and you think your father was crap!

Comrade Shampanyov wrote: So what's the minimum number of innocent people who should be executed?

just the one in your 'sky news flash.'

I'm against the death penalty mostly because the state gets it wrong far too often.

I don't want an innocent life on my hands.

I know there's the counter-argument that not having the death-penalty means someone might commit a murder they otherwise wouldn't and so opposing the death penalty means you have innocent life on your hands also, but I don't think the evidence for the death penalty being a deterrent is at all strong. For one thing killers are very unlikely to get it, unless you make it so common you are executing innocent people all the time.

I'm not religious so I don't oppose it on the grounds that life is sacred. In fact whenever I read a case like the one in the news in the UK now about the yobs who beat a Goth girl to death for looking different, I find myself thinking it would be no great loss if such people were executed. I do think there are people who are embarrassments to the human race and there is something to be said for doing away with them. Not least because if they ever did 'reform' they'd then be unable to live with the guilt of what they'd done and would have to top themselves anyway.

But I don't think its worth sacrificing a principle, or risking executing any innocents, for a small number of worthless people, that's the way I see it. Better to try and stop producing such people in the first place, rather than to just resort to culling them.

Plus there's the horribly uneven way the death penalty gets applied in practice. Judging from the US, society is quite irrational in how it applies it. You are more likely to get it for killing a stranger than a member of your family, more likely if you are male rather than female and more likely if you are black rather than white.

And have I got this right, the pro-death penalty US poster is in California, and the anti-death penalty one is in Texas? Shouldn't you swap states?

EdelBrock wrote: read the post above your question Comrade, and you might get an idea

well, that's the reason I asked-- because I did read your post, including, specifically, this bit:

EdelBrock wrote: wrongful sentences will be kept to an absolute minimum

which implies that there is some minimum number of "wrongful" capital sentences (i.e., executions of the innocent) that is acceptable.