First let me compliment you on your willingness to look into the issue. Being open to consider all sides is a great virtue.

My goal was never to change your mind. I believe that is a long process and often never happens. Having been “in the trenches” on this issue, I have a pretty firm belief system based on that experience, and could tell you things you never saw on either site. Perhaps there will be another time for that. For now I respect your opinion, though we disagree.

Thank you again for making the effort to become better informed.

“The law recognizes the specific distinction between those legally innocent and those actually innocent, just as common sense dictates. Yes, there is a difference between the truly “I had no connection to the murder” cases and “I did it but I got off because of legal error” cases.” I really have little sympathy for those that “beat” the system through technicality. If you truly commit a capital offense, the punishment should match.

I have seen research within both camps that argue for and against capital punishment. Both have merit. That leads me to believe that capital punishment should be reformed, but not abolished.

Like Sparrow I have considerable experience in this area. The unjust application of capital punishment is legion. Some state provide adequate funding to defend capital cases, others so restrict funding that only low end attorneys, with little staff support do these cases. Blacks receive the death penalty far more than whites for similar crimes. A black killing a white receives the death penalty at a rate 16 times that of a white killing a black. Incidence of death penalty can vary from county to county depending on the prosecutor's discretion in charging.

By the way, can't tell you how many false “confessions” I've seen. Almost every capital case has false confessions, often multiple. And, eyewitness reports are horribly unreliable, no matter how many. Law enforcement is very good at getting people to ID the target of the investigation. Particularly true in cross-racial ID's.

Wish I had time & space to go into details, but have to leave for a meeting. Please, please go to the site Sparrow recommended. It has much information and statistics on death penalty. I use the site regularly and have referred to it before on other threads. Learn about people being put to death after having attorneys who fell asleep at trial, showed up drunk, were subsequently disbarred, or made public statements that their own clients should get the death penalty, etc.

The site is http://www.deathpenaltyinfor.org Worth a look just to get a glimpse of what is really going on out there.

But alas, I tend to deny the term “human” at times. (Bear with me here). Since they rip the right of life away from an innocent (as well as their children and families), a big part of me thinks of them as having given up their right to humanity – humane treatment? maybe. But to be given life at all? No. This isn't the vengeance position you were talking about. It is true justice to me and to many in Texas. The death penalty is spelled out in both Old and New Testaments, so there's also the religious aspect to all of this in terms of popular support.

I stand against cruel and unusual punishment. And to me, it is much more humane to send a man to his death, than to let them rot in prison for the rest of his life.

Innocence: I agree. But in cases where there is a confession or eye-witness (at least 3 witnesses) testimony; i see no problem with capital punishment.

but Jefferson i will spare us from that. . . my stance is not grounded with what i know but rather with what i do not know. . .

I don't know. . .after my experience of working with just one phase of the judicial system in relation to the process of Capital Murder. . . there are too many places and layers where a case can be tainted, distorted, and exploited for power, for profit, or prestige that has little to do with the actual person on trial. . .there are all kinds of players in the judicial world. . . some really good ones, and some that would throw granny under the train for one of the aforementioned “p's”. . . Jefferson there are so many places it can go wrong. . .too many times i shrugged my shoulder with ” i don't know.”

human nature?. . .the best. . .the worst. . .it is all there. . .within me. . within you. . .within everyone. . . i agree with you concerning life in prison without parole not being a cakewalk and was glad to hear you are not coming at execution from a space of vengeance as many seem to do. . .often have thought if i had to choose, i would take execution to life in prison without parole. . . but would never chose that for someone else because even if there was one in 1000 cases where power went amuck or even if it was clean mistaken injustice, it would not be right to take an innocent life if it was mine or yours, or somebody else's; brother, sister, husband, wife, child, father, mother, friend. . . .

Jefferson in my early childhood there was a T.V. show called the Real McCoy's. . .Each week they started it off with a song. . .part of the words where. . .” he roars like a lion but he is as gentle as a lamb.”. . . That what i often think when i read your posts. . .I think if you sat down and really listened to the individuals on Death Row your heart would not advocate for their execution. . .Maybe your head, but not your heart. . .

I agree that every effort must be made to keep an innocent away from prison or the electric chair. We should expect that in our justice system. That's where we should put the concern and effort, not against the choice of punishment. The people in Texas overwhelmingly support their death penalty. So let them. We don't have it in our state, but they can have it in theirs if they wish.

The cost is where we disagree, I think. First, countless appeals are allowed – both legitimate and frivolous. There are so many loopholes that a prisoner can do the research and exhaust the courts with technicalities. Now if a death-row inmate petitions for proof toward his/her innocence, then great. Otherwise, the appeals should be minimized. This is where the astronomical cost comes from, as you mentioned. The cost of a bullet, rope and gallows, or even electrical current, cyanide, or lethal injection is cheap compared to keeping a prisoner for the rest of their life.

Which brings up another point. Are you really doing a person justice by keeping them caged for the rest of their lives. You spared their lives in the electric chair, and gave them what? The chance for sodomy, gang activity, and animalistic survival?

One last thing…. I've never bought into the black vs white argument within incarceration rates. If any race commits a crime, then they should face the penalty. My black friends and I have discussed this at length. They agree that the entire black community needs to change. The roll models should not be gangstas. And their opportunities (or lack thereof) should be expanded within their own communities.

here is a really good podcast link that goes into the cost of Capital Murder Cases. . .

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/podcast/audio/C…

also Texas much like California is one of those States that has a huge prison industry where they take prisoners from other States and they are scattered out through rural communities. . .prisons have become a very important Texas industry. . .

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-pen…

Do those views also apply to executing the innocent? That's what this post is about.

One other quick point. Because of the all the legal issues, it costs about the same to execute someone as it does to house the person for life without parole. There are no savings to the taxpayer, but even if there were, money is no excuse for executing the innocent.

I always say then what I'd say out in public. I've got nothing to hide.
Of course, if I find myself duct-taped, bound, and in the back of a black van; I may change my tune a bit.
Until that time, screw em'. I am not afraid of the government. Come and get me, fellas.

I think it has something to do with the citizens not wanting to pay $75,000 per year to dress, feed, and house a piece of garbage. They apparently have better things to do with their tax money.

When a murderer steals life from another innocent person, they deprive that person of their Constitutional right to LIFE, liberty, and the persuit of happiness. Therefore, their life is taken.

Just like a liberal: Save the guilty (murderers) and kill the innocent (unborn).

Those who do mitigation work are the angels of God. They devote themselves to the lowest of the lowest, who often do not know or appreciate the love and committment. They travel to dark places and risk danger to interview and see those who do not want to be seen. With a firmness and rightness of principle they stand against a system that would rather kill the inconvenient person than listen or understand. You have done God's work. Thank you.

and there are the other cases where there is guilt. . . and i have often thought of the Jewish ritual where the scapegoat is brought forth and all the sins are placed in the scapegoat then turned into the wilderness to take their chance on survival. . .for a number of years i gathered material for mitigation to be used to plea the death penalty to life in prison without parole. . .what i found where the most wounded of the wounded in our society. . .and example one young man strung out on drugs murdered a woman and he was guilty. . .he was raised by a mother that had chronic untreated schizophrenia and a alcoholic father that used the method of of making his son eat his own feces in order to potty train him. . .so often those on Death Row are not the Lamb of God but are truly Scapegoats of forces so vile and dark it would be insane of us to believe they could escape the wilderness and the distortion of what they had been formed by. . .those years turned me into a “bleeding heart” liberal for those on Death Row. . .

Somethings do come up from the ground, and continue to breath the old into the present . . .and since that might sound a bit woo woo. . .i will use the word history. . .

Remember the Alamo. . .As a person educated in Texas school system, Texas History was considered more important than U.S. history, thus Texas citizenship was deemed prestigious . . .Texas was even rejected concession to the U.S. if i remember correctly prior to the succession in 1861. The Lone Star State

Recall of Texas History . . . Part of this in quotation marks is taken from a Historian Monty Rainey on the Alamo. . .
“In the 1830's the total population was only 20,000″. . . . during these years “Mexico had been unsuccessful in populating this land, generous offers of land proved ineffective in encouraging Mexican families to move to the untamed region. . . Being a settler in the Texas coastal plains region in the 1820's was no easy task. Indian raids were a constant threat and Mexico was in need of men with the pioneer spirit to tame the region. Texas became so rough the Mexican government passed what is known as the Colonization Law forbidding further immigration from the U.S. A rather ironic action considering today’s problems of illegal immigration from Mexico. It was also rumored that Mexico would soon begin sending their convicts to Texas. Settlers feared Texas would become little more than a Mexican penal colony.”

Texas was untamed, rough and considered unsuitable for the more peace abiding settler families, it became populated by outlaws and criminals that where driven from the States or where fleeing from the laws. In many ways Texas was the United States Penal Colony and also the lands Mexicans that did not hold to the laws of the land resided. . .

Thus the laws of Texas where set by this kind of mentality. . .people drenched in real and imagined fear. . .Perhaps people that created laws based on fear as well as their own unexamined outlaws, criminal, and murderer family shadows. . . From what i have been able to find Texas law has changed little in how they view their prisoners and reform is desperately needed for all prisoners in Texas. . .

I suggest the current Texas treatment of prisoners and the unexamined and unmerciful case at hand is a long withstanding mentality based on fear that has now become part of the proud 'cult'ural identity of too many Texans. . .

http://www.utwatch.org/archives/workingstiff/vo…
http://www.juntosociety.com/essays/alamo.htm