[QUOTE="itsTolkien_time"]
Gabu, quite frankly you sound like a walking commercial when you say this. You say 135 people have been exonerated, but how many people have been executed and NOT exonerated?
GabuEx
1173 people thus far have been executed since 1976. That puts the rate of number sentenced to death to number exonerated at around 10%. How many of those 1173 were innocent, we will never know - there is no real incentive beyond closure for the family of the one executed to further investigate the innocence of one who was already executed. We do know that the number is greater than zero, however.
My point with parroting that number repeatedly is to drive home the point that it's not even an insignificant number - one out of every ten sentenced to death were later exonerated. That precise question must be asked, then: indeed, how many more were wrongly charged and were not exonerated? How many were put to death before a case could be made for their innocence? And how can a justice system possibly be justified as conscionable if it leads to even one innocent person being placed in danger of being murdered by the state, let alone 10% of all people sentenced to death?
One of the most fundamental human rights in existence is the right to a presumption of innocence. Even after a person is convicted of a crime, it is clear that we cannot and must not assume that that person is guaranteed to be guilty such that we can now do whatever we want with him or her. A punishment ought to serve two and only two purposes: the deterrence of those who might otherwise commit a similar crime, and the protection of society from the one being punished. Anything beyond that has exited the realm of justice and has entered the realm of vengeance - and vengeance is something on which nothing in the world should be based, let alone a country's judicial system. It reminds me of that one lady who, in response to a person wrongly charged with murder, declared that she did not even care if an innocent person is killed - she just wanted someone, anyone to pay for what happened. I fear that that mentality is all too pervasive in the minds of those who see nothing wrong with the death penalty - I can't count the number of times I've heard sentiments along the lines of, "He killed someone, so now he doesn't deserve to live!"
So why have any criminal law at all since innocents are inevitably going to be punished due to the imperfection of the system??Do you also oppose the system of stamping people as sex offenders? You do know that people end up having it having done nothing? And it ruins your whole life being a registered sex offender. The list of crimes can just go on so I ask you, why do you support any judicial system regarding criminal law at all??
As for the topic, why is it so much more worse to have an innocent killed rather than having him in lifetime punishment? Infact the latter is worse in my opinion cuz the mental stress and frustration caused by having to see your whole life wasted for something you didnt do will be terrible indeed. With death penalty you wouldnt be "there" to know how you were wronged.
What are the chances that an innocent will be able to "prove" his innocence and get out of his lifetime exile?
It is human nature to seek revenge, it's a built in mechanism and by all standards "equal revenge" is justice. If law doesnt provide man with revenge in matters as serious as murder and rape then you can be assured that many would go out of their ways to seek it some other way which could be worse for society. Those people who oppose revenge can simply forgive crimes done to them or their loved ones.
To oppose the death penalty altogether because innocents are going to get caught here and there is just not the way to go, the universe is not perfect and will never be. I could say that lets genocide the whole earth cuz "innocents" are going to be born with diseases and disabilities and it's not fair so lets just end life altogether.
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