LINKS: The best piece I've read on George Ryan's decision to commute the sentences of everyone on death row in Illinois. And Jeff Jacoby, of the Boston Globe, of all places, makes the case for the death penalty as well as I've heard it put:
"To say that society should refrain from executing murderers for fear of making a mistake is not noble. It is a cop-out. A soldier on the battlefield who refuses to shoot at the enemy lest he inadvertently hit the wrong man is no moral hero, and neither are those who demand that all murderers be kept alive so that we never face a risk -- however tiny, however remote -- of executing an innocent defendant.
Granted, it is not easy to condemn someone to death, still less to carry out the sentence. Executions are irrevocable and irreversible; to take away anyone's life -- even a brutal criminal's -- involves an assertion of moral certainty that might make many of us tremble.
But trembling or not, we have a duty to carry out. A duty to proclaim that murder is evil and will not be tolerated. That it is the worst of all crimes and deserves the worst of all punishments. And that while we will bend over backward not to hurt the innocent, we will not let that paralyze us from punishing the guilty."
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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