Quote Originally Posted by paulnj
Those stats tell me that "BLACK" people in LA county are more apt to commit murder, or does it say...... "BLACK" people in lower income areas(read can't afford OJ's lawyers) get the death penalty.
Actually, these days if you're black and have enough money or celebrity status, and a savvy, celebrity lawyer who knows how to play his race card right, apparently you too can avoid a conviction! 'Po Martha!

Also Paul, killing a person for a crime they committed is not murder. It's called justice. Murder is to kill someone premeditatively and with malice (i.e. without a justifiable reason, such as in self-defense or in the execution of justice).

BTW everyone, I watched a documentary on the American penal system some time ago. I think it really explains well why our country is so polarized today on the death penalty. Historically speaking, imprisonment mainly served only to temporarily hold a criminal for some form of physical punishment to follow. But in America, authorities began to experiment with imprisonment as the primary form of punishing the criminal, hence the gradual departure from death and other forms of punishment for one's crime. After over 100 years of soceity being assimilated to accept a penal system where imprisonment as the norm for punishing criminals, it is not to wonder why major resistance has built up against the death penalty. We are, in effect, nearly divorced from those days where physical punishment was the norm.

For those who oppose the death penalty on the basis that 1) an innocent man might die and 2) it does not serve as deterrent to others, could not the same arguments be validly used against imprisonment and any other form of punishment as well?

I ask this because it seems to me these arguments are more emotionally based than anything else.