Coming back from the dead?

Could you kill someone?

Read the question carefully.

Pretty much anyone can take the life of another human being. It can be accidental.

F’rinstance, if you drive a car, you are running the risk of killing someone. Yes huh. Pedestrians and people in vehicles are killed every day by drivers. Accidents happen.

Ok, since I’m gonna be stuck on looking at the specific definition of a word, lemme retry this.

Would you kill someone?

Aha! We take out random chance and accident and insert motivation and deliberation.

So I ask again, would you kill someone?

Why?

Some obvious answers - to protect myself, my family, possible to protect other people. May be others.

What about capital punishment?

Ooh ah. A bit tougher now, isn’t it? Before you answer the capital punishment question, eyeball this story - http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-01-06/news/ct-met-illinois-house-death-penalty-v20110106_1_penalty-gordon-randy-steidl-historic-vote

Telling quote: “The historic vote comes 10 years after then-Gov. George Ryan placed a moratorium on the death penalty following revelations that several people sent to death row were not guilty.”

Now I ask again, what’s your opinion on capital punishment? Before you answer that, I also ask, do you know what crimes may call for the death penalty? Hint: Murder is one. There are others.

Now, do you really know how close you are, right now, to being on Death Row in your state’s penal system? You are much closer than you think.

Do you know how easy it is to frame someone and plant false evidence and have a witness commit perjury? Not to mention the fact eye witnesses are generally not very reliable, a fact born out time and time and time ad infinitum in case studies.

No offense to the men and women of the thin blue line, but most criminals get caught because they are stupid. The really smart criminals don’t get caught, except by rare accident. I am not saying the folks in law enforcement are stupid. I am saying they need a break to make a case happen.

"You can release an innocent person from prison, but you can't release them from the grave," said Gordon "Randy" Steidl, who spent 17 years in prison, including 12 on death row, after he was wrongfully convicted of a 1986 double-murder.

Um.

I remind you, by my definition government is merely an extension of you and me (albeit an often out-of-control extension, but nonetheless). When the penal system (government) puts someone to death as punishment, you and I are the ones pulling the trigger, releasing the trap door, injecting the poison, or flipping the switch.

Can you live with yourself knowing you have put an innocent man to death? If you say no, then I ask what will you do to offer recompense?

If you remember your history book - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_and_Vanzetti

Then consider this outfit - http://www.innocenceproject.org/

I am, as I have said many times, in favor of the death penalty, but only in cases where guilt is obvious, like the Brian Nichols case in Atlanta. His shooting spree was caught on film and witnessed by a LOT of people. He needs to be slowly run over by a tank.

But for other cases, no. As Steidl says, you can’t release a person from the grave.