Notes of the Death Penalty

So I spent the morning reading up on the death penalty. I read this story about a young man who may have confessed to a crime he might not have committed. I couldn't believe some of the details of this story: a man killed his possibly cheating wife, stuffed her in a car and then drove around to show people. I can't believe people say there is gender equality when things like this happen.
And then I read up on what John Paul Stevens, the former Supreme Court justice, thinks about the death penalty in reference to a particular book on the subject. There were lots of good facts in here too. Michigan (!) apparently made the revolutionary decision to outlaw the death penalty for everything except treason in 1846. And then after that, they decided that the state had to wait fifteen years before killing someone. And that 130 people have been set free (mostly from DNA evidence) since 1973.