imported post
Who is it among us who wants to kill another human being?? And I mean aside fron the heat of passion. If my brother in law were to kill my sister, do not doubt that I would drive 500 miles and kill him myself, not with a gun but with a baseball bat; unless of course the Law got to him first and had him confined where I could not get to him. At some point I would have to look on him as a pathetic wretch, albeit a pathetic wretch who deserved the death penalty. I can imagine myself poised above his trembling form, baseball bat ready to emd his life, my sister's bloody corpse only scant feet away. But what good would I do?? and how would I know that Sis had been the victim of intruders and thatmy Brother-in-law had sustained injuries trying to defend her??
This is why we have trials. And the death penalty can be a result. And gas a man or shoot him or hang him by his neck, orn pass electricity through him or give him an injection of lethal drugs, in the end he is still dead and there is no reversing the process. And there are prosecutors who like the "feather in the cap" that a Capital sentence can give them: "Look! I just made sure that guy will never harm anyone ever again!! And I know my brother- in -law well enough to know that he would never ever harm my sister, his wife. But evidence can paint a perverted trail, and combined with prosecutorial ambition the result can be the ultimate perversion of justice: the execution of an innocent man.
Herein lies a paradox: There exist some things that people do that not only merit but absolutely cry out to God Almighty forthe life ofthe perpetrator. Andthere exist those people who would lay down another human on the killing machine just to advance their own fortunes. No matter what the weenies say, the death penalty does indeeddeter homicide. But no matter what the adocates of the death chamber say, in our capital system the chance of executing an innocent man is ever-present. We are not Gods. We are human beings. That our present systems of criminal justice; be they inclusive or exclusive of the death penalty: are woefully imprecise is one of the curses on our Human race.
Having said that, if I were to catch my brother-in-law or anyone else truying to harm my sister, I would worry about the criminal justice systen later......