04-20-2018, 12:25 PM
(04-20-2018, 09:31 AM)hollodero Wrote: That seems odd. How comes?
The Sate always pays for the prosecution (obviously) and many times also pays for the defense attorneys also. In many death penalty cases where the defendant gets appointed counsel he gets TWO attorneys. Death penalty cases are also so much more complicated and require so much more evidence that the trial and sentencing phases can take several times as long as a non-capital case. Finally a person on death row is also entitled to a lot more appeals than a non-capital prisoner.
There have been hundreds of people wrongly convicted and sentenced to death. Our criminal justice system is flawed, and even the best systmes have trouble finding the truth at times. There have been thousands more who were executed still insisting that they were innocent. Given the high number of people we have wrongly sentenced it is pretty clear that we are executing some innocent people.
Usually the debate about the death penalty is about cost or whether or not people deserve to die for horrible crimes. But those are the wrong issues. The first point we all need to admit ti that our criminal justice system is so flawed we can not use it to decide who lives and dies.
