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Originally Posted by richlevy
It is pretty obvious to anyone in the system, from prosecutors and defense attorneys to judges, that the system of capital punishment is broken.
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That statement is so accurate so many times over. Defense lawyer sleeps through the trial in TX, his client gets the death penalty, and that is called competant legal representation? People on death row *proven* by DNA not to be guilty - and the system refuses to even look at that evidence. The Gov of IL found the system so defective in his state as to completely reverse his opinion and suspend the death penalty.
Frontline (PBS) made the defects in they system woefully obvious. So how do advocates of the death penalty respond? They advocate the status quo. And that is the problem. They system is obviously broken. And yet those who advocate the death penalty make no effort to even acknowledge the system is broken.
The death penalty is being eliminated not so much because it is barbaric. It will be eliminated because those using the death penalty have so violated their obligations. The death penalty is a valuable tool to solve or prevent crimes IF it is used accordingly. But to be effective, how the death penalty is used must be performed by extremely careful logic. And yet we don't do that. Too many prosecutors use the death penalty only for revenge - even refusing to consider future evidence that proves the human innocent.
The problem with the death penalty is in how too many in the system use it. After all, a man can be put to death even when his own lawyer sleeps through the trial? Worse still, this is not the only example of questionable justice in TX that has killed people - then refuses to learn whether they made a mistake.