He wants the DP I say bring it on. JA did too until she got faced with it. Funny how they change their mind when it becomes reality.
TODAY:
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- A bill abolishing the death penalty drew passionate debate Tuesday before passing a senate committee.
"He'd been on death row for about 20 years before I met him," said sister Joan Pytlik. She described her work with inmates as she spoke of a costly capital punishment system that she says is applied disproportionately to minorities and fails to bring timely justice.
"Law enforcement ranks the death penalty at the bottom of the list of tools effective as a deterrent to crime," Pytlik said. But prosecutors urged lawmakers against a bill doing away with it.
"When someone premeditated and deliberately takes a life what we need to say as a policy from this state is 'you will pay with your life.'"
Both sides agree the current system is broken. All lethal injection drugs currently in the state's possession are expired. The rest were given away five years ago to corrections departments in Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
"That doesn't mean we do away with it," said 20th Judicial District prosecutor Cody Hiland. "That means we fix it."
But opponents like State Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, say Arkansas keeps poor company in its continuation of capital punishment.
"Yemen and Iran and China and people of that ilk," Elliott said.
Hiland didn't like the argument that most developed countries have abolished the death penalty.
"To me the United States is the gold standard and people should be comparing themselves to us not the other way around," he said.
Sister Pytlik says she's learned through her work with inmates that it's actually life without parole that's the tougher sentence.
"They all say this the death penalty is an easy exit," she said.
Despite passing through the committee Wednesday, the bill is a long shot to make it through the Republican controlled senate.
http://www.ozarksfirst.com/story/d/...senate-committee/13376/thX1S07py0ejwO2WIxi50A
