We just aren't killing them fast enough
by digby
... and if a few innocent people get executed, it's the price we have to pay for "closure":
States across the country have spent the last few years reconsidering the wisdom of capital punishment. Over the past six years, five states have abolished the death penalty entirely, including Maryland just last month. But Florida, where the execution rate is second only to Texas, isn't having that conversation. Instead, Gov. Rick Scott (R) is currently considering a bill passed by the legislature this week that would speed up executions in the state by limiting "frivolous" appeals by inmates and shortening the time they spend on Death Row. (Florida has about 400 people on Death Row, 10 of whom have been there more than 35 years.)
Called the "Timely Justice Act," the bill would create new deadlines for certain filings and force the state to move faster towards an execution after a ruling by the state supreme court. Florida legislators behind the bill believe it will save money (executions currently cost state taxpayers about $24 million each) and bring closure to victims, but legal advocates say that it's likely to do nothing but raise the possibility that Florida will execute an innocent person. They're on pretty solid ground with that argument, given that 24 people on Florida's Death Row have been exonerated since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s.
24 people!
I guess it's just me, but the idea that anyone thinks it's ok to even take the chance of executing innocent people is just beyond my comprehension. To actually make it more likely is just evil.
I am against the death penalty on a moral basis --- I simply don't believe in killing except in cases of self-defense and since these people are in custody, I cannot see how one can construe the death penalty as anything but revenge. But even if one believes strongly in the concept of an eye for an eye, our system of determining who's responsible for the first eye is racist, inconsistent and ... human, which means it is imperfect. Which brings me back to this incomprehensible notion that we should just accept that occasionally killing innocent people is the price "we" (actually "they") have to pay to make somebody feel good. Yes, evil is a good word for that.
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