and all of this "well what if they're innocent" crap doesn't fly anymore. maybe 30 years ago or however long ago it was before they were able to do DNA testing. with all the technology there is now, i really doubt they're gonna get the wrong person.
needled24-7
In 2004 an innocent man was executed. DNA evidence does not save someone from incompetent or unwilling court-appointed defense attorneys, faulty evidence, and fabricated testimony.
The idea that it doesn't happen anymore is the part that doesn't fly.
that fact does not make me oppose the death penalty....there is going to be mistakes made...that is no reason to lighten up on the thousands of others that are guilty, and do deserve to no longer breathe air
jJaAmMeEsS2184
As foxhound-fox said, this has nothingto do with "lightening up". This has everything to do with ensuring that the government does not murder innocent people - which it already has done in the past. Every single other punishment in existence can be halted the moment the one charged was found to be falsely accused. The murder of an innocent man or woman cannot be undone. The US is the only country in the civilized world that still executes those charged with crimes; there is a reason for that.
I presented the story of Cameron for a reason. People hear "129 people on death row have been exonerated" and think "well, that's not a very large number; the system still works". This is exactly what Joseph Stalin once said, really: you kill one, it is a tragedy; you kill ten million, it is a statistic. That 129 is not just a number on a page. It is one hundred and twenty-nine individual human beings, each of whom had lives to lead, families who loved them, and friends who cared about them, and each of whom would have been murdered by the government had new evidence not come to light. That is not simply a clerical error. It is not something that can be made OK through an apology and an admission of error. That is a fundamental miscarriage of justice that damns the entire judicial system of the country that would do such a thing. It is not a matter of a sufficiently large percentage of those executed having been innocent; if even one single person is executed falsely, the system has failed.
Again, no one has said that those charged with a crime should not be punished. But they should be punished in such a way that it maximizes the extent to which their life can be pieced back together if they are later found to be innocent. No one should be punished on the basis that he or she "deserves it", because to do so is to fundamentally cast into the trash the human right of presumption of innocence.
....and the figures you have of 129...I've seen a higher study of about 350...and still if you incorporate that into the prison population...it is somewhere between .025% up to 3-4% of prisoners that went to prison/deathrow as an innocent person....that to me is far too small of a percentage to say..ok you can murder all you want..you'll still be able to live out your life..just behind bars is all..yet your victims, who had no choice in the matter, are never going to be here again.....makes no sense...if you are willing to kill, then you should be willing to die....
needled24-7
You are assuming that the ones charged are guilty. That goes against every single legal system in the developed world. Even if we were to dehumanize those we punish - which itself is a totally sick way of going about punishment - it is still the case that every punishment enacted must, if we are to be a civilized society, contain an admission in the back of everyone's head that innocent people are guaranteed to be convicted of crimes. Punishment should go as far as necessary to deter others and protect society, and go no further, because to go any further is to transition from a just punishment to a craven act of vengeance on someone who is not by any means guaranteed to be guilty of what they have been changed with.
I think the fundamental difference here, really, is the question of which is more important: the protection of the innocent or the punishment of the guilty. It is a plain fact that we mustchoose between those two; we cannot perfectly segregate the innocent from the guilty.And anyone who supports a system of justice in which innocent people can be put to death plainly does not place the emphasis on the protection of the innocent. That's really all there is to it.
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