Coming Fights
euthanasia
death penalty
sex and the politician
media violence
censorship
gun law

Capital Punishment in the US
Yet to be confirmed, this is probably going to be the first Fight Club topic in Houston, Texas at the start of 2005. Watch this space for more details.

The United States is one of the very few industrialized countries in the world which continues to execute criminals. Further, it is one of a handful of countries in the world which executes mentally ill persons, persons with very low IQ, and child murderers (i.e. persons who were under 18 at the time of their crime). When asked whether they prefer to keep or abolish the death penalty, about 60 to 80% of American adults say that they want to retain capital punishment.

Here are some sites for reference on the subject:

Pro:
Here's an essay by a 'converted' lawyer, who changed his opinion towards supporting the Death Penalty, or "Preserving the Dignity of Man"
http://www.leaderu.com/socialsciences/colson-dignity.html

Texas Dept of Justice lists their current 456 death-row inmates and details their offenses: http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/offendersondrow.htm

A personal website dedicated to supporting the Death Penalty, with lots of articles:
http://www.wesleylowe.com/cp.html

And here's a (morbidly fascinating) pro-death penalty chat board:
http://prodp.proboards18.com/index.cgi?board=general

Contra:
PBS's Frontline Report: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/angel/

Amnesty International have been trying to abolish the Death penalty in the US for many years: http://www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/

It's quite clear which side of the fence the 'National Coalition To Abolish The Death Penalty' is sitting:
http://www.ncadp.org/

Neutral
Government Statistics: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cp.htm

PBS's Frontline Report gives some links to views on both sides:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/angel/procon/

A range of information about the history, demographics and laws concerning the death penalty, and some interesting arguments for either side:
http://deathpenaltyinfo.msu.edu/

there are some very good quotes on this site and further down the page are links to several informational pages that give a good overview. Curiously, this site has a lot of advertising for diet products too...
http://www.religioustolerance.org/execute.htm

A lot of useful links from this student research website:
http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/links2.htm