(idea) by bitter_engineer Wed Jun 07 2000 at 8:39:49
A few points for getzberg, courtesy of Amnesty International's website.
  1. Execution occurs in countries that are both industrialized or otherwise. We seem to be lagging behind 'civilized' countries such as Haiti, Cambodia, Columbia, Mozambique, Turkmenistan, and the Ukraine, which all have laws against execution.

    Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, El Salvador, Mexico, and Peru only have the death penalty in effect for exceptional crimes, and crimes commited under military law.

    And Turkey, Albania, and the Central African Republic all have the death penalty, but have not actually executed anyone in the past 10 years.

    None of the above, are places I'd care to live. Yet they manage to get by without the need for government slaughter. Unlike, say, the Russian Federation, China, Japan, Myanmar, Iraq, and Somalia.

    And in the really elite circle are the six countries that have executed inmates under the age of 18 since 1990. Drum roll please....
    Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and--you guessed it--the good 'ol U S of A.

  2. It has been empirically proven that our justice system is incapable of reliably ascertaining guilt before execution. Earlier this year, the governor of Illinois imposed a moratorium on executions when it was discovered that 10 inmates on death row were not guilty by reason of DNA Evidence.
  3. As any mechanic can tell you, if the system is broken, don't use it until it's fixed.
  4. And I don't really need to tell you this, but getzberg's argument against the lack of deterrence and waste of resources is pure horseshit, especially when he argues that paperwork should be reduced, a few paragraphs after his argument that the system needs to be more certain of guilt. I'll throw out a statistic anyway, since it's close at hand: When Canada abolished the death penalty in 1975, the homocide rate was 3.09 per 100,000 people. 5 years later, it was 2.41. In 1993, the number was 2.09, a 27% decrease since abolishment.

I like it! 1 C!