survey time

due to recent events, I'm forced to consider my opinion on the death penalty. I'm just really not sure. There are a lot of faults with the system, for sure. In the article linked above there, you'll see what I mean.

"California's death row has grown to house about 650 condemned men and women since the state brought back capital punishment in 1978. Since then, only 10 executions have been carried out — the last one in 2002. It can take years for even the first phase of the appeals process to begin."

It seems kind of stupid to maintain a system which is intended to kill people but that doesn't, really. I think that life (literally meaning life, not 25 years) without the possibility of parole is a pretty decent punishment. Killing someone as punishment seems a bit eye-for-an-eye, old fashioned, perhaps barbaric. I know this is simplifying to the extreme, but is it not a bit strange to say to a child, 'do not hit your sister, no hitting!' as you smack said child? Sends a bit of a mixed message, no? Back to the killing people though, I think maybe they should just be locked up somewhere with only their basic human survival needs being met, and they should live that way for the rest of their lives. No free education, no weight training, no tv. If you're committed of a crime for which there is no seeming rehabilitation available, then you just get locked up, and the key is destroyed, and that's the end. I briefly thought that perhaps you should die in the way that you killed people, but that would never get past congress. As you can see, my opinion changes, but I think I feel now, and of course my opinion would quite possibly change if I were to ever find myself in a situation like Laci's family, that I might quite possibly want the satisfaction of knowing my daughter's murderer was no longer a breathing member of society...but I think as it stands now, I vote for life in a non-luxury jail cell.

Also, how would you ever know the person was guilty, for sure. You can go with the evidence, and especially now with all the high-tech DNA stuff and whatnot, it's pretty accurate. There have been quite a few convicted murderers on death row released due to new techniques and re-examining the evidence. Who's to say that in 15 years we won't have something else that totally outdates the stuff we have now, that may even prove what we're doing isn't all that accurate? How do you know? Should we just trust the evidence and the juries and judges and fry the bastards / inject them with deadly things? I just don't know. I think maybe that's one of my main issues with the death penalty. Surely the gross majority of convicted death-rowers are guilty, for real and for sure. But what about that one person who isn't? For whom there was enough evidence and just not enough of an alibi?

What do you think?