James Bond: DFO, There is an AP article this morning about how yet another "death row" inmate (David Leslie Card) has been given new life by a court. He's too incompetent to execute, as if that is an excuse! Seriously, though, I am exasperated by how so many law and order types don't seem to understand the HUGE costs and TOTAL FUTILITY of the death penalty in Idaho. As a society, we need to start looking past our insatiable need for fire-and-brimstone revenge on killers and start looking at WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS to them after the sentence is handed down. It's almost as if people shut down their brains after a killer is sentenced to death, assuming he's either already been executed or is about to be. The truth is, as I've repeatedly noted on this board, no one gets executed in Idaho, and very, very few people get executed in the western United States. Yet, we spend all this time and all this money when we could be locking them up until they die naturally in prison without all the appeals and costs automatically associated with the death penalty.

DFO: I firmly believe in an eye-for-an-eye, a life-for-a-life. But I also supported the editorial board's switch when it took the position against capital punishment. The. System. Is. Broken. Few get executed in this country. Only one in Idaho in the modern era. 007 lays out the case perfectly above. It's a waste of effort to fight to execute anyone in this state, even the louse Joseph Edward Duncan.

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