[speaker001:] you're uh can you tell me what you think of capital punishment
[speaker002:] yeah um I'm against capital punishment um
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] I I guess there's a cliche that um for every thousand criminals let free if one innocent person is uh killed that that's a terrible thing for the state to be doing and I agree I remember watching a a documentary film a couple of years ago
[speaker001:] um-hum um-hum
[speaker002:] I've forgotten the name of it now but it was about a killing in Texas where somebody was sentenced I think it may have been just to life imprisonment but in any event it may have been capital punishment but uh
[speaker001:] um-hum um-hum
[speaker002:] this documentarian documentarian or whatever you wanna say um he uh interviewed all the parties involved and basically got another person to admit that he had been the one who had committed the murder I don't know
[speaker001:] was that the rape murder of that sixteen year old girl in a school
[speaker002:] um no I don't think so it was a I don't remember the circumstances actually I I just remember
[speaker001:] there was something like something like that on Sixty Minutes about two years ago
[speaker002:] no no this was documentary um it was a a you know in released in theaters I saw it on PBS finally I guess um but any event it was it was very interesting and it
[speaker001:] um-hum hm hm
[speaker002:] you know I guess they say that you look for views in the media that support your own and maybe maybe that's the bias here
[speaker001:] I don't find very many that support mine
[speaker002:] well what's your um perspective on capital punishment
[speaker001:] well actually I mean not not with regard to capital punishment I mean just in general the media um
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] uh they take the the the the the average person in the media is far more liberal than the average person in the rest of the country and so uh views that are more conservative just don't get adequately represented in the mainstream media that's been documented by a number of studies but on capital punishment look that's an exception I'm not conservative on that I'm sort of middle of the road I I lean against capital punishment but I I wouldn't be an activist on it cause there's so many more important things I think I mean I admit that some innocent people get killed and I believe you're correct that has been documented it happens occasionally and it's very that that that's that's quite unfortunate
[speaker002:] and there's also the factor that that there's obviously racism in terms of even though certain minorities might commit a higher percentage of crimes than they are represented in the overall population they are also convicted convicted of capital crimes and sentenced to capital punishment at a higher percentage than they're represented even among criminals so that's
[speaker001:] hm well that last caller actually I I this is the first time I've ever spoken about a topic for the second time but the last caller that I discussed it with didn't
[speaker002:] oh really
[speaker001:] didn't say you know even that even the the fraction that would be represented among criminals are convicted more often and in fact I just asked him the question is it is it true that isn't it true that minorities you know from people in general people from lower socioeconomic groups tend to commit more violent crime and so wouldn't you expect them to be committed to to be convicted more often
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] now I do think I recall seeing some statistics to to the effect that that you that you mentioned um I don't know that you know maybe it was a report a news report I heard or something where I couldn't check it out very carefully where I couldn't I I always tend to read over these things you know especially if you have an interest group that comes up with a study that supports their own position if they did the work I always tend to be a little suspicious of it and that might've been the Southern Poverty Law Project or something that did that
[speaker002:] um-hum right I think I don't know
[speaker001:] and so I don't know whether I necessarily whether I wanna give credence to that without looking into it but I do remember hearing that yeah
[speaker002:] um-hum I think some bar associations um a lot of bar associations are against capital punishment and um this is one area where perhaps they've done some of the work I'm not sure
[speaker001:] um-hum um-hum um-hum yeah well I'm I mean I I I agree I think that that the problem with capital punishment is that it's irrevocable if you find out you put somebody in jail wrongly you can just let them out if you find out that you you killed somebody wrongly there's nothing you can do to bring them back to life so so that's definitely a problem and um you know well we're supposed to talk about our state I guess according to the synopsis at the beginning so North Carolina has capital punishment well
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] if if North Carolina didn't have capital punishment I wouldn't try and institute it it it does have capital punishment I don't see that it does any good
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] they might convict somebody wrongly sometime that's unfortunate but um you know farther the fortunate thing really is that that it occurs so rarely uh I think we have about uh maybe one execution or a little bit less a year in North Carolina now I
[speaker002:] is that so
[speaker001:] I know there're some states like I think Texas is probably the leader in the country I'm not sure of that but I think it may be is that right
[speaker002:] I'm not sure I think that sounds right offhand but I'm not positive I I have only recently moved to Kentucky so I'm not even sure what Kentucky's law is my guess is it's probably legal but probably similar to Carolina that it's not used very frequently
[speaker001:] um-hum hm yeah I think that that you know most southern states tend to have capital punishment more than northern states and a state like Minnesota for example I don't know but I'd be almost sure that they don't have capital punishments Wisconsin Wisconsin the same way
[speaker002:] right right right I was living in Illinois before here and I'm virtually certain that they didn't have it or if they did have it it was never used
[speaker001:] hm um-hum