Shawn,

and how often is somebody on death row innocent?
Collateral Damage? or just bad luck?

If it is proven with absolute certainty, then I am all for it but unless
then.
BTW, why was Noriega, the former Dictator from Panama given the death
sentence in the US?
Karadzic is still at large in Bosnia or Serbia.
Pinochet is another example of never receiving a death penalty.
Nor the Shah of Persia as well as many others.
What about Gary Ridgway in Seattle? He got life instead of a bullet.

Are you just talking/requesting the death penalty for Saddam or for all
dictators or mass-murderers?

Michael

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 10:01:13 -0700, Shawn Gordon <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>At 09:49 AM 10/13/2004, Bruce Collins wrote:
>
>
>>According to http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777460.html
>>
>>The U.S. (and Iraq) are part of an ever decreasing list of countries that
>>still have the death penalty. Note the company you keep in the following
>>list. There are also a few countries including Israel, Mexico, Chile, and
>>Brazil, that only allow the death penalty in exceptional cases (I assume
>>Saddam would qualify).
>
>I have a very simple math formula to support the death penalty.  Stats are
>like 10% of the criminals commit 80% of the crime, so you kill that 10% and
>suddenly there is hardly any crime left, and because they are dead, there
>is no chance to get back out on the street and commit more crimes.  Harsh
>punishment is actually a detriment, the problem with the death penalty is
>not that we have it, but that it is so rarely used and takes so long to be
>enforced that it isn't really seen as a detriment.  Personally if my
>choices are life in prison and the death penalty, I'd take the death
>penalty, who wants to sit in prison your whole life, which is just a slow
>death penalty.
>
>In california we have a 3 strikes law - you have 3 felonies and you go to
>jail for at least 25 years.  You know what?  Crime in our state has dropped
>DRAMMATICALLY because this law is enforced.  There is a great short story
>by Larry Niven about a future where organ transplants have been perfected
>but they only harvest organs from criminals on death row or natural causes
>where the organs are still viable.  The problem is that the demand for
>organs goes up and people stop committing the crimes because they know they
>will die, and they'll die in short order, so the populace keeps voting the
>death penalty for lower and lower crimes until finally too many traffic
>tickets is cause for the death penalty.
>
>
>
>
>Regards,
>
>Shawn Gordon
>President
>theKompany.com
>www.thekompany.com
>949-713-3276
>
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