That's what I'm about too. It's not that I feel sorry for rapists and murderers and want what is best for them. If the system were perfect, I'd say kill those that deserve it. But it sucks for people to die, convicted of a horrible crime, and then be labelled as a rapist/murderer/etc postmortem forever; their family members have to live with that too. That is the ultimate torture.

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lambaste me not

Has anyone paid attention to the 53 deaths in San Fransico after the death penalty was abolished? As well as the increase in injury of police officers in the area. With the death penalty abolished criminals seem to think that their crimes go unpunished. I'll admit that sometimes innocents are wrongfully excicuted, but i believe that the deaths of innocents due to a faulty system is fewer than this increase of murders.

We cannot eliminate options before we have agreed on new ones.

What makes you think that these 53 deaths were on account of the death penalty being abolished? What is the connection and do have any links to support it?

And something else that really bothers me is that people like to play God by saying that "Its ok to spend a few lives here and there to keep the death penalty going." These lives are not for you to spend.

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lambaste me not

We have already covered the ground you are mentioning. In fact, I supported the points you say now.

If 13 out of 25 guys on the Illinois death row can be exhonerated by DNA evidence, then we have a problem. Does that mean we release convicts early? No. Does that mean we stop giving a conseqeunce for the actions. No. All it means is that we keep this guys in life without the possiblity of parole until we can fix the problems that allow a majority of the inmates in the Illinois death row to be exhonerated by DNA evidence.

Trust me when I say I am a big law and order guy. I have several friends who are policemen and state troopers. I am a big proponent of the death penalty, forced labor for inmates and a lot of other things that would make most liberals choke on their granola. Still, I am not in favor of killing 13 innocent guys so we can kill 12 guys that deserved it. Its not the only way to send the message. Besides, we can still kill the guilty once we have take reasonable steps to ensure they are guilty.

I repeat that no one is taking the death penalty off the table. We are just asking for a brief suspension of executions until we can find out why a majority of the people on death row can be exhonerated by DNA evidence.

Let me ask you guys this, should DNA testing be a Constitutional right in Capital Murder Cases?

-Demosthenes

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"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Hmmmm....that's not bad. I don't know if it needs to be a Constitutional amendment. But maybe it should be a law for now that you cannot be executed unless you are found to be guilty using DNA ( I know that there could be some gray area to that), or admit to the crime. You can go down for life but not executed. They have been finding that "eyewitness" accounts are not as accurate as people thought. I used to be hardcore for the death penalty, and in some cases I still am. It kills me that certain criminals might stay alive because of this stuff. But it needs to be figured out.

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lambaste me not

We should exhaust all possiblities when proving guilt or innocence and not worry so much about form and procedure.

How do you make it a given step in the process without declaring it to be a person's right?


-Demosthenes

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"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Here is a link to a website about the Death Penalty, it's various forms of being carried out, and what states use what forms. It's pretty informative.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/arti...scid=8&did=479

There is also an interesting section on Botched executions that is worth reading. As you are reading these (if you should choose to do so), picture yourself being there and seeing this, imagine the smells, the sounds, the sights. Just something to think about.

-Demosthenes

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"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

so, you are saying we should take these guys off of Death Row, commute their sentences to life without parole, fix the system, and then put them back on Death Row?