Am I the only one that sees a problem with fewer erronious convictions?
One is too many. When the day comes that we can restore a life unjustly taken, we’ll talk more.
Can we restore the lost years of an innocent person who spends a lifetime in prison? Can we restore the missing time for an innocent person who spends 5 years in prison? Any sort of punishment creates irremediable harm. That’s reality.
Obviously, no judicial system can be perfect. If we insist that the government never make a single error, we can never punish anyone.
The death penalty is different from prison, because it’s irreversible. But, the reversibility of other punishments is illusiory. First of all, we can’t give back the lost years. Second, most innocent people in prison will never be exonerated. It’s of no value to them that their unfair verdict hypothetically could have been reversed.
IMHO we must be willling to punish people, admitting to ourselves that we won’t always get it right. The focus ought to be on getting accurate verdicts – for both guilty and innocent defendants. DNA evidence will help.
Aww shucks, he’s not a hypocrite. He’s just a slack jawed knee jerk dittohead panderer with grand delusions of mandate.
Using a moral idea in a cynically political ploy doesn’t speak well of anyone involved. What makes this nation great is that we recognize the validity of having a plurality in views from which to debate our laws and community. Something like this betrays that vision by clumsily establishing, by fiat, a ceremonial proclamation that heedlessly belies the honest differences in public thought and debate. Ceremonial rulings are almost always less harmful than real actions, but they are in some respects more craven, because at least laws are recognized as political tools: public ceremony tries to presumtively speak for our entire society.
There is in fact a slight difference between the penalties of which you speak. The nuance is really quite subtle and I cast no aspersions on those are not aware of it. You see, when one has been put to death one is frikkin dead!!!
There are not words enough to express the vast difference between having your life fugged up over doing a stretch in the state penn and being killed. Again, it is a subtle case, but you see that when you are killed by the government (and through extension every citizen is made a killer) you are dead!!!
To sum up: Being killed by the state = You’re Freakin Dead!!!
Unjust stretch in prison = A rough Life
Having a rough life means that you live.
-Coffeeguy
You can work on putting your life back together after 5 ye4ars in prison.
You cannot work on putting your life back together after 5 years in the ground.
I’m pro choice and undecided on the death penalty.
I too, don’t think it’s fair to put both these issues into the same camp. It is reasonable to be for one and not for another and vice versa.
Sure, Bush is throwing a bone to the pro-lifers by doing this. It doesn’t surprise me. The way you heard Gore tell it during the election women would have lost the right to choose by now if Bush won.
He sidling up to it. I figure the hope is that he can appease the “pro-lifers” with gestures and rhetoric and keep them on board without doing anything to infuriate and, most important, energize the pro-choice people. Have his cake, eat it too, and most importantly, stop the Dems from taking it.
Is GeeDubya “pro-life”? Darn tootin’. Would he risk blowing his re-election chances for such a moral principle? When Hell freezes over.
How do you know (cite?) that the death of innocent civilians in Afghanistan does not bother Bush? Is it because you hate his squeaky voice and his beady eyes?
What do you suggest we should have done in Afghanistan after 9/11? Not invade because we could not guarantee innocent civilian safety 100% and leave Osama bin Laden in his safe haven?
By the way, I am pro choice (BTW that IMO is not the same as pro-abortion) and I am also for the death penalty, although I do believe that our justice system needs more controls to further ensure innocent men and women are not executed.
Bush is a politician, just like ALL politicians, he does and says what will get him more money in the long run and also get him re-elected. Appeasing to the pro-life faction is part of that plan. If he sounds like a hyprocrite to you, do you think it is really gonna matter in the end, if it gets him re-elected?
After all, when was the last time you saw the Clintons or Gores in a black church? I think it was November 2000…but I could be wrong.
A thoroughly accurate and reasonable comment. Pinch me.
Whew, back to form. Everyone see the logical error, here? Death is not the only punishment, so we CAN stop using it and still punish people. Effectively, as it turns out. Still no evidence, AFAIK, that the death penalty ‘works’, except at killing people.
Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?
Bush knows that he is in the minority on this issue, so he won’t risk his re-election on a loosing issue. It’s basically how Clinton made every decision while he was in office. And I don’t see the problem with it, unless a politician seems to have no concern for anything other than his popularity, which Bush most certainly does not.