Capital Punishment: U.S. Ranks 5th On Global Execution Scale, Amnesty International Reports

It looks like the US ranks 5th in the world on criminal executions. I have very mixed feelings about this topic. My then high school teacher's daughter Michelle was murdered on my birthday in Reno, Nevada on 2-24-1976. The murder turned out to be a decoy so that a group of conspirators could collect on an insurance interest on a casino employee. They had also killed this other woman about the same time as Michelle in February 1976.

A number of my classmates were questioned about this murder specifically the ones who knew Michelle. I never met her.

So, I always have that case in the back of my mind when I think about capital punishment and what this group of conspirators did to Michelle and the casino employee as well as how it affected students at two Reno, NV high schools. Both parents of Michelle were high school English teachers.

On the other side, I hepled prisoners at various prisons in NV and MN before and in law school at the U of MN. Some the prisoners seemed rehabilitated, others not.

I also feel that people could be framed for crimes they did not commit due to incompetence in the investigation, political corruption, or any number of other reasons. Not that I actually met any prisoners in MN who I thought were innocent.