In my humble opinion Capital Punishment equals REVENGE.
A society to be more civilized has to find better ways of punishment, civilized ways, that will ensure a JUST punishment without resorting to old-fashion justice.
Please feel free to disagree with me.

I think it's inhumane as a punishment, but necessary in certain very rare cases, when there's a significant risk that the person being executed will commit a horrible crime in the future.

Capitol punishment is ironic, because society kills to prevent killing, and society kills more when it sees that society kills.

Karl Marx did a study in London in 1865 where he found that every time they had a public execution the murder rate rose 50% for the next 3 days.

I don't deny the state's right to execute. I just deny the efficacy of it. It has the reverse effect from what is intended.

Killing begets killing. Period.

Of course it's inhumane. Of course it's revenge. It's not helpful; it's not educational. And all that's considering that the prisoner really did do the crime he/she was convicted of. (Juries and courts are wrong sometimes.)
It's kind of crazy actually. Society says, "You killed someone. You're bad. Now we're gonna kill you." WHAT??? I've never been able to understand that kind of stuff. Society has apparently determined that killing people is bad, right? So now that same society goes and kills someone.
I don't know if it was Martin Luther King or Gandhi (but I'm pretty sure it was one of them) who said, "An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind," but it's a very wise statement.
Also, evil does not grow in a vacuum. I can assure you that people who do cruel things to other people, to animals, to the environment...something bad happened to them at some point...something traumatized them. Cause people who feel good about themselves want to share that with the world. And people who feel horrible about themselves are sharing that with the world, unfortunately.
Namaste.

You must understand that REVENGE and REWARDS are basically the same thing except that one is negative and the other is positive.

Karma is Action = Reaction.

You do good, you get rewards. You do bad, you get revenge. This is the most basic self-enforcing law of the universe.

I feel that ALL Punishment equals REVENGE.
Without REVENGE means without JUSTICE.
Without JUSTICE means without ORDER
Without ORDER means CHAOS ( no civilized society )

I was pro-death penalty for a long time, but I have changed my stance over the years, for several reasons:

1. By far the most compelling is this: Sometimes the legal system gets it wrong. In the U.S., over 100 death row inmates have been exonerated by DNA evidence in the last 30 years. Unfortunately, DNA evidence is not available in most cases. No matter how rare it is, the government should not risk executing one single innocent person.

Really, that should be reason enough for most people. If you need more, read on:

2. Because of the extra expense of prosecuting a DP case and the appeals process (which is necessary - see reason #1), it costs taxpayers MUCH more to execute prisoners than to imprison them for life.

3. The deterrent effect is questionable at best. Violent crime rates are actually higher in death penalty states. This may seem counterintuitive, and there are many theories about why this is (Ted Bundy saw it as a challenge, so he chose Florida – the most active execution state at the time – to carry out his final murder spree). Personally, I think it has to do with the hypocrisy of taking a stand against murder…by killing people. The government becomes the bad parent who says, ‘do as I say, not as I do.’

4. There’s also an argument to be made that death is too good for the worst of our criminals. Let them wake up and go to bed every day of their lives in a prison cell, and think about the freedom they DON’T have, until they rot of old age. When Ted Bundy was finally arrested in 1978, he told the police officer, “I wish you had killed me.”

5. Most governments are supposed to be secular, but for those who invoke Christian law in this debate, you can find arguments both for AND against the death penalty in the Bible. For example, Matthew 5:38-39 insists that violence shall not beget violence. James 4:12 says that God is the only one who can take a life in the name of justice. Leviticus 19:18 warns against vengeance (which, really, is what the death penalty amounts to). In John 8:7, Jesus himself says, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

capital punishment is wrong period. what if that person was innocent? thats a lot of weight on your conscience when you happen to find out that person was innocent all along. and plus, life sentence is way cheaper than death penalty. it cost about $1 million to have someone put to death and about $300,000 for life sentence. i wouldnt want the government to take more money out of my paycheck just to have someone executed.