I don't think it makes sense to start with a specific legal case and work back to a principled position; that argument is easily countered by citing a case where the defendant's guilt is unquestioned. No one, after all, is seriously in favor of capital punishment for the innocent.

Terry,
What WOULD make sense then? I find it extremely interesting that there are so many who take this situation so lightly that NEVER get close to it.
What the H*** is the matter with society? The need for answers absolutely drives our lives, excuses our flawed processes, and keeps this country from progressing toward decency where we have clearly NOT been decent. I would point to slavery and segregation. 200 years before a black person could sit next to a white person in an academic setting.
Out Constitution was in place. But it took that long to actually realize legal equality. We still don't practice it even though the laws are there.
We could always find upstanding citizens in high positions who were extremely beneficial to this country who, on the other hand, supported segregation. How does THAT work? The common and fundemental need for justice does not excuse bad laws and we do NOT need to work to cover our error. We need to expose it and correct it.
Ya gotta start somewhere. One case at a time. One step at a time if necessary. Rosa Parks went to JAIL, remember? At her death she laid in the rotunda of the Capitol.
We just HAVE TO WAKE UP.

Mitch, I've asked you this before and you've ducked the question: would you support capital punishment for Osama?

I'm all in favor of making capital punishment much, much more difficult to obtain, but I'm leary of removing it entirely.

I know you didn't ask me, and I want to hear from Mitch too. But I want to say something.I think it would be FAR more horrible for Osama to be locked up for the rest of his life in an American Federal Prison than to "die a martyr's death". I wouldn't give him the honor. I would not let those people think he was any kind of hero. They love the idea of martyring themselves for their cause. Kamakazee style and desecrating their own religion - distorting their own God.
McVeigh thought he went down a hero - a patriot. He stared us all down. I just wouldn't give Osama or Al Qaeda the pleasure. They would consider it a dog's treatment, and that would fit this piece of crap to a T.
My unasked for two cents. But I would also like to hear from Mitch.

Nerd,

I hope we don't go through the motions with Osama, complete with Ramsey Clark-led defense team and "Free Osama" protests in San Francisco. I hope his "capital punishment" comes at the business end of a laser-guided bomb or a Delta/SAS guy's .45. This is war, not "America's Most Wanted". I hope the closest we come to "due process" with Bin Laden is ensuring the public display of his severed head follows guidelines for such things.

Terry,

"I don't think it makes sense to start with a specific legal case and work back to a principled position; that argument is easily countered by citing a case where the defendant's guilt is unquestioned. No one, after all, is seriously in favor of capital punishment for the innocent."

My principled position is this: in all respects save one, I support the death penalty. Barring that lone exception, I support killing child-murderers, cop-killers, serial killers, terrorists and traitors (as defined by the Constitution's rather stringent formula) as quickly as the demands of rational due process allow.

But that exception - the likelihood that he will, and indeed have, execute one or more innocent people - is the clincher. There is, to me, *no excuse* for executing the innocent, or even risking it, when a reversible alternative exists.

If we were perfect - if we *knew* not just beyond a rational doubt, but with G-dlike certainty that the condemned were guilty - then I'd support running a big honking lawnmower through Death Row. But we aren't, and we don't.

There are those - left AND right - who think that executing the innocent once in a while is acceptable. I do not; it is a double crime, murdering (the term is apt) an innocent person while letting the guilty go free.

Perhaps if there were no other rational alternative...

...but there is.

Balanced among the legion of convicted murders that have gone on to murder again, it seems on that balance to be the lesser of two evils. Capital punishment unlike life withour parole ensures no repeat murders.

Mitch-
What do you think of the abstract statement "It is possible for an individual to commit a crime so ghastly that the state is justified in putting him or her to death".
If you would agree with it, I say that you are pro-death penalty -- you just don't like the way it is sometimes carried out.
The "reversibility" argument in favor of life imprisonment as a substitute for the death penalty is a distraction from the argument at hand. Juries do not find people provisionally guilty, they find them guilty. In a state without the death penalty a person who pleads innocent & is nevertheless convicted of murder is treated identically to a confessed killer -- with the exception that his or her lack of a plea bargain may mean that they will receive a longer sentence than the confessed killer in the next cell. And if that person is truly innocent they still may die in prison after years of misery.
Imperfect justice is still justice.