re: #19 Obdicut

You can always find cases like this where you can say “See, the death penalty is totally appropriate!” That’s easy.

What you can’t do is create actual policy that makes sure that the death penalty is only ever used in those cases.

I think you can using a “No doubt” standard. There are plenty of cases, like this one, where there isn’t any question of the defendants guilt. We are 100% positive she’s guilty and I think the crime involved in heinous enough to remove her from the planet. At a minimum I think it’s acceptable for the people of PA to decide whether or not she deserves to continue breathing.

My problem with the DP has always been a lack of trust in the system in general. We have 12 people deciding, on limited evidence, whether or not it’s reasonable to believe the person is guilty or not. I’m not sure that is good enough to convict people of any crime much less kill someone over.

I agree that our system now is too screwed up to believe that every person convicted in a DP case is actually guilty. To fix it we can either dump it completely or tweak it so we’re absolutely positive of the defendants guilt. I prefer tweaking but I’m not going to get upset if voters decide to dump it instead.