Check out an article about numerous mistakes of the U.S. criminal justice system and how the Bush administration wants to address the problem. G.W.Bush is known for strongly supporting a death penalty but he also realizes that wrongful convictions happen throughout the U.S. It seems that the government has a plan how to fight it:

http://europeancourier.org/home.htm

The title of the article is "USA: Errors of Criminal Justice System"

Being a Christian and supporting the death penalty has always struck me as being a big self-contradictory.

After all, Jesus kind of got the short end of that stick.

But I see both sides of the argument. I really can't decide where I stand on it.

I support the death penalty in cases where the defendant has been proven guilty in a fair trial with good, reliable evidence. Of course there are always those cases of extreme anger or "temporary insanity" as they call it sometimes. Say you come home after a long day's work and walk in on your wife giving it up to some punk, understandably you'd be mad and maybe so mad that you're beyond reasonable thought. I suppose that basicly the death penalty is a case by case basis.

The question which I think is more important is whether the death penalty is warranted in cases where the defendant commits a heinous act that doesn't result in death such as a sexual crime against a minor and things of that nature.

I dunno....I don't think the death penalty should exist. Its not like it brings any closure, if anything it provides false closure.

In that case does a prison sentence bring any closure? I think it's kind of stupid to spend millions of dollars to house dangerous criminals in prisons when they are sentenced there for life. So what's the difference if they die in prison or they are executed other than saving the taxpayers some money?

thats true too, but I think we need to spend a little more of this money towards taking time to change their minds and examine them and then decide whether they are fit for release out into the world again or not and go from there.

What mistakes? For every scumbag arrested and charged with a crime that same scumbag will never be charged for all the other crimes he/she committed but did not get caught. Get real here. There is no such thing as a one time criminal. As for capital punisment, it would be a great deterrent were the sentence carried out immediatly after conviction.

ya they should get charged for things that happened W/IN 1-3 YEARS previous of the current charge. Otherwise it should be forgotten and left alone.

Ah yes, the "law and order, hang those bas*ards high on a tree" crowd, who believe their Golden Rule: "Kill others as you would want them to kill you." Did I get that rule correctly?

Let's say your name is George Thompson, and you live in Philadelphia. Out jogging one night, you are stopped by police who are looking for a man of the same name. You didn't bring your wallet in your jogging shorts, and they take you in and convict you of some heinous crime. Then they execute you within an hour of your conviction. No appeal, no review.

You're dead right, and you die happily, knowing that your brand of justice has been done....to you.....who is innocent.

If he wasn't packing any ID how would anyone know his name was George Thompson?? I swear Fit you are becoming more and more irrational on a daily basis. Pretty soon there will be 2 TQ's on the board.

.......you're retarded nomad...

Pardon me for making that sound so unrealistic. My old roommate worked for Juan, let's say Juan J. Lopez, a name as common among Hispanics as George Thompson. Juan, a state employee who had MSW social workers beneath him, went out jogging in Austin, as he often did, without pockets, keys, or ID. When he'd get home, he'd ring the bell and his wife let him in. Trouble was, when police stopped him and he gave his name, it matched a suspect for a heinous crime. His description did, too "Dark complected Hispanic male, around 35 years old, 5 feet 7." They wouldn't let him go to the door and call his wife. Luckily, because Juan is perfectly fluent in English (native-born citizen), he talked them into letting him go, since the regular suspect couldn't have spoken so well.

The point is, and now you see why I hesitated to tell the story, is that without DNA testing and a long appeals process, YOU and I stand the chance of being falsely arrested, falsely tried, condemned, and executed.

Sorry to lose you there, along the way. No, there will never be 2 TQ's on the board.

However, if I'm becoming more irrational, please illustrate. Or is it that we finally understand one another well enough to wrestle in the Bear Pit?