i Daily -g I TMW. I ■ ^p* warmer with southwest I I f 1 V M winds at 5 to 15 mph. Fri ^^1 BmS ■ ■ ■ |4 ^ M ■ ■ day, partly sunny with a high l>ICt/lCl3l\.Clll l ^— - ' ' f^BBnTFOOL i :kle up AND DRIVE SOBER B,: F*^se family ^ "^pZ^^TtlEHr — - jCT*3 ■ .. .. . -- I —^—I ■ I Shaun Sartin/DN Think before you drink Members of Farmhouse fraternity and the Lincoln-Lancaster Health Department display a wrecked car on Broyhill Plaza in an effort to raise awareness of the dangers of drinking and drivmg. Morality of death penalty debated Ethical battle over deterrents, prejudice waged in city union By Jeremy Fitzpatrick Senior Reporter In a heated debate Wednesday, former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meesc III argued that the death penally was needed to protect innocent people from murder, while American Civil Liberties Union President Nadine Strosscn countered that it was a barbaric and unconstitutional form of punishment below a civilized society. The two clashed over the morality of the death penalty in the Nebraska Union. About 400 people attended the debate, which was sponsored by the University Program Council Talks and Topics committee. Strosscn said “the United Slates stands alone” among civilized nations in using the death penalty as a form of punishment. Among in dustrialized nations, she said, only the former Soviet Union and South Africa execute their citizens. “There is no place in a civilized society for the death penalty,” she said. Mecsc said a majority of Americans — 79 percent, according to a poll he cited — sup ported the death penalty. “The reason that there is this overwhelming majority of Americans who do believe the death penalty is necessary is because they indeed do believe in the sanctity of life—” he said. Strossen said the ACLU did not support the death penalty because “state sanctioned kill ings give the lesson that the taking human life is a legitimate way of dealing with society’s problems.” She said she favored life in prison without parole or restitution instead of the death pen alty. In restitution, a convicted person would be required to work to provide financial com pensation to the victim’s family. Mccse said society was responsible for punishing those who had killed innocent people. “The whole focal point of any nation’s crimi nal justice system,” he said, is to provide retri bution for crimes. Life imprisonment is not a sufficient deter rent to criminals, he said, because they can be paroled and released. “Life in prison means in some stales being out in seven years, he said. Strosscn said the death penalty was not a deterrent to criminals. “States with the death penalty do not have lower crime rates_” she said. “There simply is no evidence of a deterrent effect.” Meesc disagreed. “For most people, reason and logic would suggest that the death penalty is a deterrent,” he said. When the death penalty is used, he said, the murder rate goes down; when it is not used, the rate goes up. The two also disagreed over whether the death penalty was discriminatory against mi norities. Strosscn described the death penalty as “random at best and discriminatory at worst.” She also said the death penally was almost exclusively assigned to the killers of white victims. “The only possible explanation is that the justice system values white lives more than black ones,” she said. Meesc argued that the death penalty actu ally discriminated against whiles. “All of the studies have shown that it is discriminatory toward while males as much as any group in our society,” he said. Bush targets UNL studies for cutbacks Officials unsure why 3 projects selected By Alan Phelps Senior Editor Officials involved with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s agriculture college projects appearing on the Bush admini stration’s “hit list” of recommended rescis sions said they were unsure why their programs were targeted. The Bush administration recently released a list of budget rescissions that would save the federal government $3.6 billion in the next fiscal year. While the bulk of the money saved would be in a submarine-building program the administration previously had said was to be slashed, other cuts deal t w ith a variety of lower profile programs across the country. The UNL College of Agricultural Sciences \Iotnro 1 D m'Ai■rr'nc’ r\rr\iAr