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"...it is important to once again focus the debate on the stark reality that the death penalty extinguishes the lives of breathing, joking, flawed and thoroughly human beings."

I have serious problems with two parts this of statement.

"...breathing, joking..."

This is a poor and unjustifible attempt at painting murders as human beings. Oh they tell joke.... hahaha, let them live. My god, are we so weak now that we can in essance compare the Jeffrey Dahmer and Charles Manson's of the world to the Jerry Seinfields and Josh Blues.

Serial murderers, confessed killers, even serial rapists tried and convicted with DNA should have no more "right" to live than those of the lives they took. It has been the thought of civilizations long before the Bible was written that an eye for an eye was the just punishment.

There is a thing as cruel punishment. Starvation can be cruel. A firing squad can be cruel. But the punishment should fit the crime and I've long been a proponet of that. If a serial killer's MO was to hang and torture people, then that is what their death should be. If it was to drown their victim's then that is their fate. The problem in that is to get people to do that. It isn't fair to ask a reasonble person to such an heinous act, therfore lethal injection is the proper punishment.

Better yet, build a prison on an island in the middle of god know where and lock up every murderer and serial rapist and let nature take it's course. No t.v., no cameras, it's not a game show... it's just letting them take each other out. Bury a GPS tag deep inside the chest cavity of these "breathing, joking" killers and track them. If they dig it out, the run the risk of killing themselves. Surround the island with barbed fencing buried 3 miles out from shore. There is no need guard supervision.

I know I've gone way off track from execution but it's a alternative method with the same ending.

But not every killer is pure evil. Some killings are unintended where life imprisonment or 10 years is the just punishement. Unintended murders like driving drunk and killing someone, crimes of passion, etc. Execution is not for everyone it's just not justified.

I agree with you John.Not so much for the convicted person but for the grieving family.

Regardless of what you think about the death penalty I think all should take into account the fact that we can never be sure that we have brought the right person to justice. Within the last few years alone there have been several people released from jail because they have been proven innocent by DNA evidence. How many people were so sure they had the right person only to realized years and years down the road that the person who murdered their loved one is still out there? I bet that in the moments of the trial they swore they KNEW that person was responsible for the murder, just like the jury did; obviously since that jury convicted that person.

The point is, we can almost never be one hundred percent sure that the person on death row for the death of another is the true culprit in the crime. That is when the death penalty becomes murder. How many more people are on death row that are innocent but there is no DNA evidence to prove they are?

we can't burn 'em alive anymore.

Some crimes deserve multiple death penalties. What a pity we cannot bring the murderer back and kill him again.

Chuck Johnson is a student at Claremont McKenna College. Feel free to contact him.