From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Wed Dec 04 2002 - 08:07:15 MST
Greg Burch wrote:
>> -----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.
### For some strange reason I misattributed Lee Daniel Crocker's post to
you. I'm sorry.
Still, as you write below, your opinions were not substantially
misrepresented, I think.
Rafal
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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