re: #204 CarolJ

I used to be the same way about the death penalty. But I began to realize, along with the many people who were later found innocent, that there was usually no way, short of serial killers who proudly show their work, to be sure there wasn’t a mistake along the way. So I began to support life without parole. If guilty, they just stay in jail. If evidence turns up later they are innocent, then we can let them go. That’s a better margin than killing someone and later finding out they were innocent, or not innocent, but there were mitigating factors.

Plus it ends the endless drama around appeals and the actual administration of the sentence itself and the endless search for a way to kill that isn’t cruel and unusual. There really isn’t a good way to kill a relatively young and healthy man.

I’ve long been against the death penalty - with two exceptions: mass murder and genocide.

Depriving someone of life, even if following due process, is an irrevocable act if you later learn that the accused was innocent, and reliance upon the death penalty as a legal punishment cheapens the value of human life and creates a sick, sociopathic culture that worships death and cruelty.