The Facts...

Q: Are you aware that the Bedau & Radelet study was published in the November 1987 issue of the Stanford Law Review? In your own words "I would surmise that it must be well thought out. I don't think that a Law Review of the status of that of Stanford would publish anything that it (felt was) less than adequate." So, having been betrayed by your own words, you must think the Bedau & Radelet study to be pretty high-brow, eh? After all, it was in the Stanford Law Review...

A: One small problem, they would have to site that they killed a person who had killed another person. Problem here is they took the law into thier own hands and didnt let the state do it for them. Well lets see could it be that the anger the killer had was cause someone took his parking place, scratched his car, talked back to him, was the wrong color or sexual orientation. Where the anger in a DP case is because an innocent person was murdered for parking in the wrong place etc, the base motive of anger and hate might be there but the reasons or driveing factor behind the motive is not the same, in one case the life of an innocent person was taken for no reason, in the other the life of a killer was taken because of his offence. First off, I would like to say that you have brought up a great argument here. The entire reason I am posting is to entice intelligent debate. I don't claim to be an expert, I just want to try to find a reasonable solution. They took the law into their own hands. Yes, they did. My anti-DP stance does not mean that I condone this act. I believe that the killing of another human is WRONG. We, as humans have the basic right of life. The decision of death is NOT a basic human right. I do not have that right and neither does the judicial system. The question is whether the judicial system acquires that right when that decision has been made by an individual, acting on his/her own? Do they forfeit their rights upon the breaking of this law, on both the legal and moral fronts? This is one of the many Gray areas that makes this a difficult and

complex topic. I don't believe that there is a right or wrong answer to this question. The reason that I lean toward the Anti-DP stance is that I cannot trust the System to be without error. I cannot trust any human decision based system to be able to always execute the "guilty" and set the "innocent" free. I realize that there are new "safeguards" that are intended to correct that. I have no faith in them. I have said this before, I might have faith in the DP if there were a great big book of absolute truth that would shed light upon the actual events. If all opinion, predjudice, racism, and error were removed from the decision, I would be Pro DP. But, to Err is human...