To add onto the torture that we know happened under US auspices at Guantanamo and Bagram, we now have the state of Oklahoma torturing a murderer to death.
Some of the cause of this has to do with availability of drugs used in executions; some drugs are only available from European sources, and the EU forbids sale of those drugs to the US for executions.
But whatever the cause, several days ago, an execution was botched terribly, resulting in the torturous death of a US Citizen. Is this what we want to be, as a country?
I've been a skeptic of the death penalty for some years now, largely due to the efforts of the Innocence Project, and seeing how often innocent people are put on death row (and executed). What is the worse crime? Letting a criminal (no matter how heinous their crime) live in a box for many years, or executing an innocent person?
I'd personally much rather see no one punished if we aren't sure about who is the right person. Despite the threshold for a murder conviction being "beyond all reasonable doubt", it's obvious that the justice system doesn't always get it right. Imagine the horror of being killed for something someone else did. I truly can't imagine how terrible that would be. And it happens. And if we kill the suspect, there's no way to right the injustice if that happens. Sorry, WHEN that happens.
But it becomes that much worse if the government can't even handle killing someone without doing something as horrific as the crime that put the person into prison. Two wrongs never make a right, and this just takes that to an extreme.
So, as a short-term "fix", I'd be happy to see Obama commute the sentences of all death row inmates in the country down to life without parole.
Aside from how much that would make right wing talking heads explode, it'd also prevent some terrible injustices.
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