>I'm not a principled abolitionist. I don't think we can have a fair
>death penalty under present circumstances. But if, hypothetically,we
>were to execute war criminals and criminals against humanity under
>Nuremberg principles, Wall Street fraudsters, corrupt government
>officials, and government lawyers who devised rationales for
>torture, I wouldn't object. I'd be happy to defend or prosecute
>them. Obviously this is an alternate universe for the reasons Doug
>states. As things are I oppose the death penalty.
Its seems that, as things are, or in any circumstances which are conceivably possible, you are an opponent of the death penalty. To describe yourself as an supporter of the death penalty is like me describing myself as a political conservative - in the sense that I am a staid old-fashioned socialist who is resistant to changing my views. ;-)
At 11:19 AM -0500 4/10/12, andie_nachgeborenen wrote:
>At the same time I favor the Chinese solution to serious white
>collar crimes and political corruption. "You are a Wall Street
>investment banker?" "Yes, but . . ." "Guilty. Death. Take him out
>back and shoot him. Charge the family for the bullet." (Just
>kidding--sort of.)
And here you have precisely put your finger on the the greatest evil of the death penalty. That it is political murder, murder for political motive. Every time.
This is probably the main reason the death penalty has been abolished in most civilised societies. People become sickened by the poisonous politics of executions, as each execution drags the the judiciary, the executive and the legislature through the political gutter.
Now perhaps that is less of a public issue in a totalitarian dictatorship like Singapore. Not that politics doesn't still determine who gets executed, that is a given, but unsavory public debate is less likely to drag politics into the gutter in an absolute dictatorship.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas