Death Penalty appeals

Joe,

I found an excellent article on "Christians and the Death Penalty" in First Things, one of my favorite journals, which I'll post on another thread to avoid derailing this one. Will check out your link, but I believe that appeals should be tightened up to avoid abuses but death is the ultimate penalty and we must ensure it is used very carefully.

 

I read the link, and, aside from some poor spelling on a professional website, my hope is, as I said in my last post here, that we don't soften some very real protection to ensure that the innocent aren't killed by the state. I believe the death penalty is proper, but we must be careful with it.

I found a couple of other articles which inspired me to post another couple of threads, too.

 

If I get this right, the way to clear up the courts is to have a "hearing" in the courts to see if the criminals are getting adequete legal council? Doesn't that sound a bit odd to anyone else?

 

Perhaps we can even repeal the death penalty!!!

 

G2G,

What I envision as Lungren's proposal is that on the firt post-sentence federal appeal, the court would hold a mandatory hearing, perhaps called a "Lungren hearing", in which adequate counsel would be discussed.

 

That would be good start. Many times someone will have a court appointed lawyer, who doesn't care if he does a good job or not.

I believe in the appeal process if we are going to kill somebody, we need to get it right. Look in ilinois, they have a mess. We need to make sure of guilt first.

 

Sounds like a good idea on paper that will get screwed up in practice. I would agree with BiR, getting rid of the death penatly would be the best policy.

 

BiR notes:

Works for me.