Perhaps you’ve seen a discussion about how justice was performed in the old days, where someone says “we would never have done it like that” or “if it had been today, that case wouldn’t even have gone to court.”

The latest such discussion I came across was on the execution of Joe Hill :

Like many historians, Gibbs M. Smith, author of a Hill biography, said the trial was unfair. “Under today’s laws of evidence, he never would have been convicted and executed,” Mr. Smith said.

Then it hit me. If we say these things today about things that happened a century ago. People a century from now will most definitely say the same about things we’re doing today.

And that’s why I will never ever under any circumstance believe in the death penalty.