Ask500

I had a guick look at Wikipedia. It seems that the expanded version is something like "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand and a foot for a foot". If this is the justification then perhaps we should start blinding people who cause the loss of sight in another, we could have remove the hands and feet of employers who's neglect results in an employee loosing a limb in an industrial accident etc. Lots of opportunities present themselves here. If we are going to do it lets do it right and with consistency. I seem to remember something too from the dim past about "he who is without blame cast the first stone". I sometimes think that if Christ made the same offer today to crowds in some of our "civilised" societies, we would be having a stoning!

And what is an acceptable rate of being wrong - is it in 1 in 10, 1 in 100, 1 in 1000 or 1 in 100,000. That is you say that as long as the rate is below the acceptable rate, lt is ok to fry an innocent person occasionally. The real tragety in my mind is that it is ultimately a form of revenge and I suspect the real looser when someone is put to death by society is the society which overseas it (personal view). As an aside, there are many societys which manage to function successfully and I suspect have a much lower murder rate than the US without capital punishment. As a final bit of home spun philosophy, I believe that much better outcomes come from positive emotions that negative emotions. Revenge is up there with the most negative.

Yeah you're right...Lets fry them and then later find out that there was an error and that person was innocent all along. Is your last name Bush? LOL