Randomize

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6899748.html

Without reading the judge’s opinion, I can’t decide for myself if he is correct.

But that’s why we have an appellate court system, so more experienced jurists can consider new arguments from lower courts and make sure our system is sound.

In the remote chance that there is a valid issue, I’m just glad the prisoner wasn’t already executed.

Of course, that may be his whole point — you might be able to let a guy out 20 years later if the next DNA-like technology exonerates him, but you can’t un-kill him.

Personally, I’m against the death penalty, but not on some emotional or religious grounds. I just don’t like:

• the necessary economic cost of a thorough prosecution (vs. one for life)
• the irreversibility of the sentence
• the real-world racial disparity of application of death penalty for the same crime
• the unsettled medical questions about the most common method of execution
• the error rate, proven by groups like the Innocence Project
• the dubious intelligence of the average “jury of one’s peers” these days
• the lack of evidence that it is a deterrent.

The whole thing just seems sloppy, inaccurate, unnecessary, and expensive.

However, those are probably not what this judge is making an argument, so either his logic will succeed or fail with the appeals court. Either way that’s one more settled argument, no harm done to test it out.