Maryland abolishes death penalty.

[shoju]

@Eppie: I'm Shoju, not meat.

Most of the information that I have found based on people who were wrongly executed, or pardoned from Death Row, are convictions that are 20+ years old, when DNA / fingerprinting / etc.. weren't as advanced as they are today. Was there a time, and a place where things were done poorly? Absolutely. Do I think that we are moving past that? Absolutely.

Now mind you, I'm not championing for the death penalty to stay in it's current form. Even as it current is done, it's not even close to working the way that it was intended, and it does need overhauled.

But I believe that there is a time and place for the Death Penalty.

Of course we can cite times, and places where it was used poorly, and improperly. And I'm sure that there will be times where yet again, it will be used wrong, and abused.

But, like a lot of things, I just don't feel that because something bad happened, or that there was a failure in the system is a reason to scrap a system. The judicial and corrections systems are horridly flawed, and have at times proven to be the worst of the worst in terms of use, and abuse. But we don't scrap them. We look to improve them. We look to make the necessary changes to make them function better.

I think the Death Penalty should be paired down in scope. I think that it should be reserved for only the most heinous cases, and i think that we should really look to tighten the definition of what fits that ideology.

If Mr. Holmes is found to be of sound mind, I think he's a candidate, just like Brievik, just like the baby raping murderer.

I think putting someone to death who isn't of sound mind is a problem. I think that putting someone to death in some instances is just as big of a crime as what they committed. But there are times, when I think it's just what needs to happen.

And I have to disagree with the ideology, that you can't be 100% sure the person "really" committed the crime. Look at the three I mentioned. There is no doubt. There is no debate. They did it. The evidence, the confession, the post trial behavior, it's all 100% consistent. Because a family doesn't believe that their loved one did it is irrelevant.

The mother of my oldest's family are the classic example of this. She has never been wrong. She has never been guilty.
She left her husband, and moved her drug dealer in.
She went missing for long periods of time.
She was arrested with the drugs on her, and a "crack manufacturing facility" in her home.
She stole from them, and her children. (Yes. She stole the cash her family gave her children for christmas)
She was arrested again, passed out, testing positive for the drugs, which she had on her.
She went to prison
She got out
She went back to doing the same pattern (sans children)
She went back to prison
She went to Rehab
She relapsed
She went to Rehab
She relapsed
She went to Rehab
She relapsed
She got out
She stayed clean
things started coming up missing
she started going missing
her boyfriend came home to a house full of people all stoned out of their mind.
She's now on the run.

This whole time, her parents and grandparents have enabled her, by living in denial that there was a problem. The saga has been so devastating that is has fractured her family. She is just not a topic they talk about anymore, because one sister committed suicide over the devastation is had on her family, the other sister wishes she would just OD, her parents say it's not her fault, her grandparents keep bailing her out, her aunt's and uncles want nothing to do with her.

Denial, is a powerful thing. There is no denying what she did. But her family swears it's been a string of bad decisions on who to hang out with. It's not her. it's not their daughter.