The Death Penalty

I've gone back and forth for years on whether or not I think the death penalty is a good ideas... It's tricky, because I think, and I tend to think a lot of people do, that you absolutely know that there are people who have done things that earns them the "shouldn't get breathe anymore" express train ticket.

But the problem is that once that decision and option becomes institutionalized, it becomes as screwed up as anything else. The Innocence Project has exonerated dozens of people via DNA evidence who were convicted beyond all "reasonable doubt." False confessions, crooked or lazy law enforcement personnel and judiciary.

There's just no way once you have it as an option, a legal option, that innocent people won't die sometimes.

Doesn't seem worth it.

HoustonChronicle.com - Did Texas execute an innocent man?:

"Texas executed its fifth teenage offender at 22 minutes after midnight on Aug. 24, 1993, after his last request for bubble gum had been refused and his final claim of innocence had been forever silenced.

Ruben Cantu, 17 at the time of his crime, had no previous convictions, but a San Antonio prosecutor had branded him a violent thief, gang member and murderer who ruthlessly shot one victim nine times with a rifle before emptying at least nine more rounds into the only eyewitness — a man who barely survived to testify.

Four days after a Bexar County jury delivered its verdict, Cantu wrote this letter to the residents of San Antonio: 'My name is Ruben M. Cantu and I am only 18 years old. I got to the 9th grade and I have been framed in a capital murder case.'

A dozen years after his execution, a Houston Chronicle investigation suggests that Cantu, a former special-ed student who grew up in a tough neighborhood on the south side of San Antonio, was likely telling the truth.

Cantu's long-silent co-defendant, David Garza, just 15 when the two boys allegedly committed a murder-robbery together, has signed a sworn affidavit saying he allowed his friend to be falsely accused, though Cantu wasn't with him the night of the killing.

And the lone eyewitness, the man who survived the shooting, has recanted. He told the Chronicle he's sure that the person who shot him was not Cantu, but he felt pressured by police to identify the boy as the killer. Juan Moreno, an illegal immigrant at the time of the shooting, said his damning in-court identification was based on his fear of authorities and police interest in Cantu."