[Gráinne]

(I know very little of Davis's case, but this is in general about the death penalty).

I think this country has a hell of a lot of nerve complaining about China or North Korea or whathaveyou country, when we're just as bad, maybe worse.

If we're going to have a death penalty, let's have it-not 22 years later after the crime. I mean, fast. If we can't do that and really need 20 years of extremely expensive appeals and trials, etc., let's abolish it.

Mr. Davis was a prime example of why the whole thing should be abolished. Black, poor, from the South, and probably not highly educated (I know little of his background, but what I did hear was bad enough). If we're going to have it, it should be for *this* crime (whatever the *this* is), without reasonable doubt as to guilt, for all those who commit that crime-no matter race, faith, background. If we can't do that much, it's inhumane.

Are we truly a more civilzed people than everyone else we "other", and react with horror at public stonings or hangings? The only difference is that we hide executions, more out of shame, I think, than any real reason. I don't think we're that removed from the Tudors, with burnings right out in the middle of Smithfield, than if we set up a scaffold in the parking lot of Wal-Mart.

This fucking country. There are those who have no problem telling a woman she cannot have an abortion because it's "murder", and yet are almost gleeful at painfully poisoning to death just another almost non-person who didn't count for anything.