Nexa wrote:
There shouldn't be a death penalty without 100% certainty.
Nexa
Well there shouldn't be one at all, actually, but that's another story.
Well, it's not though (another story that is). There's no such thing in life as "100% certainty". Your test is a non-test. You're just saying there shouldn't be a death penalty, period. Which is an acceptable position to take IMO. Just stand up and make it! :)
I happen to think that there are overweighing issues that make a death penalty worth having. Once we accept that our legal system can never be 100% accurate, then it has to be about measuring that accuracy rate, comparing the costs of various sentences, and assessing the sociological benefit/harm of having or not having any given penalty.
Death penalty cases have by far the *lowest* rate of overturns, not because of a lack of appeals or some other obstacles, but because of the opposite. We make sure that a death row prisoner is given every possible recourse. There's a reason why a prisoner convicted in 1979 was still on death row in 1996 to have his case dismissed due to DNA evidence. While it seems simplitically obvious to simply do away with the death penalty entirely (cause then you could take all the time you want to exonerate the innocent), but IMO the value of having a death penalty is worth that incredibly tiny risk that an innocent might die (or I should say might be executed, but would have lived long enough in the correctional system on a life sentence to have been freed).
There are some crimes that are so heinous, some criminals so unremorseful, that a death penalty is the only way to provide both protection to the society and closure for the victims families. Again. We can debate this, but let's not hide the real issue behind DNA (what Smash was trying to do). That's a tiny tiny fraction of the issue.