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Capital punishment as a standard measure is based on one of 2 things:
1. a claim to absolute, infalsifiable truth (i.e. in establishing beyond ALL - not just reasonable doubt - that somebody is guilty), and to do this EVERY TIME;
or
2. accepting that innocent people are killed in the process.
Anyone who has had the remotest dealings with science knows that 1. is impossible to achieve, leaving 2. as the only other basis. And that is so unbelievably wrong, it is sickening.
Many say just don't commit the crime when you are there. Great! What if you didn't do anything and get arrested anyway? What if somebody placed heroin in your luggage, over which you have no control between check-in and baggage collection. Or what if someone you call a friend gives you a bag containing drugs, and you then don't even get a chance to explain yourself properly in court because you are not provided with an interpreter. This may well be what happened to the woman that was spared this week. Her ultimate mistake might have been not checking her bag properly, i.e. cut open the lining. And for that, she would have been put to death as well, escaping (for now) only because her former "friend" back in the Philipines finally came to her senses.
I therefore cannot accept science as the best way to explain the world and support the death penalty at the same time.
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