On the death penalty
The best thing I've ever read on executions.
I've been an opponent of the death penalty for 50 years. I have mixed feelings about people who support it. On the proverbial one hand, I understand that murders can be so heinous that nothing short of putting the murderer to death seems just. Someone—I don’t know who—put it this way: It is as if the blood of the victim cries out for vengeance.
On the other hand, it has been my consistent experience that people who support the death penalty resist learning more about it. These two observations are related. It is the overwhelming emotion and sense of moral outrage that often lead people to avoid confronting the reasons the death penalty should be abolished. An incomplete list follows. It carries an unacceptable risk of executing innocent people, a fact supported by numerous exonerations through DNA evidence and investigative error. It disproportionately affects marginalized communities, and includes undeniable racial inequities. It fails to deter violent crime any more effectively than life sentences. It is costly, morally fraught, and inconsistent with a justice system that values human dignity and the possibility of redemption. It also takes a terrible toll on correctional officials and officers who must kill people in our name. It is not at all rare for executions to be botched, leading to the cruel in “cruel and unusual.” And there is no reliable evidence that it brings the so-called “closure” to the families and friends of victims.
In all these decades of my opposition to the death penalty, I’ve read a lot on the topic. I’ve never read anything better than this article in The Atlantic by Elizabeth Bruenig, linked below. (It’s a gift article, so you should be able to access it without a subscription.)
One of the many things I appreciate about this article is that Bruenig does not diminish the horror of the crimes committed by many of those who are sentenced to death. That is essential. Those who oppose the death penalty must accept the terrible reality of these crimes. We cannot minimize these horrors.
Here’s the link to the article, which is available both in text and an audio version.
Here it is.
Thank you.
Dale
"Leave room for mercy"
Extract from Drifting Sands #17, "Last Rights", first published as a haibun on September 01, 2022
“An eye for an eye,” we read in the Bible. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed”, Genesis 9:6 “Thou shalt not kill!” states one of the Ten Commandments in the Torah. By this, we are to understand that all murder is killing, but not all killing is murder. Sharia law endorses the death penalty, and the United States looks on, professing outrage. As a leader in Human Rights, some may question why this major democracy continues to support brutal ways of dying, sometimes botched, for those languishing on Death Row.
No wonder there’s such confusion, such controversy!
But as Clive Stafford Smith, a civil rights lawyer working against the death penalty in United States asks: "Why do we kill people who we think killed people, to show that killing people is wrong?"