Death Penalty (17 Apr. 2006)

Penn and Teller argue against the death penalty.

Director:

Star Price

Writers:

Michael Goudeau, Jon Hotchkiss,

Stars:

Penn Jillette, Teller, Steven Banks

Cast

Episode credited cast:
Penn Jillette	...	Himself
Teller	...	Himself
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Steven Banks	...	Himself (as Billy the Mime)
Alan Gell	...	Himself - Former Death Row Inmate
Rick Halbert	...	Himself - Professor, Southern Methodist University
Ronald Hampton	...	Himself - Executive Director of the National Black Police Association
Ágnes Heller	...	Herself - Professor, New School for Social Research
Marc Klaas	...	Himself - KlaasKids Foundation
Joshua Marquis	...	Himself - District Attorney, Astoria Oregon
Sean Penn	...	Himself - Actor
Cathy Schultz	...	Herself - Museum of Death
Dudley Sharp	...	Himself - Death Penalty Advocate

Storyline

Penn and Teller argue against the death penalty.

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Plot Keywords:

child killer | gas chamber | death penalty | lethal injection | stay of execution | 

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Genres:

Comedy | Documentary

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Details

Release Date:

17 April 2006 (USA)

Company Credits

User Reviews

They totally missed the mark on this one

I love Penn & Teller, but sometimes regardless of their efforts to appear non-biased their bias shows through. Regarding the death penalty, first they say that punishment isn't considered for crimes of passion (infidelity for instance). However, when my ex-wife did this to me it was the fear of punishment that guided my behavior - so people do consider the consequences, even when they're "flipping out." Regarding sexual criminals and murderers, of course the death penalty is a deterrent - once their dead they stop killing and molesting people – end of story. They also have some egghead liberal historian stating that the concept of lethal injection is a Nazi concept. What he fails to mention is that the concept of abortion is also a Nazi concept and started with Hitler's Eugenics movement (in fact Planned Parenthood started as an American chapter of the Nazi program) However, the very people against the death penalty seem to be 100% in favor of abortion - gee, that seems pretty hypocritical to me. Lastly, they show a "Bullshit" (no pun intended) statistic that States without the death penalty have a lower rate of murder than those that have it. While on the surface this statistic is true you need to know a little something about statistics to understand it. There is no control in this equation

• meaning that the obvious explanation can't be proved. In other words,

maybe the states with the significantly higher murder rate imposed the death penalty because of those higher murder rates and the higher rates are not a result of the death penalty, but the death penalty is a result of the higher murder rates. Of course, none of this is valid because in reality there is no State with a true death penalty. Every State has fifteen year provisions for appeal and many never see the gallows (so to speak). Only when a state will impose swift justice and execute 100% of those sentenced to death will we know if the murder rate is affected. One final point, innocent people do die from the death penalty. However, more innocent people die as a result of not having the death penalty (as I said, once you kill a murder he/she stops murdering). It's a trade off, people are going to die either way, we just have to use the way that inflicts the least amount of harm on the least amount of innocent people.