(March 3, 2015 at 6:29 am)Aractus Wrote: The USA is very backwards in a lot of ways. An awful lot. All the media attention given to the Bali drug smugglers here would not fly there since the USA is one of the only first-world countries not to have abolished the death penalty (China of course counts in its own right as well - I don't want to for a second say they don't, but they aren't a democracy). In the 1970's, the overwhelming majority of Christians and the majority of the general population in the UK supported the death penalty - even as it was being dismantled politically. In fact you could even describe it as political-suicide at the time. Yet now they emphatically say they don't believe in it; it's not until it's actually gone that people realise that they were better off without it.
At first this paragraph seemed a little out of place considering the main thread topic until I considered your penchant for America bashing. Curious comparison to second world China.
The Bali 9 case is being covered by all major outlets here. If there's a disparity in the intensity of coverage my guess would be that it has more to do with the fact that none of those accused are American nationals.
Are you aware that 18 of our 50 states prohibit the death penalty? Several other states have de facto prohibitions. Five states are responsible for 65.2% of the executions since 1976; 11 - 86%. This should provide some context for your generalization. The only crime for which the death penalty is allowed is aggravated murder, so even us backwards yanks would find executing someone for drug smuggling extremely odd.
I have two problems with the death penalty; neither has anything to do with some feel good sense of moral superiority suggesting that it is inherently wrong to execute somebody for this crime. The fact that innocent people have been exonerated from death row and the extreme racial bias in death sentencing are the reasons I think the practice should be outlawed. Consider the recent case where a man in NC gunned down three young adults. I think it would be just to execute this man, but still would not advocate for the death penalty in order to render the system as just as possible.
