From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Tue Dec 03 2002 - 20:49:43 MST
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rafal Smigrodzki
> Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 4:36 PM
>
> By the way, I fully agree with Greg Burch, who is against the
> death penalty as currently practiced, with insufficient
> degree of certainty. The standard for considering the death
> penalty must be much higher than the standard for incarceration.
I don't recall expressing this opinion. The fact is that I'm deeply
ambivalent about the death penalty. Some opinions from my current
mind-set: 1) I certainly think that an individual has a right to
self-defense and that killing in real self-defense isn't murder; 2) I
think that there must be very high procedural and substantive safeguards
in any judicial system that would carry out the death penalty; 3)
Jurisdictions that have reason to doubt the integrity of their criminal
justice system (like Illinois) do the right thing by imposing a
moratorium on executions; 4) it can't be right to put people at risk of
the death penalty without having the most effective possible defense
counsel, which presents serious challenges to the system of
publicly-funded defense as it's currently practiced in most (but not
all) American jurisdictions.
All of this leaves to the side the deeper moral question of the
propriety of the death penalty in even an ideal judicial system, a
question I don't have the time to address at this point ...
Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
http://www.gregburch.net
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