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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Huckleberries Online

Pa-Bear: State Killing Worse Than Murder

RE: Utah firing squad executes Ronnie Lee Gardner/ABC News

Papa Bear: Killing by the state is worse than a murder by a man. It is cheaper to keep a murderer in prison for life, even with appeals. We have the death penalty in many states as well as the highest murder rate per capita in the world, in a non-war zone, so the death penalty is not a meaningful deterrent. We have executed innocent people, while other innocent people have been released from prison decades after being convicted based on (coerced) confessions and eyewitness testimony — mistakes and frame-ups happen. Anyone who is a right-to-lifer must be against the death penalty as a matter of logical consistency — don't try to argue against this without doing the homework first.

Question: Do you agree w/Papa Bear that killing by the state is worse than murder by a man?



D.F. Oliveria
D.F. (Dave) Oliveria joined The Spokesman-Review in 1984. He currently is a columnist and compiles the Huckleberries Online blog and writes about North Idaho in his Huckleberries column.

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