Obama and I agree on something...

I have not changed my position on my own reasons for not supporting the Death Penalty, one of which is the selective nature in which it is used. However, that said, given it is still legal in this country, it is hard to justify in my mind how the extremely brutal raping of an 8 year old by her step-father would not be considered worse than murder or treason. Yet, that was the decision recently made by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Scotus blog states that the underlying decision was "Barring the death penalty for any crime that does not take the life of an individual victim," the AP article used by the Blade states:

Still, Kennedy concluded that in cases of crimes against individuals — as opposed to treason, for example — "the death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim's life was not taken."

The decision does not affect the imposition of the death penalty for other crimes that do not involve murder, including treason and espionage, he said.

It was encouraging to read that Barack Obama has expressed some of the exact same concerns I had. I don't normally post on candidates reacting to a news story, however, I felt it was important to give him kudos for making this public position considering some of my previous disagreement with some of his stances.