Columnist says Iowa better off without death penalty: Your take
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After the recent discovery of the two bodies of the missing young Evansdale cousins, it’s expected — and even understandable — why lawmakers and even some of the public would view the resurrection of the death penalty as a good plan,” Dave Seavy wrote in a Gazette guest column published Thursday. “If there ever was a case justifying the death penalty, this is it.
“Putting emotions and politics aside, however, common sense and pure logic tells me Iowa is much better off without such a penalty,” says Seavy, a freelance writer and author.
“For openers, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, it’s been shown that states with the death penalty have a higher number of murders than those without it. It isn’t the deterrent we thought it to be.
“Second, budgets are stretched to the outermost limits. In California, for example, the penalty cost about $140 million a year! Trying and carrying out a death penalty case is not fiscally responsible. Life-without-parole sentences, costing about $90,000 a year per inmate, require far less legal scrutiny than a capital conviction, thereby keep courts available for other matters.
“We’ve also seen many people being released from death row because of exoneration after the fact. There will never be a perfect criminal justice system. Judges and juries are made of men and women, and mistakes are bound to happen. We’re human, and as such, it’s an impossible task to put all emotions aside and operate strictly with logic and common-sense,” Seavy adds.
Read more of his column via the links above. What do you think? Is Iowa really better off without the death penalty?
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I believe if you take a life and it was planned you give your life! Only fair and it keeps the lifers of the taxpayer rolls!
“(W)e should not lose sight of the idea that we’re doing exactly what we tell others we shouldn’t do”
We also tell people that they shouldn’t kidnap, which is forcible abducting people and locking them up in rooms; yet we imprison people.
“Iowa is much better off without such a penalty,” says Seavy of Rochester, Minn.
It sounds like Iowa is better off without this writer.
The death penalty is too easy a way out. Make the worst offenders suffer cruelly and unusually.
With the costs of the death penalty I’m glad we don’t have it. I would rather those convicted of a crime that arises to a death penalty be sentenced to life in solitary confinement. No general population and limited interaction with other humans, this punishment might be cruel and unusual but so was their crime!
“For openers, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, it’s been shown that states with the death penalty have a higher number of murders than those without it. It isn’t the deterrent we thought it to be.”
Or maybe you’re mixing up cause and effect. Maybe states that a have a higher number of murders tend to enact the death penalty in order to deal with all those murderers.
Why double the fines in highway work zones?
If a more severe punishment is not a deterrent then why have any fines?
Are highway workers lives more important than school children in school zones or office workers crossing at the tracks downtown?
More severe punishment does work to curtail crime. We won’t allow for torture or inhumane treatments so the death penalty is necessary.
As the parents of one lost child asked, what reason did the kidnapper have not to kill and dump their daughter. He wasn’t risking any more punishment.
Time to turn prisons into places that no one wants to live in, too. 3 hots, a cot and cable tv along with video games and exercise equipment is better than a lot of working class people have available to them. At Linn County they refer to inmates by name. How sweet. Take away their identity and strip them of power and privilege and I bet they won’t be so ready to reoffend and return when they get let out. They may fight each other at first but once they get their butts handed to them a few times…they’ll rethink that too.