I’ve said it quite a few times; I support capital punishment for every reason but one – the inevitability that the state will execute the wrong person. And given that that is one of the ultimate wrongs – an innocent person dies, the guilty party goes forever free – that’s all the reason I need to oppose capital punishment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it’s not just an intellectual parlor game; we’re fairly certain one innocent guy was executed<\/a>; there are suspicions about many other such cases. And the fact that well over 100 people have been freed from death row<\/a> because their convictions were overturned, in most cases because they could not have committed the crimes for which they were convicted and sentenced to death, usually after sitting on death row for many years, as some conservatives demand the curtailing of appeals, which would have led to several more executions of the innocent? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Color me unconvinced. Or, rather, utterly convinced. <\/p>\n So, with all that said: a “botched” firing squad execution in South Carolina left a convicted murderer not quite dead, for a while anyway:<\/p>\n\n\n\n