Chico & Shane
Yeh, we're all pretty angry.... maybe just angry enough to participate.
C.

I have some experience with the legal system in America, which is my only real frame of reference regarding capital punishment. There, it's a huge failure in many ways - the main one is that is fails as a deterent, like you mentioned. This is arguable, but right now I think most evidence supports the fact that states with the death sentence have not seen a decrease in crime which warrants it as a punishment. It seems to me that people who are commiting 1st degree murder, sexual assaults, pedophilia, etc... don't tend to worry about the reprecussions of such acts. If I'm not mistaken the states with the top 10 murder rates all use the death penalty.

Aside from that it's incredibly costly because of the way the appeal system works and the length of time it takes to go from sentencing to punishment. Most people on death row that do die end up dying of of natural causes. It ends up costing huge amounts more to keep them on death row than to just let them rot in prison, since they have an automatic appeal process that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Another major flaw is the number of innocent people who (taking the U.S as the example again) have been put to death or put on death row only to later be removed. Last time I read anything about this something like 65% of all death sentences had been reversed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid to admit that I condone revenge and I'd like nothing more than to see the animals involved in Mondays shooting burned at the stake, but it sets Canada down a path I don't think we really want to go down morally, or financially.

No worries - there's no reason people can't disagree and remain civil, and of course I agree that a primary concern should be protecting people in Canada, I just don't think capital punishment achieves that.