Do you support the death penalty?

[TDAS04]

No (D)

[TDAS04]

I’m a huge flip flopper on this issue, to be honest. I question the moral justification of the death penalty, and the states right to end the life of one of its citizens, but I also think that 99.99% of those executed in the last twenty years deserved it. I also had a relative who was murdered in a home invasion in 2011, which is a personal bias.

What exactly are you basing this on?

Empirical data. Like I said, I really don't care about the issue, and IIRC, only 30-40 people out of the thousands of people executed in the United States were of questionable guilt. Only five of them have been completely exonerated. Obviously that is the fault of the justice system in general and not the act of execution.

I'm not sure where you get 99.99%.  The remainder would be 1 in 10,000.  There have less than 5,000 executions in the US in the last 20 years.

30-40 people of questionable guilt?  Still way too much.  There is no justification to risk executing a single innocent person.  Sure, it's the fault of the justice system, but the justice system should not have the authority to kill people.  The justice system can never be perfect.

I don't see how anyone could support the death penalty after reading this.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/03/12/after-nearly-30-years-on-death-row-glenn-ford-is-exonerated-and-free/
This is the victim of the corrupt justice system.  Innocent people can be executed because of corrupt police officers who know their innocence, and because of judges liking to appear "tough" for political purposes.

Many consider the human capacity for evil as a justification for harsh authority.  The problem is, people with authority can also be evil.  Human society will never be perfect enough to precisely determine who deserves to live and who deserves to die.  There should be punishment for lawbreaking, and the risk of punishing the innocent is unavoidable.  However, the negative effects of the imperfect justice system can at least be moderated by nixing the right of society impose death sentences.  Life imprisonment is appropriate for the very worst crimes.  It's harsh, but at least the wrongly convicted would have the rest of their lives to prove their innocence (and it would also be easier on the convicts' families).

I personally think some people deserve to die, but I have no faith in society to make accurate determinations on who does deserve death.  Occasionally, I hear about horrific cases that cause my emotional side to want the disgusting criminals dead, but then I remind myself that allowing even the worst of the worst to live is necessary to prevent the justice system from committing the ultimate injustice against an innocent person.

[TDAS04]

Nebraska actually replaced the chair with the injection in 2009.  There is still a small number of states where the convict can choose the method, but lethal injection is now available in all states with the death penalty.