I’ve said before, I’m against it:

In theory, I support the death penalty. It is our society’s way of saying that some crimes are so heinous that they warrant killing the offender, both as a punishment and to deter others who may do the same thing.

In application, however, I oppose it. Studies have shown that the death penalty is not consistently applied among the races; nor is it equally applied among the wealthy, middle-class, and the poor. …

Also, the fact that people are on death row for 20 years is absolutely ridiculous.

That said, I find this case troubling:

Four of the nation’s top arson experts have concluded that the state of Texas executed a man in 2004 based on scientifically invalid evidence, and on Tuesday they called for an official reinvestigation of the case.

In their report, the experts, assembled by the Innocence Project, a non-profit organization responsible for scores of exonerations, concluded that the conviction and 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham for the arson-murders of his three daughters were based on interpretations by fire investigators that have been scientifically disproved.

Now, despite what Kevin said, this is not necessarily the case of the state killing an innocent person. Rather, it’s a case that some of the evidence presented was not absolute proof and that should give us all pause. After all, you can’t there is no Control+Z for the death penalty. If it’s done, it is done. That doesn’t mean that insufficient evidence is absolute proof of innocence. But that doesn’t matter so much because a person should be proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. And, as AC (who’s now blogging here) said once:

A society that uses capital punishment must be comfortable with one fact: You are going to kill innocent people. I don’t care how many appeals you exhaust or how much science you bring to it. Human error or human malice will result in the death of an innocent or two.

Ayup.

Posted in uncategorized on May 5th, 2006 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |