Lawyers invent claim of "temperament and suitability" to assist with executions - Missouri

Those readers who know me personally or online know that I'm generally pretty left-leaning. However with regard to the death penalty - I believe that in the case of premeditated murder or the rape of a child: you should be subject to death.

I'm not so sure about the loooooooong list of other crimes that have been added to that category in the last ten years though.

But this legal argument threw me for a loop.

"Lawyers for five death row inmates are pressing Missouri to identify members of its execution team after a newspaper revealed that a nurse on the team was once accused of stalking. The lawyers filed papers last week in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, arguing that the executioner's criminal record raises questions about his "temperament and suitability" to help with executions.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch named the nurse in a story last week, revealing that he was on probation in 2001 when he worked on executions and was allowed to join a federal team that executed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in Indiana."

Ok... if the job description is, the convicted murderer goes in alive and comes out dead... SO WHAT if one of the team has a little bit of a checkered past? Is raising the issue of a background check done out of concern for their safety? The whole process is inherently unsafe, right? Go in alive, come out dead... yup, not real safe.

In general I think the US has gotten overly tough on crime. But when someone plans to kill another person and carries it out... an eye for an eye.

Since this blog ostensibly focuses on Uruguay, this is what I observed there:
Get caught robbing a bank (dumb idea there) - 20 years.
Kill someone? - 7-10 years.

Granted, each of those years is 1000% harder than they would be in the USA because prison conditions are, well, a little different.