It is frankly embarrassing to live in Texas where they have such a high rate of executions, and at the same time, a high rate of exonerations, including people on death row.

With the pressure on states to reveal the source of their execution drugs and the pushback from states to protect those sources from public scrutiny, there is a void where individuals without a great deal of experience are involved in the dispensing of deadly cocktails. Medical professionals will rarely have anything to do with execution. If the volunteers can figure out the right cocktail and hit the right veins, it works. But it is a haphazard way of running a process that has such powerful ethical objections that all executions should be put on hold. Forever.

So often the wrong people are fingered in fatal crimes and not represented well by public defenders (a hugely underfunded and over-stressed part of the legal system). And then you have the situation where too many individuals who lost a family member have been able to push through emotional state legislation that targets specific situations - i.e., the "three strikes" laws, and the legislated sentences instead of leaving judges free to impose sentences as they deem appropriate. Forget glib chatter about guillotines being more efficient, the problem is in good LEGAL representation and 100% certain convictions - something that simply isn't possible in many of the cases that result in the death penalty. And even if it is proved 100%, there are still problems. The fairest thing is to get rid of the death penalty. We spend billions on incarceration, what is the tab for a few more inmates in for a lifetime instead of death?

SRS