The Death Penalty

[joeydb]

I'm for it for the crimes of pre-meditated murder, and treason, as is currently on the books.

I do think that now with genetic evidence recovered from crime scenes and crime instruments that it should be mandatory to test the suspect (for exculpatory purposes) so that mistaken indentity will be driven almost to zero cases. I think most states have adopted that rationale by now.

I would also be for the death penalty for heinous crimes like rape, except that, when viewed dynamically, you don't want to have the potential sentence actually negatively affect the victim. For instance, if you make the death penalty for rape, than many rapists might kill their victims since the sentence is the same as murder, and, without a living witness, their chances of being convicted of the crime is substantially reduced.