Great post, great points, Prudence. It's nice to see a reasoned, articulate response to a complex question. Thank you!

Thank you Prudence, that was a much better response. That's what I was trying to get at, that the two issues aren't even comparable. It's not as black and white as, "This is killing, that's killing, therefore I have one opinion on both and to not is hypocritical." My opposition to the death penalty is entirely unrelated to my support of abortion rights. It's not relevant to the argument.

Uhh...Neph... that was a cultural reference to the song "Every Sperm is Sacred." Not a snide remark.

Deep breath, dude.

You call it "giving legal permission" I call it staying the heck out of it.

As a woman who has had a miscarraige, an abortion, and a wonderful birth (of my 11-year-old son) I just wonder WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TO JUDGE. My boy would not be here if it were not for the hard decisions I made earlier in my life. I will never equate abortion with murder because I HAVE BEEN THERE. Have you?

sounds good, im for it!

First of all, thanks to everyone for your contributions to this thread. I have to be honest and admit to being disappointed that the discussion moved from the death penalty to abortion though. I really wanted to focus on the story in the OP a bit more.

I'm just as guilty as anyone though of injecting my own beliefs into threads that may, at times, be off-topic, just because I am passionate about them. It can be hard not to. All I suppose I can ask is that, if we continue this discussion, we try to get back to the original topic and refrain from flaming each other. It's an interesting topic and so many of you have made elequent contributions. I'd love to hear more opinions, even conflicting ones, as long as we try to keep focused.

Once again, the old red herring gets thrown in the ring before any serious discussion can begin. This thread is about the Death Penalty, not abortion, and if one feels like starting an abortion thread, by all means, go ahead. Don't hijack another's thread to do it- not cool at all.

I think my opinion has obviously been influenced by personal events, but I can project myself out of those and look at it fairly dispassionately. I believe in the concept of the Social Contract - you live in a society, you live by their rules. You commit an atrocity like murder- and I don't mean heat of the moment or vehicular homicide- I mean a calculated, cold blooded murder, well then you know what dues you may have to pay. The man that murdered that little five year old a few years ago in California? Death penalty. Charles Manson? Death. The BTK killer? Death, even though he gets to skate because the penalty wasn't in effect during his rampage. There is no rehabilitating these monsters. They are outside of society, and chose to be that way. Even so , I think the evidence must be incontrovertable- DNA, confession, whatever. Texas is playing it too fast and loose, and I fear that innocent people may be falling victim.

Here are a few quotes from Amnesty International. I'll understand if they are taken with a grain of salt. ;)

I'm just not comfortable with those numbers. I understand the human desire for vengeance and I won't deny that there are some people who a part of me says "Fry 'em!" And like NA, if someone brutally murdered a loved one, there would be a strong desire to want to send them to hell myself. I just don't think it is my decision to make, as to who lives and dies. And god forbid, if I was wrong. Like I said earlier this isn't a mistake that can be corrected. If we are going to have to death penalty, it has to be onyl in cases where guilt is absolute. I don't know that our system can guarantee that.

I fear that speeding up the process would increase the error rate. I'm not comfortable with that.


Here's a question for those of you that are pro-death penalty. How about in regards to minors? Some of them have commited some pretty brutal crimes. At what age do we determine that all hope is lost and they should be written off as a lost cause. 18? 15? 12? Where would you draw the line?