The Stella awards!!! you gotta read this.

[Andromeda18_]

You have any idea how unlikely it is police plant evidence

Right, 'cause there's no such thing as a corrupt cop.

I do appreciate the idea of a jury of my peers based on my understanding of the original intent. This system was put in place to avoid having a corrupt government putting judges into power and lock people with opposing viewpoints away without much of a real trial.

Imagine a country where the courts are filled with "impartial" judges that have all been appointed by a ruler that HATES mauve shirts. He could have his judges sentance harsh terms for people who support mauve shirts as a way of life.

The idea is that a jury of peers from within the community would be more likely to support communal views rather than be at the whims of one person who may abuse their power.

The original intent was indeed a good one. Unfortunately it's just one of those things that look very nice in theory but not in reality. How many black people have been convicted because members of the jury were racists? Do you doubt that happened? And not just because of racism. If a member of a jury doesn't like the defendant for whatever reason he will likely vote "guilty". And the opposite is also true. Many criminals have walked out because they managed to charm the jury.
I remember we had a thread here sometime ago about how people who don't have a certain level of culture and education shouldn't talk about certain subjects because they only speak nonsense. While I disagree with that, because everybody should have the right to speak their mind, nonsense or not, the jury system has a similar flaw, people judging people's lives based on nonsense. And while speaking nonsense can be pretty harmless, judging a person's life based on a whim isn't.

Also I don't care if someone is mentally unstable in most cases. It doesn't matter if you even remember what you did honestly. You've done something horrible to society and if you don't even remember you'll probably do it again. You need to be locked away or killed. I don't care if someone is mentally unstable if you just killed 7 girls at a local collage. You need to die. The only real problem I have with the death penalty is it costs so damn much money. Then we give these horrible people a more painless death than i'm probably going to have.

The thing with mentally unstable people is that 99% of the time it's a physical thing. Those people have chemical imbalances in their brain that can usually be treated with medicine. Crimes have been perpetrated by schizophrenic people who, when properly medicated, are completely normal. They commited crimes due to their disease.
Then there's the other 1% of people who commit crimes because they're mothers (it's always the mother ) beat the crap out of them and they turned out wrong. In my opinion those need to be punished, no matter how bad they childhood was they did it willingly. Still, I don't think they should be executed. I'm all in favour of "life in prison" but completely against the dead penalty, it's nothing but lawful murder.