re. Because of budget cut backs in many states a public defender will be paid as little as two dollars an hour for the pretrial work that they do. If it takes more than 500 hours to prepare for trial, and the average time is in an excess of 2000 hours, this minuscule sum will be lowered even farther.Perhaps that is the reason that sixty-nine people who were falsely imprisoned have been released off of death row since 1973. Twenty-ones of those people were released after new evidence emerged since 1993 alone. Ricardo Guerra was released off of death row in Texas after 15 years of false imprisonment. Sadly, his isn’t the only horror story out there.The morality of capital punishment, at least twenty-three people have been executed who did not commit the crime they were accused of. And that’s only those that we know of. And herein lies an inherent danger of capital punishment…When we execute an innocent person; the real killer is still on the streets, ready to victimize someone else. But when an innocent person is arrested, he is often the driving impetus behind further investigation, and if he is executed, than the case remains closed forever. Or, at least, until someone else gets killed by the real perpetrator.Does the government have a right to kill? Perhaps in self-defense, as in a policeman firing on an armed and dangerous criminal. Suppose we apply the same standards to the government that we have for civilians. True, a civilian has the right to shoot at an intruder as he is entering his home. But if the civilian catches the intruder, incapacitates him, and has him under his control, then shooting the intruder would be considered simple murder. That’s what capital punishment is…simple murder. Which brings me to the next point. What is the difference between the state killing and an individual killing? The end result is the same…one more dead body, one more set of grieving parents, ...
