Connecticut abolishes the Death penalty

"Connecticut has become the 17th state in the US to abolish the death penalty.Governor Dannel Malloy signed a bill in a low-key ceremony, after legislators voted earlier in April to end capital punishment for all future cases."Connecticut abolishes the death penalty - BBC NewsPersonally I was a little shocked to see that Connecticut is only the 17th State to do this...
(Also, I've never noticed the silent 'c' in Connecticut before.. not sure I've ever had reason to type it before now.)Do pro-death penalty folk believe that there will now be a surge in murder cases without this supposed "deterrent" in place?Historically, has the abolition of the death penalty had any effect on murder/violent crime rates anywhere?

The deterrence argument does not work. Amnesty USA have a good site for this info:Death Penalty Facts – Amnesty International USAAside from the plain fact that it doesn't deter (for the obvious reasons that most murders aren't premeditated and those that are are done by people who do not believe they will be caught) it's also a revolting, inhuman and barbaric institution and not something the USA should be proud of itself for.Oh, yes, as an afterthought; life imprisonment is cheaper:"Using conservative rough projections, the Commission estimates the annual costs of the present system ($137 million per year), the present system after implementation of the reforms ... ($232.7 million per year) ... and a system which imposes a maximum penalty of lifetime incarceration instead of the death penalty ($11.5 million)."--California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, July 1, 2008Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

The deterrence argument has always been mere smoke and mirrors. Capital punishment has always been justified on the basis of appeals to more base instincts of humans. It is about revenge, and a distorted, barbaric notion of what constitutes fairness. And only a few countries, most of whom we would not chose to emulate in any other way, engage in he practice.

I think it's wrong to describe states which still keep the death penalty as 'only a few countries'. Certainly, if you look at Europe and the Americas, you see just Belarus and the USA sticking out like sore thumbs, but most African and Asian countries still technically have the death penalty. Looking at the UN member states, a little over half still have the death penalty as a legal punishment, even if they don't all use it in practice; while almost a quarter still use it as a regular punishment for ordinary crimes.

Point taken. I think we can exclude those states that don't actually use the death penalty from the count. The overwhelming majority of states don't execute people. And how many of those countries are ones we would consider models to follow in other respects.

Ireland, My home country, Had the death penalty on the statutes right up until 1990, but in reality it was never used with the last execution in 1954. It was finally removed from the constitution in 2002. It cannot be reintroduced.
I guess there are many countries where this happens, i.e. it's still available as a punishment, but rarely, if ever used.
Capital punishment in Ireland - Wikipedia

The biggest problem with the statistics on deterrence (which indicate very strongly (as per the graph which Tangle has put up) that capital punishment is ineffective as a deterrent), is that the statistics are counter-intuitive.This site enjoys an abundance of debates, where counter-intuitive reality has met a brick wall of "common sense", and the data generally make little impact on that brick wall.I think that if we are to make more headway in abandoning old, barbaric punishments, and in encouraging more states like Connecticut to abolish capital punishment, then the battleground has to be our schools. I took part in two debates on the death penalty when I was a kid, and as I recall, the teachers were excellent in allowing the debate to flow, and not guide it too strongly. And we came to the conclusion that the death penalty was unjustified.It won't happen that way every time of course, but younger minds are more open minds, and I would welcome debates on the death penalty being added to every school's curriculum.(Of course, the proponents of the death penalty will recognise the danger here, and fight any such thinking, claiming that a liberal agenda is seeking to influence their children's minds, but hey, it's good to dream)

I was kinda fishing for a pro-deather to explain why they think abolition of the death penalty is a bad thing.

I don't know how good that kind of fishing is 'round these here parts

I don't think I've ever met anybody who was pro-death penatly.

I have.They're typically extremely resistant to any form of argument. There are a few Ive spoken to who have, upon direct questioning, replied that there is no possible evidence or argument that would ever dissuade them from their support of the death penalty. For them, it's about what the accused "deserves," not about the effect such an action may or may not have in society. They literally consider execution in a bubble - this guy killed somebody, so we're going to kill him back, because he deserves it. It has nothing to do with deterrence, they don't particularly care about the potential to execute innocent people, and the relative cost isn't a concern (a frequent response is "just stop letting them appeal so much, and then it won't be so expensive to execute them"), it's an emotionally-charged question of vengeance.It's frustrating to see someone so determined to end another human life for absolutely no reason other than a vindictive streak.

It seems to be something fundamental Christians are often fond of. I've never worked that one out - wwjd? is apparently an invalid question. All very old testament.

Exodus 23:25 would seem to give biblical justification..
"then thou shalt give life for life, 24Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. "

It's not exactly an uncommon viewpoint. Gallup's opinion polls have shown a majority in favour of the death penalty in the US every time tney've asked since 1971. Even then, it was 49% in favour with only 40% opposed (the rest being 'Don't knows' I suppose). The last time a Gallup poll found more opposed to the death penalty than in favour was 1966. And, just to be quite clear, 'the last time', also means 'the only time'. Every other poll all the back to 1936 when they started asking shows more in favour than opposed to the use of the death penalty.I would stake everything I own for any odds that you have met plenty of people who were pro-death penalty. You just don't discuss the death penalty with most people you meet.An interesting addition I noticed just now going through Gallup's polling data. In some polls, they also asked people whether they thought the death penalty was a deterrent. In all polls, less people said they thought it was an effective deterrent than supported it's use. In recent polls, the figure is about half. It seems that, for many, it really is about retribution, not deterrence.One last point - this isn't something unique to Americans. The most recent opinion poll I found from the UK, here in abolitionist Europe, has 51% in favour and 37% to the death penalty for ordinary murder. Support is higher if you ask specifically about murdering children, or murder with rape. A widely discussed poll in Poland a couple of years ago had 63% in favour of the death penalty (if I remember right, there had been a recent big case in the news about some teenage murderer getting off lightly, which I'm sure affects results).

I'm pro-death penalty. But not because it's a deterrent. It just seems like the right amount of justice in certain circumstances.There's no reason for people like Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer to live. They are quite literally monsters that should be put to death. What's the point of keeping them alive, in a jail cell?Some people need to fucking die, and I feel all states should have a system of putting them to death.- Oni