to spout off with his incite-ful opinions.
It’s difficult to argue that there aren’t people in this world whose actions are so
despicable--who are so purely evil--that they well deserve to be put to death.
The problem is that most of these people aren’t even eligible for the death
penalty. Many of them aren’t even criminals. But even among the ones who
are eligible, i.e. murderers, is our system trustworthy enough to give it the power
to decide who should live and who should die?
Judging from the fact that a number of death-row inmates have been proven to
be innocent and released in recent years, obviously our system isn’t even
perfect when it comes to determining guilt. The main problem with the use of
the death penalty is that it falls heavily on the poor defendants who have to rely
on a public defender. If you can afford a legal “dream team” you might not even
be convicted, and it‘s almost unheard of for a wealthy person to be executed.
But a person without the means to hire the best lawyer and pay for an
investigator and expert witnesses is not only much more likely to be put to
death, but also much more likely to be wrongly convicted. Also, a
disproportionate number of people with low I.Q.s seem to receive the death
penalty. Maybe because they’re more easily duped into making ill-advised or
even false confessions to the police.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not believe in coddling violent criminals. I just think
that the ultimate punishment should be to lock them up and throw away the key.
Keep them in a cage for the rest of their life and let God decide when it should
end. There’s a reason that we’re the only western democracy that still executes
prisoners. When our legal system is sharing its philosophy with countries like
China and Iran, it should be obvious that something is wrong. And the thought
that even one innocent person might be put to death by the state should be
more than we’re willing to bear.
No matter how deserving a criminal might be, how can we, as a civilized society,
condone strapping a person down and putting him to death? It’s reminiscent of
the torture and execution of the Inquisition. Courts have now declared that
killing by electrocution, long the favored method, is cruel and unusual. Recently
the use of the gas chamber has also been decided to be too unsavory. Which
leaves us with lethal injection. But I read about a recent case where they
missed the condemned man’s veins and he suffered a long and agonizing
death. These aren’t doctors injecting the poison, after all. Taking part in an
execution would violate their Hippocratic Oath.
The point is, no matter how despicable a criminal might be, once they’re locked
up in a cage they are no longer a danger to society. It’s the state’s job to mete
out justice, not to take revenge on behalf of the victims.
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