too-many-mistakes We know that many innocent people have been sent to death row - over 125 have now been released from death row in the U.S. due to evidence of their wrongful convictions. The death penalty is also riddled with racial and economic bias and... Amnesty Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:47:41 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/the-death-penalty-makes-too-many-mistakes http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/the-death-penalty-is-a-denial-of-human-rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the U.N. in 1948, proclaims the right of every individual to protection from deprivation of life. It states that no one shall be subjected to cruel or degrading punishment. The death... Amnesty Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:47:34 -0600 http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/the-death-penalty-is-a-denial-of-human-rights http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/an-enforced-death-penalty-saves-lives-through-deterrence There has been a sea change in the scholarly literature on deterrence in recent years. Dr. Paul Rubin of Emory University summarized it in his congressional testimony in 2006. "The literature is easy to summarize: almost all modern studies and... Criminal Justice Legal Foundation Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:30:39 -0500 http://www.opposingviews.com/arguments/an-enforced-death-penalty-saves-lives-through-deterrence