I used to think that the death penalty was just fine; some folks have done such heinous crimes that they no longer deserved to live.
However, over the years – and I now in my late 70s – I have read far too much about two items that have changed my opinion. One, states spend enormous sums to deal with death penalty cases, which can take years, if not decades, to resolve; far more than it costs to care for some folks for their lives, so why spend all of those resources on those often-failing attempts?
And two, it has been shown over the last few decades that far too many individuals have been put to death, or have been put on death row, only to have them subsequently cleared of those crimes.
So now, I am totally opposed to the death penalty. It is far cheaper to put these folk behind bars for the rest of their lives than spend those infamous sums to try to get courts to finally agree, and it is far more humane to keep them alive knowing that there are finite probabilities that they were not guilty.
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