It's strange how liberals are 180 degrees out of phase when it comes to abortion and capital punishment.
Liberals only want to kill the innocent.
Conservatives think only the guilty should die.
Go figure...
Originally Posted by gfejunkie
I figure this. There are 144 known exonerations since the death penalty was reinstated out of about 1000 executions. That is better than 12% innocent people that would have been executed for a crime they didn't commit that that is only the ones we know were well and truly not guilty. There are at least ten known who were executed and it is highly likely that they were innocent, but executed anyway. Often prosecutors and judges destroy the evidence after an execution so the truth cannot come out and defense attorneys tend to work on those they can save rather than lost causes to know the truth that conservatives don't seem to care about.
Florida's conservative legislature and governor just passed a law that well get anyone on death row killed a lot quicker so we don't have to worry about who is innocent and who is guilty anymore. IMHO that is conservatives for you. Why don't we just let police and citizens like George Zimmerman execute anyone they think is guilty of a capital crime or who just needs killin' and save us all the cost of trial, incarceration and those damn appeals? I mean, look at Michael Morton just up in Round Rock who, though he wasn't on death row, served 25 years for a crime he didn't commit with no record at all and was described as a "monster" and he wasn't even a minority who are incarcerated at 2x to 4X the rate of whites for drug offenses alone even though rates of use are documented as similar.
I won't argue that there aren't some people who probably deserve execution or even need killing and are guilty of crimes that deserve that punishment, but I will argue that none of us humans are wise enough or perfect enough to really get it right on who those are even 10% of the time much less 1% of the time. How many innocent people dying for a crime they didn't commit is too many? How many is too many if one of them is you or your loved ones?
Besides, it is less expensive, probably more humane and can be rectified if we don't execute people. The death penalty is barbaric in how it is administered and sends a message to society that it is OK to kill as long as it is the state. Turns out most evangelicals and the Catholic church are officially against the death penalty, but you never hear them do anything about that anymore though they are screaming about abortion.