Because values change, legislatures abolish the death penalty, permit same-sex marriage if they want, abolish laws against homosexual conduct. That's how the change in a society occurs. Society doesn't change through a Constitution.
I think in some instances that the death penalty is required.
I believe Timothy McVeigh getting the death penalty for his heinous act of killing over a hundred in Oklahoma City, that could very well deter others that might want to enter into that similar conduct.
While I oppose the death penalty as a policy matter, in a legal culture in which we reserve the right to execute people for relatively routine street crimes, it seems quite absurd for the justice system to get squeamish about executing the operational masterminds of Sept. 11.
The death penalty is being applied in the United States as a fatal lottery.
I'm actually really opposed to the death penalty.
The death penalty confronts us with a penetrating moral question: Can even the monstrous crimes of those who are condemned to death and are truly guilty of such crimes erase their sacred dignity as human beings and their intrinsic right to life?
When the state imposes the death penalty, it proclaims that taking one human life counterbalances the taking of another life. This assumption is profoundly mistaken.
The death penalty is discriminatory and does not do anything about crime.
We have abolished the death penalty for humans, so why should it continue for animals?
