[skullreken]

It's the states responsibility to preserve life so what kind of message does it send when they take it? I think the process devalues life overall and leaves the tools in place for a bad regime to abuse it's power we all say it will never happen but history has shown that hard times and unrest are the times when those regimes get their chance to take over Nazi Germany and Communist Russia are two key examples.
I personally don't think the death penalty should stand because as you see in international trends from so called "civilized" countries that practice it there is an unfair distribution in the death sentence mainly focusing on people from poorer backgrounds and minority ethnicities. Also I attended a seminar by a woman falsely accused of murdering her husband she spent ten years on death row and new evidence that finally cleared her name was discovered months before her execution she said the only thing keeping her going was the hope that the truth would come out and now that she has been released she lives a fuller life than she did before her ordeal.
Also there have been cases where people who really can't be held responsible for their actions have been executed one example was when a mentally retarded man incapable of making his own decisions and susceptible to the influence of others was used by another person as a tool of murder the orchestrator got a life sentence while the person he took advantage of was executed, that in my opinion was a gross miscarriage of justice.
Over all I think executing a murder is too good for a punishment a lifetime of solitary confinement has a much more devastating effect on a human mentally and physically force them face the consequences of their actions by making live in pure isolation physically denying them all the pleasures that their victims could have enjoyed if I were in that position I'd rather be dead