http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/25/ordering-death-in-georgia-prisons.html
I used to believe in putting vicious killers to death. The men who dragged that black man to death in Texas. The man who chopped off that girl's arms years ago in California. Ted Bundy, who killed some 160 young women.
Those horrible crimes seemed to deserve a firm response. The death penalty seemed to say: We won't allow this. We will stop you from killing again. You don't deserve to live. You are no longer welcome on this Earth. We need to protect innocent people from you. Some crimes are too horrible to bear.
And in some cases, executing the murderers seemed the only remedy. A few years ago, a group of Aryan Brotherhood leaders were on trial for ordering murders from behind bars:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/29/us/29aryan.html
They were in maximum security prisons, yet still ordering death. Killing them seemed like the only way to stop them.
But I have changed my mind. I still have a strong emotional attraction to the death penalty. My blood boils when I read about certain crimes. I have thought about it long and hard.
The death penalty seems like a good idea in the abstract. Like going to war. Like wrestling Ken Kesey when he was alive, if you were a horse's ass literary critic or editor. Like shooting Pablo Escobar, famous South American drug kingpin.
Yet the death penalty exacts its own price on those who carry it out. Ever seen the "thousand-yard stare" of men who return from war? Ever seen the ragged, desolate look of a homeless Vietnam vet? Read in Newsweek about those who have carried out society's most gruesome task.
Executioners and our military personnel have killed for abstract ideas. On our orders. And look where it got them. Look where it got us. Death is no deterrent.
What would it be like if each one of us had to pull the lever, at least once, to kill a man or a woman? I believe that would change the whole picture.
I say, let the killing stop. It doesn't do what we want it to do. It doesn't accomplish what we want it to accomplish. It doesn't say what we want it to say.
It is an exercise in futility. And barbarity.
Enough. Let it stop.
Join Amnesty International and others in their crusade to stop the death penalty:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/
-- Roger
NOTE: I have since changed my mind, yet again.
Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle
1 comment:
I also believe in it for some cases. But when I heard that it takes billions of dollars to manage the entire legal apparatus for appeals processes, etc, I came to think it is not worth the money. Why not life in a special harsh unit, like death row, but forever? That might be less money and just as effective of a punishment.
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