Death penalty proponents: How do you feel when a person exonerated?

The 18th person who was on death row in Illinois will be released. He already has been in jail for 12 years. If you review the details of the case, it's clear they just wanted to pin a brutal murder on "somebody," guilty or not.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0405270248may27,1,802263.story?coll=chi-news-hed

When you read stories like this, how can you remain steadfast in your support of the death penalty? What if it had been carried out already? An innocent man already has lost 12 years of his life. What would you say if he actually lost his life?

and speed up the carrying out of sentences, situations like this would not arise.

This response presented in behalf of John Ashcroft & Anthony Scalia

You were being sarcastic, right?

Rien!

1) I don't support the death penalty for *guilty* people, so what difference does it make whether they are guilty or innocent? It's wrong for the State to kill when it's optional, as it always is when dealing with the incarcerated. Killing innocent people is just bad PR for killing guilty people, not a distinct moral situation.

2) I roughly equate taking a person's liberty with taking his life. It's a matter of degree. For religious reasons most people think life is on a higher plane than liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I don't see it that way, nor did our founding fathers, nor do many modern idealists.Give me liberty or give me death... it's better to die on your feet than live on your kness, etc.. (The fact that my instinct to live may overpower my principles in extremis is just being human. Our principles are always challenged by our nature. If they were consistent with out nature we wouldn't consider them principles)

I understand the ireversibility of death but some folks over-estimate the reversibility of incarceration. You can no more regain those years or unlive whatever you've experienced than the dead can rise. I disagree with the idea that we need to be extra careful about executing people. If the punishment is ever reasonable then it's just another criminal proceeding. The alternative presumes a lower standard of care is appropriate when we are *only* imprisoning people.

I was just trying to use this thread to demonstrate just another reason why we shouldn't employ it.

I am rather confused by your second point. Are you saying that people should not be jailed for their crimes?

Granted fear of punishment as a deterrent is very low on the stages of moral development. However, some people do operate on that level. Wouldn't an increase in crime accompany the elimination of jails.

There are many, many things wrong with our justice system, but I would rather correct it than abandon it.

But as anti-death penalty I felt left out. Sob.

I think people should be jailed but not for punishment--only when they must be separated from the general population. There have to be more effective alternative punishments for nonviolent offenders.

Because incarceration is a kind of death (to one born into a free society) and because the difference between one year and twenty years is largely an abstraction before-the-fact I think relying on incarceration just makes people nihilistic. It's an all-or-nothing approach and it's a backward incentive in a way. Some people are pretty well suited to incarceration while others could hardly bear it. Prison holds more terror for the law-abiding than it does for the career criminal, more terror for the family man than the lone wolf, more terror for the violent than the non-violent and more terror for the weak than the strong, so the disincentives are misplaced.

(I might even support things like caning for smaller crimes, on an optional basis. It's a *punishment*, pure and simple. A disincentive. Given a choice between a month in prison or a standard Singapore caning I'd probably take the later, and if I would prefer it I can't pretend it's less humane than incarceration. The down-side is a more overtly sadistic criminal justice system... worse and worse tortures, etc. I'm just throwing it out there. I'm not a caning advocate.

The death penalty has been abolished in most civilized countries. The government is often corrupt and needs a scapegoat. Prosecuters are looking for votes and convictions and often don't give a rats ass about who is guilty, only about conviction rates.

The courts have a narrow view of what evidence should be and are conviction friendly.

Its a recipe for disaster.

Lock them up. If the government is wrong, at least they can have part of their life back.