re: Breaking: Barr directs fed government to reinstate death penalty, 5 ordered executed

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Food, clothing, and shelter yes. However at a level far, far below what prisoners have now. The rest? No, and if it were up to me prisons would return to where they were prior to the idea of "rehabilitation.

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While that would be more acceptable than conditions we have today, I still think it falls short of what justice requires. A life for a life is justice.

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I'm not saying it should be done away with because humans are fallible. I'm saying it should be done away with because innocents have been, and will continue to be, executed.

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I see this as the same thing. The reason why innocents will continue to be executed is because we are fallible and limited in our knowledge (we aren't omniscient) so we will likely continue to get things wrong. Because of our limitations, you are saying we shouldn't provide justice (a life for a life).

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I'm simply not willing to trade the life of even one innocent person to the power of the State.

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A couple of points. The power of the state is to execute the guilty party in terms of capital punishment. It's usually up to a jury of one's peers to convict.

Putting someone away for life (especially in the conditions that you want) would be just as horrific if not more so than putting them to death, depending on one's worldview, yet you seem fine with that prospect because of the possibility of exoneration, but that won't give the wrongfully accused their lost years back. So in this case, we don't have justice being served and we still have a severe miscarriage of justice if we lock up an innocent person for years of their life. We should focus on the process instead of seeking to prevent justice from occurring.

Finally, it's the state's responsibility to uphold and enforce the law and to provide justice to those who break the law. Who else can we allow to provide justice? Mobs? Individuals with a vested interest in revenge? Humans are always going to be fallible and get things wrong, so we need to continue to work hard for reforms to our legal systems.

We need to hold people accountable for their abuse of the system to wrongfully convict people. We need to continue to invest in technologies that will help us improve our certainty of our verdicts. At the same time, we should continue to seek justice and put people to death who deserve it. Most of the wrongful convictions that are being overturned these days are for crimes that happened prior to the technological advances we have today. We can be more sure than ever today that the verdicts that are handed down are accurate, and we should continue to improve our certainty through the improvements that I and others have already listed.