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Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t - The Death Pena...

Superb episode, outlining why the death penalty is just morally atrocious.

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15 Comments

Current View: 15 / Show all Comments

AmericanPatriot : LVL 22: VP 3.1: said:

AmericanPatriot

-2 votes NegativePositive

1295 days 8 hours ago...

What exactly is so morally just about letting cold-blooded murderers live off the backs of hard working americans (via tax) while denying justice to the victims of the monters acts? You can't claim moral high ground by letting ultimate evil go unpunished.

mateo45 : LVL 10: VP 1.9: said:

mateo45

-2 votes NegativePositive

1295 days 7 hours ago...

This is directed to the dumbass who calls himself nahx. Do you really think an innocent unborn baby is the same as a convicted criminal?

Sejs : LVL 20: VP 2.9: said:

Sejs

0 votes NegativePositive

1295 days 4 hours ago...

"The death penalty is pre-meditated murder in its purest form."

"legal murder."

OKay, some of you people seriously need to get a dictionary. Murder = unlawful killing. If you want to say it's morally reprehensible, by all means, knock yourselves out. But at least use the word properly so you don't look like dickheads while you do it.

JamesM : LVL 32: VP 4.1: said:

JamesM

2 votes NegativePositive

1295 days 2 hours ago...

In Australia, it is illegal to kill someone! That includes the government! So, Capital Punishment is murder. I can understand how people can be happy with putting a horible person to death who has killed (personally, i don't think anyone has the right to kill someone, it doesn't matter who they are), but there are places in the world where 15g of heroin will get you hanged! That is barbaric.

Suck my balls Singapore.

RIP Nguyen Toung Van

Nahx : LVL 23: VP 3.2: said:

Nahx

1 votes NegativePositive

1295 days 2 hours ago...

AmericanPatriot said:
"What exactly is so morally just about letting cold-blooded murderers live off the backs of hard working americans (via tax) while denying justice to the victims of the monters acts? You can't claim moral high ground by letting ultimate evil go unpunished."

Actually, it costs millions of dollars more each year to sentence someone to death than to keep them in prison their whole life, even under maximum security. Don't quote me, but California's average cost for a capital murder case was something like $2.3 million if I remember correctly. Texas was $1.3 million. Anyone who gets charged with the death penalty automatically gets an appeal so this figure is a statement of complete court costs throughout the whole trial. Maximum prisons can service 3 people per year for $30,000, which is mainly prison guard pay. Divide 2.3 million by 30,000 and we can house 3 deathrow inmates for 76 years all at the same cost to tax payers as 1 death penelty case. Kinda makes sense to just lock them up for the rest of their lives, if someone were concerned with only tax dollars.

exhumed : LVL 12: VP 2.1: said:

exhumed

-1 votes NegativePositive

1295 days ago...

It isn't working for me. :(

Sejs : LVL 20: VP 2.9: said:

Sejs

-1 votes NegativePositive

1294 days 22 hours ago...

"Actually, it costs millions of dollars more each year to sentence someone to death than to keep them in prison their whole life, even under maximum security."

To be fair, the only reason execution can be (not always -is-, mind you, but can be) more expensive than life-long incarceration is the abusable appeals process. In a nutshell, no matter how damning the evidence, no matter how cut and dry, open and shut the case is, the individual gets to expend every single possible appeal, all levels, every level, one at a time, before execution can be carried out.

It's clunky. It's slow to the tune of years-to-decades. And having to deal with that level of bureaucracy over and over again, in addition to the cost of housing and maintaining the individual is why execution can be so expensive.

The actual final step is cheap. $5 worth of drugs, a needle, a handi-wipe, some leather belts and a chair. It's the getting to that final step that's costly.

MadDictator : LVL 33: VP 4.2: said:

MadDictator

0 votes NegativePositive

1294 days 21 hours ago...

i agree /\/\

Midknight : LVL 43: VP 5: said:

Midknight

-2 votes NegativePositive

1294 days 21 hours ago...

Nahx: "Actually, it costs millions of dollars more each year to sentence someone to death than to keep them in prison their whole life, even under maximum security. Don't quote me, but California's average cost for a capital murder case was something like $2.3 million if I remember correctly."


^ California's system needs some long-overdue repairs. However, that 2.3 million figure probably includes the money spent by socialists to save the condemned.

In the case of Illinois, there was a mass murder by the name of John Wayne Gacy. He tortured, sodomized and murdered approximately 30 teenagers and buried their bodies in his home's crawlspace. Gacy is best known for dressing up as a clown and entertaining kids.

Anyway, he was found guilty on all 30 murders and sentenced to receive the needle. This would not have been expensive had it not been for a socialist advocacy group that wanted to abolish the death penalty.

They cost the Rep. of Illinois millions of dollars - to save a serial killer.

York Pacer 2750 : LVL 9: VP 1.8: said:

York Pacer 2750

3 votes NegativePositive

1294 days 21 hours ago...

It couldn't be more obvious that all the pro death penalty posters never even watched this.

Did you notice 121 people on death row were proven innocent and released? Begs the question, how many were not so lucky (innocently executed that is).

Did you notice how prosecutors withold vital evidence, because it may prove innocence. They don't wanna lose professional face you see.

Did you notice how police are pressurised to catch someone in high profile cases, no matter how weak or downright fabricated the evidence?

In short - CORRUPTION!

However, even if we had some means of proving guilt 100% all of this is irrelevant. You totally missed the point. The death penalty is plain WRONG! This is the 21st century and our law is that of savages.

I don't care about your precious tax dollars, we're talking about human LIFE. You're argument can be applied to ANYONE in prision. Let's execute tax evaders as well, or the old woman who backed her zimmer into a limosuine.

The central theme of this episode is that it's morally WRONG. That is to say not applicable in ANY circumstances. Sorry that flew over your heads.

AmericanPatriot : LVL 22: VP 3.1: said:

AmericanPatriot

-2 votes NegativePositive

1294 days 21 hours ago...

>>Begs the question, how many were not so lucky (innocently executed that is).

You didn't notice that convicted murderers can murder innocent people while in prison? Including guards, fellow prisoners, phoning in 'hits' on the outside?

n 1974, Clarence Ray Allen ordered a 17-year-old young woman, Mary Sue Kitts, murdered because she knew of Allen's involvement in a Fresno, Calif., store burglary.

After his 1977 trial and conviction, Allen was sentenced to life without parole.

According to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders, "In Folsom State Prison, Allen cooked up a scheme to kill the witnesses who testified against him so that he could appeal his conviction and then be freed because any witnesses were dead -- or scared into silence." As a result, three more innocent people were murdered -- Bryon Schletewitz, 27, Josephine Rocha, 17, and Douglas White, 18.

Perhaps the most infamous case of a death penalty opponent directly causing the murder of an innocent is that of novelist Norman Mailer. In 1981, Mailer utilized his influence to obtain parole for a bank robber and murderer named Jack Abbott on the grounds that Abbott was a talented writer. Six weeks after being paroled, Abbott murdered Richard Adan, a 22-year-old newlywed, aspiring actor and playwright who was waiting tables at his father's restaurant.

Midknight : LVL 43: VP 5: said:

Midknight

-2 votes NegativePositive

1294 days 21 hours ago...

^ Great points.

Most people opposed to the death penalty don't understand the human psyche or anti-social personality disorder. Its unfortunate. The educational system in many parts of the World leaves alot to be desired. In some cases, education is state-run, like in France, and contains little non-state thought. In many other cases, the system is simply not well organized or funded.

Anyway, the anti-death penalty advocates get involved in the emotional aspect of the death penalty and forget nature of the beast - sort of speak.
As for the statistics, I give little value to information that originates from advocacy groups. This is especially in the case with anti-death penalty groups which unfortunately tend to be dominated by socialists. The end justifies the means - at least in their eyes.

Nirah : LVL 25: VP 3.4: said:

Nirah

4 votes NegativePositive

1294 days 20 hours ago...

I would like to start by saying:
There are far greater punishments than death...
I come from a country with out death penalty... (Denmark)
I am against it...

Now it's time to talk...

People are people, people do things they think are right, which they have learned to be right, by their social upbringing, many americans who are for death penalty have their reason, they think it is the greatest punishment, they feel it is only fair, as a revenge...

I am against killers roaming our world... But killing them, is joining them... you wont be better than than him/her... No my friends and fellow "humans" there are better ways to punish a man... Death is simply a end to all... unless you belive in a life after death (which I don't) if your religious, chrisitan or other? the person will go to hell and that justifies your killing of him/her, but in my mind you simply end his life...
having said that, death is not the greatest punishment, it is a escape! Living the rest of your life in a cell on the other hand, you will have to live with the fact that, this is your new life.... your stuck, you wont ever live normal again... you can sit in there, wasting a lot of your life! that is a great punishment, unless you dont value your own life...

People who dont value their own life are a danger to them selves and others... hmm I better shut up now, since it's getting late here and all... comment my comment?

JimCarrSavannah : LVL 17: VP 2.6: said:

JimCarrSavannah

2 votes NegativePositive

1294 days 19 hours ago...

I can't get this to work here in Georgia, U.S.A.
Perhaps neo-con's have instructed the NSA to filter liberal leaning commentary from all web casts.
B.T.W., would one of you people in Europe please let Germany know that we found Hitlers remains. They cloned him and his replicans are running our Government.

SanMan899 : LVL 14: VP 2.3: said:

SanMan899

0 votes NegativePositive

1294 days 19 hours ago...

Its not working for me either

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