I'm against the death penalty, but...

One of the reasons I am against the death penalty is that I don't believe it is doled out equally. Judgements about the death penalty (as with so many other things) are imbued with bias about race, class, gender, sexuality, and, in this case, sex-worker status.

There are a lot of details missing from this article. The article said that the DA "has expressed concerns about the death penalty." It also The said, though, that this was only the second "special circumstances" case for which the DA did not seek the death penalty - I wonder what "special circumstances" means, and I wonder what cases he considered heinous enough to warrant the death penalty.

The death penalty is a concept that I have struggled with for a long time. I mean, taking all the possibility of killing someone who is innocent out of it (and the racism, sexism, etc. etc. that goes into our justice system), and going just to the pure philosophy of killing someone because they have done something wrong.

The conclusion I have come to is that if someone has done something so horrible, so unimaginably awful that killing them would be a distinct possibility for a punishment, they must be mentally ill. People who are not mentally ill do not do truly awful, horrible things to other people like that. Thus, we should not kill them because killing someone who is mentally ill is wrong (to me). I am not saying, though, that people should be let off the hook. Keeping someone who is a serial rapist off the streets, locked up in a mental institution where their needs are met and they are able to get therapy to try to deal with whatever is going on for them, totally fine. People who do horrible things to other people may need to be take out of society, but I do not think that the death penalty is ok.