Forgive me, but I believe in punishing criminals, and not waxing philosophic about their rights after they've committed the most vicious of crimes. I believe in eliminating their threat to the public. Permanently.
I reserve my sympathy and defense of rights for the victims, not the murderers.
Not everyone sentenced to death was a murderer though. You can always increase security at a prison but a death sentence can never be undone once carried out.
Quote: Nowhereman said:
Quote: Wonder Boy said:
The death penalty is the only way you can guarantee that a killer will never kill again. I'm very much for it.
And how many wrongly convicted people have been put to death over the years?
The simple answer is that we will never know, and thats what makes the death penalty wrong!
That's very true. I can't dispute that.
But if you put away a guy for 15 or 20 years, and then set him free, you've still taken his life away.
I recall an incident I read about in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel back in 1993 or 1994. I graduated high school in 1981. And I read about a guy who'd been in prison in South Florida who'd been wrongfully convicted who was exactly the same age as me. He had hung out with two guys who were auto mechanics, who killed someone and pinned the blame on him. Several people, friends and girlfriends of the murderers, falsely testified that it was the innocent guy.
But 13 years later, one of the girlfriends who testified revealed that she lied, exposed the true story, and the innocent guy was set free after 13 years in jail. I couldn't help thinking about what I'd done in those years, and how this poor guy had to sit in prison all those years for a crime he didn't commit.
In addition, he'd been repeatedly raped in prison, and as a result had contracted HIV, so in his own words, his life was over, and he'd been released only so that he could die.
So, life in prison, or the death penalty. Both take away years and a life that can never be replaced.
