To be clear, I disagree with his first position, however, he has done a lot to avoid the inequities that you are quoting.
Also, it is clear that there is NO candidate who is totally against death penalty and has a chance to win in this race. Obama is the most palatable of the 3 and there is no chance that he will order the execution of a mentally incapacitated person, even if he had this power (contrarely to a certain former president married to the person you supported).
http://issues2000.org/2008/Barack_Obama_Crime.htm#4Some heinous crimes justify the ultimate punishment
While the evidence tells me that the death penalty does little to deter crime, I believe there are some crimes--mass murder, the rape and murder of a child--so heinous that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment. On the other hand, the way capital cases were tried in Illinois at the time was so rife with error, questionable police tactics, racial bias, and shoddy lawyering, that 13 death row inmates had been exonerated
Source: The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama, p. 58 Oct 1, 2006
Videotape all capital punishment interrogations
In the Illinois Senate, I sponsored a bill to require videotaping of interrogations and confessions in capital cases
governor had instituted a moratorium on al executions.
In negotiating the bill, I talked about the common value that I believed everyone shared--that no innocent person should end up on death row, abd that no person guilty of a capital offense should go free. At the end of the process, the bill had the support of all the parties involved, and it passed unanimously.
Source: The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama, p. 57-59 Oct 1, 2006
Battles legislatively against the death penalty
Obama's most significant contribution has been his legislative battles against the death penalty, and against in the criminal justice system. In Illinois, it's been a series of shocking exonerations of innocent people who are on death row. He was involved very intimately in drafting and passing legislation that requires the video taping of police interrogations and confessions in all capital cases. And he also was one of the co-sponsors of this very comprehensive reform or the death penalty system in Illinois, which many people say may trigger the retreat on the death penalty in many other states.
Source: Salim Muwakkil and Amy Goodman, Democracy Now Jul 15, 2004
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