This is one reason I'm not an advocate for the death penalty

Oh, there are many people who need to be gaoled for life, without ever having the possibility of parole. They need to be removed from society, and never interact with it again. Punishment? My idea of punishment requires Star Trek-level technology, where you record the relevant parts of the victim's experience and then force the perpetrator to relive it every day for the rest of his or her life, in full experience as if he or she was the victim. But we're not there yet. I think putting people on Death Row is expensive and does nothing to really punish, nor does it really bring closure. And of course, Death Row inmates are by definition not going to be rehabilitated, which is the stated reason some people use concerning prisons, those who prefer to not focus on the punishment factor.

Then there are those who may be innocent. There are cases of men (usually) and women who have been incarcerated for years, sometimes on Death Row, for crimes they did not commit. This appears to be one of those cases.

Fresh DNA evidence boosts defense in 1993 Arkansas slayings

Newly tested DNA evidence in the 1993 killings of three 8-year-old Cub Scouts in Arkansas has failed to link the crimes to the men convicted in the murders, including one on Death Row, advocates for the men said on Wednesday.

The DNA, including materials from the crime scene, instead matched three unidentified people, furthering supporters' claims that the so-called West Memphis Three are innocent, the advocates told Reuters.

This is one of the reasons I will probably never serve on a jury where the death penalty is on the table. I realise (and have told the court in the past, when I have been selected for jury duty), that I do not think I could sentence someone to death. Give me a throw-them-in-gaol-and-throw-away-the-key option, and I'm fine. Some people have to be put away for the safety of everyone else, either because they're deranged, or because they're just plain evil, and are not likely to rehabilitate. But for others, I think the punishment should fit the crime, that it can be a turning point in their lives from which they can choose a different path when they get out, and that there should be ways to integrate them back into society.

If these men are innocent, it would have meant that they were teenagers when arrested for a crime 18 years ago--meaning they've lost a great deal of their lives. If true, they should be freed and compensated, although nothing can replace nearly two decades of lost freedom. Also, I hope the DNA evidence helps find those who were responsible for the murders of these children. For more on the West Memphis Three, and the mess the case was, see the Wikipedia article.

Words have consequences, even if you believe they were unintended

After U.S. men visit, Uganda eyes death for gays: Three Christian evangelicals try to distance themselves from proposed law

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.

One month after the conference, a previously unknown Ugandan politician, who boasts of having evangelical friends in the American government, introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals, and, as a result, has put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations.

How do you give someone back 26 years of their life?

15th Dallas County Inmate Since ’01 Is Freed by DNA

Charles Chatman spent nearly 27 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, and he was freed today based on DNA evidence that countered a neighbour's misidentification of him as the suspect. The reason he was able to be freed? The lab used by the Texas county keeps their evidence, unlike some others. So even though the crime took place in 1981, they were still able to determine that his DNA did not match the vaginal swab taken at the time. Mr Chatman said he did not blame the woman who fingered him, but does feel like his case turned out like it did because he is black.

It was bad enough that his man had been wrongly put in prison, sentenced to 99 years, whilst an actual rapist was left free. Imagine how such mistakes can be even more harmful in death penalty cases. The article states that since 1973, 126 death row inmates have been freed on DNA evidence. 126. Okay, that breaks down to 3-4 people a year. But that's 3-4 lives each year that would otherwise be flushed away based on a lie. Now that's scary.

PS I have several things to blog about sitting in my inbox, but I'm too tired to blog much now, and I have to get up in 5 hours. I'll try to catch up later. 'Night.