On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 01:14:44PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I should think this one was a gimme: a SINGLE innocent person executed is an > affront to standards of decency at any time, any place. I'd like to hear > someone try to argue the opposite.
While I tend to agree with you, Tom, due to lack of convincing evidence of death-penalty deterrent power, I have heard people make a reasonable argument. It it along the lines I just suggested -- the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide and thus saves the lives of a certain number of innocent people; if this number of lives saved is greater than the number of innocent people executed, then there is a net gain in innocent lives saved. However, as I said, I haven't seen any convincing data of the deterrent power of the death penalty. In contrast, we know for certain that if we abolish the death penalty, WE will not be directly responsible for killing innocent people. To me, it is a matter of extremely sketchy data that the death penalty might possibly be beneficial, compared to certainty that we can prevent some innocent people being killed by abolishing the death penalty. As an aside, life in jail with out the possibility of parole actually seems more abhorrent to me than a lethal injection. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
