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as assisting with his suicide. Also, the death penalty removes any hope for atonement -- not forgiveness, by any means, but an opportunity for a soul, if you will, to turn itself around and reclaim some measure of lost goodness.
• This is an extraordinary dialogue of conscience that will probably never settle anything. There will be those people who will always believe that murderers deserve to die. And if you do believe that, Robert certainly got what he deserved. And there will always be people who will proclaim that the state must not, as they see it, commit the very same crime that we condemn others for doing.
• It is a genuine dilemma for some people.
• Meanwhile, we must also recognize that there are other problems with capital punishment that lurk in the moral fog. The danger of executing an innocent person is always a possibility. Thanks to improved DNA techniques, at least 15 people in this country who were condemned to death for crimes have been exonerated since 1992. There have also been a handful of individuals who have been executed and were later believed to have been innocent. That is unforgivable -- and uncorrectable.
• Perhaps, then, what is important is that the dialogue of conscience continues with each case, as it seems to do in South Dakota, where executions are rare. The last thing we can afford to do is to take these matters for granted and allow the use of the death penalty to become an ordinary thing, as opposed to an extraordinary punishment.
• The debate may indeed never be settled, at least in the U.S. -- although 51 percent of the countries on the planet have settled it and abolished the practice, according to the United Nations. But perhaps the debate can serve a purpose, and it may one day change public opinion here on the subject.
• Until then, we can only ask the questions -- of our society and ourselves. Because all things considered, it's truly hard to know what to think.
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