ABA: Death Sentence Unequally Applied

Tell me something I didn't know.

As I awoke this morning, there was a little tidbit about how the American Bar Association did a study of the death penalty in eight states. What they found was, well, anticlimactic, but nonetheless, it was yet another nail in the coffin of the death penalty - no pun intended.

At least I hope we're moving to doing away with it...

Anyway, the study found, in part, that there was:

• lax handling of DNA evidence -- so far used to exonerate 200 former convicts
• poor public defense of death penalty-eligible defendants
• poor implementation of rules designed to prevent cruel and unusual punishment in the application of the penalty, and
• unequal application of the death penalty, specifically, it is used more often when the victim is white.

The ABA isn't exactly the ACLU, so perhaps their imprimatur gives more credence to what minority communities have been saying for years. If the ABA sees the flaws in the use of the death penalty, can we really continue to say that the DP is used fairly?

I was once very much pro-DP, but with age comes maturity, and I am now very much anti-DP. In the end, killing a killer doesn't bring back the beloved victim, and really doesn't make the pain go away. At holidays and special occasions, victims will still be missed, and memories will never fade, so what does executing someone do to make survivors feel better? Nothing. Plus, what happens if the State executes the wrong person? Are you willing to have that on your conscience, along with the pain of the initial loss?

I, for one, am not.