Griper Blade: Illinois Set to End Human Sacrifice

It's hard for me to think of a policy I support less than the death penalty. The short take is that it's expensive, it doesn't work, and -- for me, the clincher -- it cannot be reversed. An innocent person put to death is a mistake that can't be rectified and this alone renders illogical the argument that killing people makes us safer. If your government can kill you, despite the fact that you've done nothing wrong, then you're most definitely not safer for it. The death penalty should be viewed the way we view other forms of human sacrifice -- a brutal and ineffective attempt to manipulate reality, founded only in a bloodthirsty superstition.

One state is poised to abandon this savage mumbo-jumbo; the Illinois legislature has sent a bill repealing that state's death penalty to Gov. Pat Quinn's desk. There's some question as to whether Quinn will sign it into law or not. There shouldn't be.

CBS News:

"We cannot afford to continue to have a death penalty in Illinois with the track record we have," Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, the main Senate sponsor, said Tuesday. "I believe only the state of Florida has had more people sent to death row for crimes that they did not commit. We ought to be embarrassed by that."

Illinois has removed 20 wrongly condemned people from death row since 1987. There's no evidence Illinois has executed an innocent person...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]