Sometimes It's Painful to Oppose the Death Penalty

Being opposed to the death penalty for rational reasons can be painful.

The right question to ask is not whether capital punishment is an appropriate - or a moral - response to murders. It is whether the government should be in the business of executing people convicted of murder knowing to a certainty that some of them are innocent.

That certainty has been established by DNA tests showing that many death row inmates did not commit the crimes for which they were convicted. Case closed.

The painful part of this position is that we who oppose capital punishment on these grounds have to breathe the same air as the celebrities, political panderers and other hankie-twisters who materialize every time a "Tookie" runs out of options and faces a far more humane death than that which he delivered to others.

By Kathleen Parker