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Politics : Long Live The Death Penalty! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Machaon who wrote (562)	1/21/2003 5:46:53 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 828

This discussion, Robert, is not about who hates killers more--DP supporters or opponents. It is about whether or not we can all love justice for everybody, and whether or not we can put fundamental rights ahead of prejudice. Most human beings find killers to be reprehensible and odious. There is no point of disagreement there. One can support the death penalty without needing to deny that there are crooked cops, crooked prosecutors, crooked witnesses, racism, and so forth. One need not deny that in the justice system (as in the Church, or in any field of life) there are sexual deviants, mental deviants, and persons of defective characters and deficient ethics. It is true that the homeless, or people without social roots, are convenient for framing in these cases (look at Canada where 5 people were convicted on false testimony, etc. but were finally cleared on DNA after losing many years of their lives in prison. These weren't scumbags or career criminals). But just because a person does not conform to the lifestyle of our expectation is hardly grounds for execution. "They deserve what they get" is not a responsible attitude for citizens to take. Somebody said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Prejudging the convicted as wrong and the guys with the uniforms and guns as right is neither being vigilant nor sensible. If everybody had the attitude that they would not lose any sleep over people executed for the wrong crimes then ALL those people who were finally exonerated thanks to DNA evidence would have fried. You don't lose any sleep over it, eh? But if you got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and framed by a crooked cop or a lying witness...you'd damn well be screaming for somebody to lose some sleep over you. And if it was your daughter being framed by a gang of kids to protect themselves from a drug trade that led to a death, you'd damn sure be losing sleep, then. And if it was a crooked cop protecting his son from a rape charge by framing the local rebellious kid--a teenage alcoholic with a single parent, and if you were that kid's parent--you would be losing some sleep, then. But you're not losing any sleep now; and you are clearly not the reason that all these myriad innocent people have been exonerated over the last decade on DNA evidence.