Seems to me like he could get a lot more political mileage coming off looking like a merciful (compassionate?) Republican - especially in such a Democratic state like California. Just a thought.

For most of my life, I admit to being a true believer in capital punishment. What was the epiphany? Well, after representing a few hundred of these lost souls (NOT capital offenders, just run-of-the-mill felons), I came to realize how utterly empty their lives almost always are. They are literally the dregs of society, the lumpenprole. No one cares about them, least of all themselves.

kills your wife and children - God forbid - yet you survived.... Tell me, could you HONESTLY say that you would not want to see that man dead?

You are advocating vigilantism.

Of course he/she would, blockhead. Ten thousand years ago Lavocat and her/his friends/relatives/neighbors would have formed a mob and beaten/stoned the person to death.

Most importantly, we incorporated Christian and Western principles into a new kind of justice that reached beyond the Hammurabic 'eye for an eye'. We said that the punishment should fit the INTENT of the defendent rather than the end result of his actions. For example, if I ran a stop sign and killed a little boy, under eye for an eye, either me or my son should forfeit our lives. Under democratic justice, as I didn't INTEND to hurt anyone my punishment should befit someone guilty of gross negligence resulting in death, who should have known that the consequences of disobeying traffic laws can be fatal.

However, old habits die hard. Certain crimes sound the call for blood and the real reason people are incarcerated - to protect the rest of us from them - is lost. To me, if someone is no longer a danger, there is no point in keeping them in jail (it costs me the taxpayer a lot of money!. With all due respect and sympathy to victims, the justice system isn't about justice for them, it's about justice for the accused.

Certainly some crimes are so horrific, affront us so much that we have a quite natural urge to repeal their right to even be a human - to live. However, much more often the death penalty is meted out to the killers of attractive, caucasian, soundbite friendly, high SES victims. To poorly defended, poorly raised, mentally challenged individuals whose lives may have no meaning to us or to the state. Don't forget, once the State claims the right to take lives, it also administers the line where life and death is drawn. Now I'm willing to give the Gov't. control over some tax money, but I just don't think they're up to the job of deciding life and death.

I hope all of you "stone throwers" will go back to review this story and see that Mr. Beardslee was not the primary purveyor of these murders and received a disproportionately severe sentence to those who were.

Excerpt: They claimed Beardslee helped with the murder plot and sent his roommate to get duct tape to bind the victims before they even arrived at his apartment. (source)

You may disagree, but I and the preponderance of progressive judicial legislation over the past two thousand years say a resounding NO.