*chuckles* no. But don't have an irreversable sentence. I am not arguing against laws. I am arguing against capital punishment. Political situations change. Views on race and class change. Standards of evidence change, as do types of evidence as new techniques are developed.
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Georgia Board to Pardon Woman 60 Years After Her Execution - The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has announced that it will issue a formal pardon this month for Lena Baker (pictured), the only woman executed in the state during the 20th century. The document, signed by all five of the current board members, will note that the parole board's 1945 decision to deny Baker clemency and allow her execution was "a grievous error, as this case called out for mercy." Baker, an African American, was executed for the murder of Ernest Knight, a white man who hired her . Baker was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in one day by an all-white, all-male jury. Baker claimed she shot Knight in self-defense after he locked her in his gristmill and threatened her with a metal pipe. The pardon notes that Baker "could have been charged with voluntary manslaughter, rather than murder, for the death of E.B. Knight." The average sentence for voluntary manslaughter is 15 years in prison. Baker's picture and her last words are currently displayed near the retired electric chair at a museum at Georgia State Prison in Reidsville. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, August 16, 2005).
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Since this woman's conviction and execution times have changed. Likewise in the period that the Birmingham Six were convicted in Britain, English attitudes towards the Irish changed. Their conviction didn't survive that change in racial attitudes.
The man who was cleared of a crime 9 years after he was convicted because of new DNA evidence was released. The new evidence was because of scientific advances during that 9 year period.
The point I was making about appeals, is that they are not a gurantee that someone wrongly convicted will get a fairer hearing. Nor are they a guarantee that they won;t. There are many deathrow convicts whose cases are heard and whose convictions are overturned on appeal. But...we don;t know how many people are wrongly executed. So no, I am not arguing against having laws. Nor am I saying that removing the death penalty removes the potential for miscarriages of justice: clearly it doesnt. There will no doubt be people who will unfairly serve long sentences for crimes they did not commit. People who fall through the gaps in the system: all justice systems are flawed, because all rely on us, flawed human beings. But where miscarriages are discovered the wrongly imprisoned can be released, the wrongly executed cannot be revived. And, we are less likely to discover the miscarriage once the victim of that miscarriage is executed. Whilst they remain alive and incarcerated there is an impetus for the legal system to review new evidence as and when it arises, or as and when the political winds change direction.