I still don't get the logic of people supporting killing people for killing people...

[pnwmom]

32. Yes, it is uniquely awful and uniquely permanent.

An innocent person, not already hardened to violence and death, would be especially susceptible to the threat. Especially an innocent person with children who would be devastated if he were put to death. Yes, the death penalty poses a uniquely weighty threat. (Though of course innocent people cop to lower charges with shortened sentences every day.)

This actually happened to someone I know. His wife died in a terrible accident while on vacation and the state charged him with first degree murder and held the possibility of death over him for six months, as he sat in jail. They finally dropped the death penalty after he continued to insist on a trial. (They probably knew no jury would risk a conviction on their shaky case if the death penalty was a possibility.) The first jury was hung, 11 to 1 for not guilty, but they put him through another trial anyway. Another hung jury. Then they kept him waiting for several more months before they finally acknowledged that they didn't have enough of a case to obtain a conviction. No witnesses, no motive, no evidence of an argument or fight, no other real evidence (other than things like his "affect" was either too lacking or too excited after the death) -- and all her relatives and friends, including her parents, testified on the husband's behalf.

BUT they put a terrible pressure on him before they took the death penalty off the table. His teenage and young adult children were terrified. What if he hadn't been so brave? What if he hadn't been a business owner with enough assets to sell to pay for attorneys and experts?

After seeing what he went through, I will never support the death penalty for anyone, no matter how heinous the crime. Because they take the existence of the death penalty and use it to coerce innocent people into plea bargaining -- and it has a force far beyond any sentence measured in years, even beyond a life sentence.