Wells Hall Off Topic Board

and he was a minority. No need for 100% certainty before he was sentenced and put to death.

Sorry, but I'm still pro death penalty. Are legal system will never be perfect.

I understand why you feel that way but I am in sprtnbrn's camp on this.

We have seen multiple people from multiple states be released from death row because they were wrongly convicted. Some based on DNA evidence, others because it was proven the prosecutor witheld findings, others because of faulty identification. I would much rather see life without parole or long sentences and release/pardon the person if they are found to be innocent after being convicted rather than tell the person's survivors, "Opps, our bad."

I have an acquaitance who served almost 10 years for a rape he couldn't have committed because of his confirmed location at the time the victim said the attack occured and the Ingham County prosecutors refused to reopen the case.

(His accusor was a former girlfriend, angry because he left her and got engaged to another woman. She told him and several others she would make him pay and it worked with the help of 2 of her friends)

I just can't accept that as an excuse. I prescribe to the Blackstone formulation of "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." There are certainly people that commit such heinous acts that death could be a deserving punishment for them. However, any righteousness gained in delivering justice by their death would be completely forfeited by the execution of even one innocent life.

At the end of the day, the major goal should be to remove the sociopaths from society; life without parole certainly accomplishes that. The only argument I ever hear against that is the cost, but frankly, if you're going to remove someone's freedom for the rest of their life, that should not come without a cost. That person should have the chance to continue to present their case, especially as new technology becomes available. Additionally, if we would move away from the prison society that we've created in our country, and stop putting people in jail for minor, non-violent crimes (or simply remove the illegality of the actions themselves in some cases), we'd have a lot more money available for those in for life for violent crimes. Ultimately, the only ones that would suffer would be the private prison corporations who exist off of the taxpayer.

Read this, and tell me what you think about it:

They turned over their findings to the Chicago Tribune which published a three-part series in 2006 that found evidence suggesting Hernandez killed Lopez. Multiple people told the Tribune that Hernandez -- who died in 1999 in prison from cirrhosis of the liver -- had confessed to killing her.

I won't bother to copy and paste every line in the article detailing the evidence that Hernandez did it, but that evidence coupled with multiple people stating that he confessed makes a strong case to me.

Of course nothing has been proven, but it sure looks like they got the wrong guy.

Wow. He was talking about the case at hand. It is not close to being a fact that the guy is innocent in the article the OP is referring to.

He could be innocent. A lot of people in jail could be innocent I suppose. I wouldn't mind seeing the death penalty abolished. I am not convinced that the death penalty really acts as some great deterrent for people who commit murder, they obviously aren't thinking about that when they kill someone in the first degree.

I have a simple question and I just want a number. What is the acceptable margin of error for the death penalty in your view? I don't want any hedging just a simple number.

Like Hexydes, I would rather have 100 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man be executed. I'm sorry but executing an innocent man is state-sanctioned murder in my eyes.

I am not a big proponent of the death penalty. However, I am not opposed to it in the most the of crimes. The problem I have with it is that it is extremely costly. The appeals process and special death row housing costs a fortune and takes decades. For most of these cases it would be more cost effective just to lock them up with the general population and throw away the key.

Yeah, especially when people on juries are the type of people who confuse "are" and "our."

Ha! I seen that earlier I jus didn't say nothing.

So if the state can come up with a cheap way to murder people, you would be all in favor of state sanctioned murder for all crimes. Lovely.