[fabsroman]

Val,

Were those Enron pension funds insured, or should they just have been insured? I am not sure which statement you meant.

As a result of Enron, we have the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that provides a lot stricter standards for auditors and companies.

I looked up the death penalty last night in Maryland, and it seems that it is only available for first degree murder, and the only difference between first degree murder and second degree murder is aggravating circumstances such as rape, strangulation, poisoning, and so on. The death penalty is not available for second degree murder or any of the sexual offenses. I was quite surprised.

As far as legal representation of people on death row is concerned, a lot of attorneys do it as pro bono work. We are supposed to do a certain amount of pro bono to give back to the community, or pay into a fund some money so that other attorneys can be hired to provide these services. So, you are going to be stuck with all the appeals for quite a while. I don't know about limiting the appeals process. Like I said before, I used to be all for the death penalty until I found out that a bunch of innocent men on death row were let out in Illinois after DNA testing proved they were innocent. If that appeal process wasn't in place, I am sure a lot of innocent men would have died.

Another thing that scared me had to do with some new scientific process that resulted in a doctor in Florida being found guilty of poisoning his wife. That was death penalty case and he was sentenced to life in prison if I am not mistaken. After several months in prison, and a lot more unsolved cases and current cases going down as poisoning with this specific poison, an FBI analyst figured out that the scientific testing was faulty because the trace elemeny from the poison showed up in all dead people (i.e., upon death it was created). Imagine if all the people convicted of poisoning somebody under this new scientific test had been hurried off to the electric chair or injection chamber.

Imagine that your husband dropped dead and you inherited a large life insurance policy but had a lot of debt. The authorities thought there was foul play on your part by poisoning him, you were hurried through the legal system, this new science proved you guilty, and you were hurried off to the electric chair.

See, I don't just think of what is the best and quickest punishment for the guilty, I think about how passing a law could affect everybody.