Not too broad of an indictment there.
It's quite the issue of justice and just desserts. On one hand DNA testing has exonerated innocent prisoners from death row. Proving that innocent people can and do get convicted on bad evidence.
Putting someone to death insures there is no appeal. And to answer the question there have even been suggestions that those who have been executed should now be afforded a look-see at the trial evidence so as to perform DNA testing if possible, and see if they were indeed guilty.
Some years ago a state prison warden agreed to allow a DNA crime test laboratory to perform DNA testing of all prisoners willing to comply so as to support their grounds for appeal.
Amazingly enough not one prisoner volunteered. This was something that was part of the then cable series, "Locked Up". A documentary wherein the film crew goes inside prisons in various parts of the world and films the prison experience.
On the other hand, there are some evils that deserve to be extinguished. Letting those guilty parties, those who are truly guilty on credible evidence, live longer than their victim(s). Letting them to be a burden on those tax payers who can include their victim(s) and their families. Letting that convicted evil survive while his living victim struggles to forget the trespass perpetrated against them, is for some unconscionable.
And yet, very often prisoners we think are condemned to a cell for life or a huge number of years for that evil, are doing better than we'd ever imagine. Free TV, conjugal visits (Tex Watson, one of the murderers in the Charles Manson killing spree, has kids, all on welfare, by his wife whom he use to be allowed a conjugal visit with. Until California wised up!) and of course the best health care. At tax payer expense. All care of prisoners is at tax payer expense.
I watched a prison-doc once wherein the death row inmate, all appeals used up, date of execution could be decreed at any time, was in the prison infirmary getting chemotherapy for terminal inoperable cancer.
He even laughed into the camera and said he'd told the officials he did not want the treatment because it was ridiculous to spend all that money when there were free patients out in the world who couldn't afford the level of care he was getting. And he was a dead man twice over. Once by the terminal inoperable diagnosis. And once by the court ruling.
But the state law said he not only could not refuse but they had to treat him until he was put to death.
And he didn't want the treatment. But as property of the state he had no choice.
I do think those sentenced to life without parole should be allowed to self-terminate. I can't imagine someone going to prison for life with no parole at 18 and having to look to 60 years in that living Hell with no out but suicide or being murdered by a fellow inmate.
