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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bald Eagle who wrote (15473)	6/4/2001 7:15:38 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I have no problem with the death penalty, if it can be applied fairly and justifiably. Use it or don't use it I don't care. However, If you are going to use it; 1) define the specific violation for which it is to be applied. 2) Make the level of evidence that convicts high enough so that a conviction is indisputable. 3) Don't use it to send a message to members of society. As a society, I don't believe we have the ability to deal with the nature of certain crimes. Putting these criminals in jail for a long period of time or life merely pushes the problem around for different subsystems to struggle with. For example: If there is a serial pedifile who torures and kills his victims. The big problems that I see with the death penalty in the USA are: 1)We tend to make it an emotionally involved decision that ends up being entangled with human revenge. So, the person on death row who can garner enough emotional empathy for his situation gets off and others don't. Sometimes the person on death row is suicidal and pushes for life termination, sometimes there are lenthy appeals. In other words the cases are not weighed fairly. 2) We do not have the bar set high enough to convict these criminals on evidence that is indisputable. 3) Since everybody's opinion on every case has to be given ample air time, we can never justify the choice of specific crime = death penalty as a simple mechanical choice clean of the personal vengence of those involved.