I need to interview an expert for school

[A Lamberton]

I am a student who needs help. I have a report due tomorrow for a government/debate class, and I chose the death penalty as my topic because I know where I stand on it.

However, I can't use myself as a resource, and I'm hardly an expert, just a kid with an opinion.

Anyway, I need to interview an expert on both sides of the topic to use in my report, and I was hoping that someone on this site could help me out.

I have a list of questions that I'm going to submit to serve as my interview, but here's the catch: I have to include the name (or a screenname) of the person I interview, and some way to reach them (like email or something) for my works cited page. My teacher wants to make sure we actually did the interviews, so if you don't want to be contacted by some random teacher, don't answer.

If anyone can help me, it woul be greatly appreciated. Here are the questions:

1) Do we need the death penalty? Why/why not?

2) Do stricter punishments reduce the crime rate?

3) What problems are there with the current death penalty process?

4) Do criminal suspects have too many rights?

5) What purpose does the death penalty serve? Deterrent? Retribution? Please explain.

Thank you a thousand times in advance.

[A Lamberton]

Please? Someone?

[LEGAL ELAGLE]

SOUTH DAKOTA NEEDS THE DEATH PENALTY

8-)South Dakota has scheduled the execution of 24-year-old Elijah Page on August 28 for a murder committed in 2000. Page has dropped his remaining appeals. He would be the first person executed in the state since it reinstated capital punishment in 1979. The last execution in the state was in 1947. South Dakota has only four people on its death row.

Among church leaders in South Dakota, there is a difference of opinion with regard to capital punishment. Catholic, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches generally oppose it, >:(and Southern Baptists typically support the death penalty . However, Jesse Moore, a Southern Baptist minister in the state, says he breaks with his church's position, noting, "I look at the idea of the sanctity of life, which is where I draw my opposition to abortion. If I'm going to value the life of an unborn child in the womb, I have to give the same value to a life that's outside the womb." The Rev. Charles Cimpl, pastor at St. Michael Catholic Church in Sioux Falls, agreed . The Catholic Church believes in an obligation to promoting "a culture of life," Cimpl said. "Human life is sacred from conception to natural death. Anytime we intentionally go against that, we're breaking the dignity of human life."

During his trial, Page's long history of child abuse was revealed. According to testimony and court records, Page's mother allowed her young son to be molested in exchange for drugs, and his stepfather once used him as a human shield during a drug-related gun fight. When his mother lost custody of her children, Page was shuffled to as many as twelve foster homes and became a frequent runaway. As he sentencing Page to death, Circuit Judge Warren Johnson noted, "Most people treat their pets better than your parents treated their kids."

IF HE WERE MY PET I WOULD HAVE PUT HIM DOWN A LONG TIME AGO!

[A Lamberton]

whoa, there, buddy. Now, from that response, I don't think you're an expert.

just so you know, I support the death penalty, but I had to make the questions somewhat neutral so I ask people on both sides of the issue the same questions.

It has to be fair. I can't show bias until the part where I talk about my opinion.

No reason to explode like that.

Damn.

[A LAmberton]

To LEGAL ELAGLE:

thanks for responding and not attacking me, but that doesn't really answer my questions...

[jewe]

I am a student who needs help. I have a report due tomorrow for a government/debate class, and I chose the death penalty as my topic because I know where I stand on it.

i'm an expert on many issues, but I also actively fight the dp in particularly asia and america

However, I can't use myself as a resource, and I'm hardly an expert, just a kid with an opinion.

It's ok, as kids can also have pov. we've some kids here running around too like Joey, Mel and phoenix

Anyway, I need to interview an expert on both sides of the topic to use in my report, and I was hoping that someone on this site could help me out.

I can give you only the anti site and not a pro side. For a good pov from the pro side you can ask grandma here as she's a good and honest pro. Or anna_ marek

I have a list of questions that I'm going to submit to serve as my interview, but here's the catch: I have to include the name (or a screenname) of the person I interview, and some way to reach them (like email or something) for my works cited page. My teacher wants to make sure we actually did the interviews, so if you don't want to be contacted by some random teacher, don't answer.

Well, i don't mind to get contacted by your teacher, but only through e-mail.

If anyone can help me, it woul be greatly appreciated. Here are the questions:

1) Do we need the death penalty? Why/why not?

We don't need the dp as we've been through it here too in Sweden. In the past I think that all countries had the dp and the reason they had it because they wanted to stop murderers from killing. But look what it borught ?? nothing at all !!! Murderers will always exist no matter the penalty that exist for murder. We in EU have ablolished the DP while in the us it still exists. and you can ask any american who's been to the EU that will say the EU is much safer. the dp didn't work in EU either in the past, so neither is it neccesaty to have it at all as dp will not make less murders and it only makes more victims.

2) Do stricter punishments reduce the crime rate?

It depend what you mean by crime. Every crime has it's own weighs. stealing a bike or killing a person as a big diffrecne. but there's never been proven that stricter penalties reduce crime. just lok at the murder rate between canada and the us per 100,000 persons. america has harder penalties, but still less safe then canada

3) What problems are there with the current death penalty process?

the problem is that in some states the jury makes up the sentence and a jury are not experts, like me. juries are just KFC employees or sometihng and they can be racial biased. and that's very wronf when it comes to live or death

4) Do criminal suspects have too many rights?

again, depends what kinda criminals. murderers or thieves. Murderes have too many rights, but thieves are ok to have rights

5) What purpose does the death penalty serve? Deterrent? Retribution? Please explain.

It serves nothing at all !
It only creates more victims as someone gets executed. so he's dead. The family of the person executed will also have a bad life after the execution

[e-mail] ( 1976 is not by year of birth, i'm much younger, but i'm considered an expert. )

[Dave]

1) Do we need the death penalty? Why/why not?

2) Do stricter punishments reduce the crime rate?

3) What problems are there with the current death penalty process?

4) Do criminal suspects have too many rights?

5) What purpose does the death penalty serve? Deterrent? Retribution? Please explain.

Thank you a thousand times in advance.

#1:Yes as long as there are people out there murdering others the death penalty is needed.

#2:Yes and no it depends there are some offenders that don't have any moral restraint.

#3:The appeals process takes to long appeals should only be based on guilt or innocence nothing else.

#4:No

#5: The death penalty itself serves as a deterrent to the person who committed the crime. I don't think the death penalty has much of a deterrent effect on the general population though. It also does the victim justice as it's not fair for the offender to have a life of his or her own when they have taken someyone elses from them.

[jewe]

Lamberton, you can listen to Dave too as he's an honest pro, like i'm an honest anti

[Deleted]

I don’t know if you could call me an expert, but I have unfortunately become more familiar with it than I ever wanted to be. My daughter was murdered, and her murderer is on Death Row.


1) Do we need the death penalty? Why/why not?

As long as brutal vicious murderers continue to prey on society, we need the Death Penalty. Some will murder multiple people without remorse or any cause, simply for their own selfishness or greed. Some will rape and murder because it is the way they obtain their pleasure; and some of these will even do this to children. There is no proven case of anyone ever being cured for this. Some will even murder the police, and if they will murder even the law enforcers they will murder anyone. Some will order others to murder, through the mail that cannot be denied them as the courts have stated it is their right (this is a big problem especially with gang leaders using their codes, but not limited to them). Some of these will even murder while incarcerated.

In another vein, we need the DP for the plea bargaining power. I am no fan of wimpy plea bargains, but if every case was tried in our courts the backlog would be overwhelming. If the DP were not there, and LWOP were the harshest sentence, then the only plea bargain that would be possible would be for a sentence which would mean another murderer would have a chance to get out amongst us again someday. This is not acceptable for the most brutal vicious killers. That is also one of the reasons why IMO the DP is not used often enough.

2) Do stricter punishments reduce the crime rate?

I believe they do. Violent crime rates are going down finally. I believe the 3 strikes laws that have been enacted in recent years are finally showing their effect. Habitual criminals are being taken off the streets permanently. By the same token, even if a murderer is sentenced to less than the DP, if that threat of the DP is still there, it may help to deter him/her from murdering again in prison.

3) What problems are there with the current death penalty process?

IMO the biggest problem is multiple layers of courts reviewing the same issues over and over in each case, and in different cases as well. The process needs to be streamlined.

4) Do criminal suspects have too many rights?

Yes they do. There seems to me to be no end to the reasons that the judiciary can find to throw out the convictions and/or sentences of clearly guilty murderers. There was a death sentence overturned recently because some people in the courtroom wore buttons with the murder victim’s picture on them – buttons so small it is doubtful the jury could even see what was on them. This is ridiculous in the extreme considering that pictures of the victims are allowed in evidence in the courtroom.

At my daughter’s murderer’s trial I testified in the guilt phase to identify her for the court proceedings. And then I testified in the guilt phase to answer questions about who she was and how the crime affected my life. There were some facts about my daughter that I was warned not to mention at all, because if they came out it might cause a mistrial, because it would be too prejudicial against him. They were true documented facts. That is ridiculous.

5) What purpose does the death penalty serve? Deterrent? Retribution? Please explain.

It serves to protect society from known proven brutal vicious murderers. Before I even knew who the murderers were, when I was standing in that ICU room with her, I knew that anyone who could commit such horror on anyone so kind and gently as my daughter would have no hesitation to murder anyone. All I wanted in this world was for him to be found and for the law to make sure he could never hurt anyone anywhere ever again like this.

As it turned out, my instincts were correct. It was proven that he did murder 2 people (one of whom was my daughter), and ordered the murder of another person that was carried out also. I would worry for the corrections officers and even for other inmates if he were to live in jail.

Also the DP is the closest thing to justice and the penalty fitting the crime that there is.

And finally, no executed murderer has ever murdered anyone ever again.

[DeadElvis]

Sorry, noticed this thread a little late and may well be too late for your current project. However, I wanted to post this as a possible resource for other students and future visitors seeking info in this Student area of the board.

I would question the validity of anyone who claims to be an expert on the DP. Academics may be "experts" in the statistics of the use of DP. Anti-DP folks may be experts in anti-DP arguments. Correctional officers may well be "experts" in the execution procedure. However, the subject of the DP in our society is very complicated with many many factors that must be considered by one expecting to get a "complete" picture of the subject.

I would suggest that you listen to the words of many folks who have knowledge of the subject. Fortunately, the very forum has an excellent resource to find posts of interest. By clicking on the link above titled "Members," you can directly access all the posts a particular member has posted in this forum.

Unfortunately, the Student section of this forum sometimes gets forgotten by regular posters and too often questions by students only get responses by some of the wackos that post here.

I will suggest some posters you can start with:

For the pro-DP stance: RED, josephdphillips, RFisher, RickZ, Charlene, Mike C, Doc, D.E.E

For the religious pro-DP stance: Snowstorm, onetwobomb, Muddy (you will generally find the religious anti-dp stance represented in those posts as well)

For the anti-dp stance: AKA, Kay, beej, MichaelStoker, Euro

For the DP perspective from those who's families have been devastated by murder: Shawni, Mamabear, J.B.S, MyAmber20, BentyProDP, ginger, gregsmom

There are many, many others. (Please don't feel slighted if I haven't mentioned your name here as I just listed some names of the top of my head while typing this post)

Review the posts of some of these folks and you will start to get a feel for the complexities and strong emotions associated with the subject.

[ewrong]

To original poster:

Are you still looking for answers to your questions? I am an academic who specializes in death penalty research and would happy to post some replies, as well as actual references, if you still need the help.

[Wickedlyamoral]

jewe said:

the problem is that in some states the jury makes up the sentence and a jury are not experts, like me. juries are just KFC employees or sometihng and they can be racial biased. and that's very wronf when it comes to live or death

The juries do not make up sentences. States have sentencing guidelines to follow. Juries are made up of every day people from all walks of life. And as far as racially biased, you would have to question each person to decide if they were. Jewel, you are far from an expert.