In 2015, Billingsley was sentenced to 30 years in prison, with 16 years suspended, after he pleaded guilty to a first-degree sex offense, court records show.
The Maryland sex offender registry shows he was released from prison in October. The registry classified him in “tier 3,” which includes the most serious charges and requires offenders to register for life.
Yeah, it’s better to imprison an innocent for life than to kill them.
One is acceptable. The other isn’t.
If new evidence exonerates a living person, they can be released. You cant bring an innocent dead person back to life.
Yeah, but that doesn’t mean every innocent person in prison for life is going to get exonerated before they die.
The argument that “the death penalty should be abolished because some innocent people are convicted” doesn’t hold any water because innocent people can be convicted with life imprisonment as well and die before being found innocent. Does that mean we shouldn’t sentence people to life in prison?
Which brings me back to my previous point: it’s acceptable to imprison innocent people for life, but not to execute them. At least in your minds.
It is not acceptable to punish an innocent person at all in my mind, but it is also not acceptable to sit by and do nothing about dangerous and malicious behavior, and so it becomes necessary to choose the lesser evil.