It always strikes me as strange when yoiungetbthe same people saying at one moment "Some people gave done such terrible things they deserve to be killed", and then switch to saying "And death is more merciful than life in prison, anyway." Can't have it both ways.

(And I'm not saying that the people who have said one of those thigs in this thread necessarily would say the other, but we've all come up againsat people who do.)

DNA evidence - even when it's available, and even if it's infallible in itself, it's pretty well impossible to exclude the possibility of the evidence being contaminated, either by accident or intentionally.

I'm grateful to live in the European Union, where the death penalty has been abolished in what I hope is an irrevocable way. I can remember the unhealthy kind of excitement that ran around my school on mornings when an execution was scheduled. I'm glad to be free of this, at least so far as this part of the world is concerned.