Point Counterpoint
Today's USA Today features OpEds both for and against the death penalty. The death penalty debate continues to gain nationwide momentum.
Death Penalty Debate Finally Produces Useful Result
For the past half century, the nation has been locked — deadlocked might be a better word — in a bitter debate over the death penalty. But what if there is a middle ground?With little fanfare, a compromise has been gaining favor more than a decade, drawing support as DNA evidence has exonerated inmates on death row. Last week, it reached a milestone. Texas, site of one in three executions, gave juries the option to sentence defendants in capital cases to life without parole rather than death.
Death Penalty Works
In two recent decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned death sentences of convicted murderers, sparking renewed calls for an end to capital punishment.A shifting majority on the court has struggled with the death penalty in recent years, sometimes exceeding its authority to grant new rights to murderers. But the two newest decisions focused on case-specific issues, adding very little to the larger debate. Both involve clearly guilty murderers who won new trials because of procedural errors.
Posted by beth at 10:47 AM
