I'm pretty doctrinaire and tow the Libertarian line about the death penalty.   I'm opposed to it, don't trust the government with that sort of power, and scared to death about mistakes given the clumsy, heavy handed nature of the wheels of justice.

But then I see stuff like this and am reminded that there's one thing it's good for - sometimes you don't want to deal with a verdict of justice that's so easy to undo -

BERLIN - German authorities have paroled convicted terrorist Mohammed Ali Hamadi after he served 19 years of a life sentence for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner and the killing of a U.S. Navy diver, a law enforcement official said Tuesday.

If you give the guy life, make sure he serves, ya know, life.

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UPDATE - this story just gets more spineless and depressing -

The Lebanese blog YaLibnan, and the mainstream media too, are suggesting Germany traded Hammadi for Susanne Osthoff, a German archaeologist and convert to Islam who was critical of the 'looting of antiquities' after the fall of Saddam.

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