than sentencing someone to death? Do you have any idea of what it's like to be a lifer - to know that you'll never get out of prison, that you'll never see anything beyond those four walls to which you're consigned until you die?

I'm trying to figure out your rationale here. Either you believe warehousing people in prison until they croak is a kinder, gentler option to executing them. Or you believe in and celebrate the cruelty of consigning people to life in California's penal system. Either way you're fucked up.

It's an interesting question, and if it were up to me -- right now, on the outside, not really facing the choice -- I could see how I might say: Just kill me now. I'm not living like that.

But people in prison don't want to die. Psychologists have studied this at length and very few people would actually be executed rather than being able to live -- albeit not live a wonderful life.

Besides, killing people is a barbarian practice, one that shouldn't be condoned by any civilized society. And there's always the chance that an innocent person can be wrongly convicted (it happens fairly often, actually) -- and if that person is executed, there's no chance for him or her to later prove innocence.

I don't have a problem with the death penalty as long as there is a abundance of evidence to prove a suspects guilt. I'm not comfortable with the idea of killing someone, who could potentially be innocent of murder.
There are people whose guilt can and have been proven of heinous crimes against innocent victims, and those are the people I feel should be executed. If you purposely take the life of another out of greed, drugs, or jealousy then I feel the death penalty is justifiable. There are too many people sitting behind bars who have murdered innocent victims, why should tax payers support those losers because a few Christian's feel it is "the humane" thing to do. What about victims whose lives have been snatched from them prematurely? what about the victims family's? Why should I have to pay to house, feed, bath, and entertain murders? What's wrong with you people! with you so called Christian's? get over yourselves! and stop forcing everyone else to bend to your will.
I say bring back the gas chamber and make it quick! These murders have squeezed enough money out me and their victims families. As a matter of fact whatever happened to the electric-chair?

Freedom isn't free, as all you conservatives like to say. If you want freedom, if you want justice and not just a police state, you need to pay for it.

Take this man, recently cleared of the brutal rape and murder of an eleven year old girl:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Illinois_court_clears_man_of_1992_rape,_murd...

Three times he was tried for the killing. Three times our system of "justice" somehow managed to find this totally innocent man "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." There was such an "abundance of evidence" that he was convicted three times.

And yet he was totally innocent.

Thank god we don't have the kind of "cheap" "justice" Loanne is talking about above. Thank god we still have what conservatives like to call "endless appeals" -in reality, hardly endless, but it's better than nothing! Thank god we spend at least some money to make sure prisoners have their day in court, rather than try them in some kangaroo court and then execute them right after trial like they do in third world dictatorships.

If we did what the advocates of death want us to do, the state would have long ago murdered this innocent human being. As it is, the state destroyed 20 years of this man's life, not to mention the fact that someone else raped and murdered an eleven year old girl and that someone is walking around scot free. But to the advocates of death, none of this matters. Even now there are people who are probably sorry that this innocent man will be released, because their thirst for blood has not been satisfied.

Mistakes happen??? I disagree. Mistakes are made, and worse, scapegoats are railroaded by corrupt persecutors. I didn't make a spelling error.
When I read your callous post, Guest, I felt tremendously angry that a citizen of a country that had once believed as a nation so strongly in the principles of LIberty that our predecessors fought terrible wars to protect peoples of foreign nations against the likes of people who thought just like you. Knowing a little something about the subject of the death penalty, and fueled by my anger, I did an Internet search that took me about two minutes, something that you might consider the next time you decide to write about something that you clearly do not understand. I quote; "A study by Columbia University professor James Liebman examined thousands of capital sentences that had been reviewed by courts in 34 states from 1973 to 1995...""One in twenty death row inmates is later found not guilty.""
I wonder, though, is it ignorance, lack of compassion, or is it fear and loathing that drove you to write what you did?
The writer of the article I just quoted had this to say:
"Even the most ardent proponent of capital punishment has no tolerance for the execution of innocent people. The exoneration of 113 death row inmates undoubtedly demonstrates that the capital punishment system is in desperate need of reform."
Judging by your truly dark letter, I guess he's something of a Polyanna, huh?

In Conn an entire family was killed in a barbaric fashion by two psychos. The victims deserve the ultimate punishment of death by execution of the perpetrators in very short order. The likes of Charles Manson--and countless others--should not be haunting the victims 40 plus years after the crime. Outlawing the death penalty is short sighted; a perpetrator's natural death in prison gives the perpetrator final victory over the victim.