Stanley 'Tookie' Williams

[Beth Sweet]

Back on the topic for Mr. Williams for a moment, the one point about the death penalty that I surprisingly have not yet seen arise is how many people are put to death and then late found innocent of the crime which they were killed for. They all went down pleading innocence. Ignoring entirely my personal moral beliefs, this simple fact seems enough to me for the end of the system. Even if we are saying a life for a (some) life(ves), how can you justify that with so many people who have been killed now having evidence found that they were innocent?

[Personal belief time, not necessarily backed by fact as above statement was]

As (I believe it was) Bill said, the only real time that one really ought be not horrifically punished for killing another is in self defense. There have been numerous studies that tell that the defense of one's own life is the only natural instinct: survival. Anyone who truly believes in the death penalty must be willing to die themselves. If someone is given the death penalty, someone has to push the button to give them the injection. The button pusher therefore is a murderer himself and must now be killed. He knew about this ahead of time and had everything planned out and did it all in sound conscience. And so on and so on until all but 1 person who believes in the death penalty are killed. But they have a right to kill that person some may say. Who determines the right to kill? Who says "you may kill" "you may not"? Who has the right to say who will live or die?

Some of you are arguing that capitol punishment is a way to detur murderous crime. It isn't though. You're solving a murder with a murder. Most people who commit these murders probably are not the type that think like most of society anyways because most of society does not go around killing each other. So you can't say "well this will scare most people from commiting murder" because the people commiting these murders, in doing so, have rejected the view of most of society who wouldn't have done what the murderer did in the first place. (sorry, that was a really bad run on sentance)

FINAL STATEMENT FOR THOSE WHO DON'T WANT TO READ THAT WHOLE THING: There are too many problems with the death penalty for it to seriously be used. Period.