Reply #71: You sound like Scalia.

[Lyric]

He, too, thinks that "mere factual innocence" doesn't matter so long as someone has been tried and convicted in a court of law.

I happen to think that both Scalia AND you are full of shit. The spirit of the law should matter most here, not the letter of the law. The law is meant to punish people who ARE guilty--not those who are truly innocent, but have been wrongly convicted. Otherwise, why would we overturn sentences at all, ever? Obviously the spirit of the law DOES matter, at least to some degree, and so does factual guilt or innocence. If we say that it's LAWFUL to kill an innocent person just because a jury mistakenly convicted them, what the hell does that say about US? And worse--what kind of power does that hand to the government?

"Yes sir, Mr. Right-Wing-Nutcase-President. All of the (liberal/homosexual/black/insert minority here) subversives have been duly convicted of (insert trumped-up crime here) in our "special" courts, all nice and legal-like. Shall we kill them now?"

What sort of human being thinks that the letter of the law is more important than the spirit of the law, ESPECIALLY when people's lives are, quite literally, on the line? Answer: Antonin Scalia, and other vicious fascists just like him.

To use YOUR phraseology, Thomas Jefferson would be ASHAMED of "people like you." If only the letter of law really mattered, then America would not exist. We illegally rebelled against a sovereign monarch and used "spirit of the law" arguments to justify it. If our very foundation as a nation is based on reading the purpose behind the law rather than the text, how can you possibly claim that a gross violation of said purpose is ANYTHING but inherently unlawful?