BigMacNCSU

Agreed, I would give them no more sympathy than they gave their victims.

Edit: autocorrect...

Vengeance would be if the family of the victims took justice into their own hands and got a mob together and killed the murderer. Not quite what happens when the accused murderer gets a trial and a sentencing.

I would be satisfied with life in prison without parole for moral reasoning but would think the cost difference would be negligible. Yes courts cost money but so does housing an inmate. I think I heard it's like $45,000 a year on average to house an inmate. If they live 20 years in the system, that's a whole lotta money.

At any rate, thank you for the civil debate. I wish you all the best.

I'm not buying the "is the culture, I didn't know any better" argument. Before you commit the crime, you know that there are consequences to your actions, unless you just crawled out from under a rock. The other option is that they were suffering from psychosis and either didn't know what they were doing, or lacked the empathy to care. In these cases they will not be given the death penalty based in the fact that they were not mentally capable at the time to understand what was happening. The death penalty is usually reserved for the most heinous of murderers.

I agree with you that taking a life is not normal and there are hordes of criminology experts that research murderers. Just the opinion that it is not "normal" does not excuse the fact that they did it and were fully aware what they doing (assuming they were otherwise mentally competent). Each case is individual and given a trial in front of a jury of their peers, and only a small percentage of murderers are actually sentenced death, so I would believe the ones who are on death row most likely deserved it. During these trials mental health experts examine the accused and assess their ability to stand trial.

Sorry if there are misspellings, I wrote this very quickly.

I'm not saying that you treat them like vermin, what I'm trying to say is that if someone purposefully took another's life I'm not going to feel sorry for them when they are upset they are being sentenced death. They should have thought of that before they did the crime. How do you think their victim(s) felt? Their families?