Do you agree with the death penalty under ANY circumstances in the United States? Do you agree with

[avebury]

9. The main reason I can never support the

death penalty is the fact that, once executed, should the prisoner later deemed to have been innocent, he is still just as dead. You cannot unring that bell if you make a mistake.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia set off a firestorm last summer when he wrote a dissent — joined by Justice Clarence Thomas — that the highest court in the land is not necessarily concerned with whether a person facing execution had actually committed the crime. The court "has never held," Justice Scalia wrote, "that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a ... court that he is 'actually innocent.'" Scalia was taking issue with the court's ruling that a lower court give Georgia death-row inmate Troy Davis a new hearing.

This idea that the Constitution allows innocent people to be put to death should be abhorrent to anyone who cares about justice. As Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz pointed out, Justice Scalia seemed to be saying that if a man was convicted of murdering his wife and then showed up in court with the wife, who was still alive, seeking a new trial, it should not matter. As long as the man's conviction was procedurally proper, Justice Scalia apparently believes, he should still be executed.

Read more: Supreme Court Tackles Death Penalty in Hank Skinner Case - TIME http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1991827,00.html#ixzz2qkXXdkp4