Quote:
Originally posted by sugar and spice
Not to start a debate in the middle of this thread (and if you feel it deserves its own thread then feel free to start one), but how does the death penalty protect the lives of the innocent? The people who have been murdered are already dead; the only thing the death penalty does is punish those who killed them. There have been studies that show that places with and without the death penalty have comparable murder rates, and if that's the case then the death penalty doesn't protect the lives of the innocent by deterring murder either. (I'm guessing that most murders are committed by people who are either crazy, extraordinarily desperate, or in the heat of the moment, in which case the threat of punishment no matter what it is probably won't prevent them from committing the crime.)
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I just hae to respond to this - I really think the supporters of the death penalty need to read McCleskey v. Kemp and pay special attention to the Baldus study - the death penalty is given disproportionately based on race.
The most likely to be convicted are those who killed whites. For a party that claims to not like affirmative action, they sure enjoy it here.