As an ardent pacifist, I will never cease to wonder why anyone ever wants to kill anyone else for any reason. Violence against anyone is wrong, and the old saying "fight fire with fire" has never made any sense to me. I have another saying: "fighting for peace is like f***ing for virginity." However, I'm a little ambivalent about the death penalty because I'm also a libertarian (more or less). I don't consider anyone who can murder in cold blood to be HUMAN in any sense of the word--except genetics. Also, I think life imprisonment is a lot crueler than death. At the same time, most people convicted of murder ARE guilty. There are also way too many violent criminals that have been released and later imprisoned for a similar or worse crime. These people obviously are NOT rehabilitated, and are dangerous animals, and should be treated as such. Dogs, who are supposedly "lower life forms," are killed just for BITING people without causing irreperable harm. I don't see the justice in that, either.

I feel that in some cases the death penalty is warranted, but if there is another way to keep people off the streets PERMANENTLY than I am all for it. The biggest problem with life sentences is that they aren't usually served completely. The saddest thing is that hackers and theives can spend more time in jail than murderers and rapists.

I feel that the American justice system needs to be seriously reconsidered.

Peace--Keli