The death penalty has served its time

April 3, 2007

Pennsylvania

The death penalty has served its time

By The Sentinel Online, Editorial

The death penalty is useless.

Even those who believe in the death penalty should come to that conclusion
after reading The Sentinel's package of stories Sunday. Those stories showed
that after the considerable expense of sentencing people to die, those
defendants spend another dozen years or so fighting with appeals, again to
the public's great expense.

In Pennsylvania, a felon has to volunteer to die for the death penalty to
work.

This has led to 221 residents on Pennsylvania'

s death row, the
fourth-largest number in the nation. The one sure way - and an option rarely
chosen - to get off death row is to jump on the gurney and stick out your
arm for the injection. Another is to be released, which is more likely,
considering the six inmates whose sentences have been overturned since 1982.

Death penalty supporters point to the victims and their families as they
argue for the punishment. But what about the families? What about the
lengthy trial that compounds the anguish of their loved one's awful death?
What about the years of awaiting appeal court decisions? And perhaps most
important, what about their feelings on the occasions the defendant was
wrongfully convicted?

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Source : The Sentinel Online, Editorial

http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2007/04/03/editorial/editorial/daily915.txt