Troll, you challenged someone to find a better way for the state to protect its citizens, or words to that effect.

If you are seriously interested, you could start by having a look at some of the north European and Scandinavian countries.They have a mere fraction of the murders you have in the states, and much lower proportions of their populations in prison. Yet they don't have the deterrant of capital punishment. They don't have to kill people to stay safe. How on earth do they do it???

They do it by regulating their economies to ensure that the gap between rich and poor is narrower than in western Europe, particularly Britain, and a far cry from the obscene extremes of the US. As well as helping them feel safer, this also means more social mobility than in Britain, and massively more than in the so-called "land of opportunity." (Sick joke.) In other words, many people in Norway, Sweden etc, manage to get themselves out of poverty, whereas millions of the US poor haven't a chance in hell. They stay poor because they made the mistake of being born that way. (Plenty tax breaks for the rich though.)

You could be campaigning to get something done about all this, Troll. America doesn't have to be the way it is. It's just that some of you seem to like it that way.

Raedwolf, that's quite a bright idea, executing only those death row prisoners who are guilty beyond reasonable doubt. But hasn't good old American justice found every death row inmate guilty beyond reasonable doubt?