Posted on 04/02/2003 5:56:38 AM PST by Enemy Of The State
Last week, I showed how the death penalty does not serve as a deterrent and does not make fiscal sense. Now, let's look at the moral aspect.
The most common argument favoring the death penalty is serving justice.
Killing the man may keep him from murdering someone else in the future, but the death penalty is unnecessary to protect citizens from dangerous criminals. Executing the murderer is not necessary for justice to be served.
If a man serves a life-without-parole sentence in a maximum-security, solitary confinement prison, he will never murder another man again. He will not be able to vote. He will not be free. His right to live freely will be revoked.
He will never harm another. The sanctity of human life will be preserved.
Why then do we still execute our murderers? To serve on abstract concept called "justice"? Many supporters will tell you the death penalty is for the families of the victims.
Nowhere in our Constitution or our laws does it state that the job of the government is to exact revenge for private citizens.
To kill a man because he is a murderer, in order to satisfy the victim's family's wishes, is revenge. It is to make the victim's family feel better -- a gruesome, barbaric consolation prize for their tragedy. This is little more than expensive, state-sponsored revenge.
Even if the death penalty were not amoral, and even if the idea was supported in our Constitution, the system we use to determine who lives and who dies is biased and corrupt.
Fact: For interracial murders since 1976 that resulted in a death sentence, 178 of the cases involved a white victim and a black defendant. Twelve cases involved a black victim and a white defendant.
Fact: 80 percent of all capital cases involve white victims, although only 50 percent of all murder victims are white.
The U.S. General Accounting Office summed it up in 1990 when it reported, "In 82 percent of the studies [reviewed]... those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks."
The experts are acknowledging the facts: Our death sentencing system is racist.
Other prejudices exist within our "justice" system. Damien Echols, one of the famed "West Memphis Three," is currently on death row for his alleged part in a brutal triple-homicide of three young boys.
The shocking thing is, not one piece of physical evidence links Echols to the crime scene. Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley wore black clothes and listened to Metallica.
The only evidence linking Echols to the crime is a coerced confession from Jessie Misskelley, who was interrogated for 12 hours without representation before he confessed. Only the last 45 minutes of the interrogation were documented.
Experts testified that Misskelley was coerced into lying about the murder. Photographic documentation shows a baseball bat in the corner of the room. Misskelley has an IQ of 72, is mildly retarded and did not understand what was happening around him during the interrogation.
If you wish to be shocked even more, you can read "Devil's Knot" by Mara Leveritt and learn the West Memphis Police Department's shady investigation methods.
Unless true justice stumbles it way through, Damien Echols will die for three murders despite the lack of hard evidence. A dangerously imperfect system of bias and corruption has chosen his fate.
You can't un-kill a person.
If our nation abolished the death penalty, the consequences of the system's imperfections would not be a matter of life-and-death. Brutal murderers could still be punished and kept off the streets. True justice would be served.
Virginia and West Virginia were named for Queen Elizabeth I. Dubbed "the virgin Queen" by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584.
So in fact, there is only 1 virgin. And she wasn't all that hot.
This is not an argument against the death penalty -- it simply shows that we need to start executing greater numbers of people who kill non-whites.
Right, juries always get all of the facts.
SS. Send your comments. IE. Freep him!
That is a stupid statement. Those who commit the crime are the ones who must be punished. Do they want an affirmative action death penalty that would force authorities to grab a random white guy off the streets to executute after each execution of a black man? I can't think of one single case of a white person from my community killing a black person. On the otherhand, there have been many cases of blacks killing whites. The motive is always the same: drug money. A couple of months ago a young cab driver was shot in the back of the head and robbed of ten dollars. The three monsters then took his cab for a joy-ride. They now face possible execution.
Would this pin-head please explain to the now orphaned child of the cab driver that to rid the world of the men who killed his daddy would be wrong?
That criteria would still let you hang Charles Manson and other flagrant cases, the keeping around of whom serves no useful purpose.
However, regarding "morality" of the death penalty, there are plenty of moral reasons FOR it. The author of the above piece does not argue strongly against it from a moral standpoint. There is sufficient moral authority in the Bible to justify the death penalty. One scripture, Romans 13:3-4, says:
"The government has the right to carry out the death sentence. It is God's servant, an avenger to execute God's anger on anyone who does what is wrong."
In deciding how I feel about the death penalty, I try to understand when God feels it is okay to kill. I'll digress for a moment and draw comparisons to the current war situation. The Bible is full of support for killing wars if they are fought for good reasons. Structural authority for what's at hand in Iraq might be found in Acts 17:26-26, in Luke 12:48 and in a number of other places. Specifically, wars can be waged for among these reasons:
So with state killing, from a "moral" standpoint I am opposed to it because I don't think it is necessary to accomplish any of those things listed above, and for other moral reasons. Once a murderer is caught, it is I believe more justice to make them live out their entire natural lives in prison. Death is too easy for them, and justice served by a state agency seems too far removed from me, a surviving victim, to be of any real value.
I am not pontificating. I have lost family members to murder. My uncle was killed by a hitch-hiker in Fairfield, CA, and my cousin was murdered by someone bent on revenge for his turning them in for burglury at his home. Still I am opposed. Of course if I catch someone "in the act" I will not hesitate to unbody them with a certain brutality, I might after all be able to stop the crime; I would do the same in a righteous war for the reasons given in the scriptures above.
"Plus, it seems to me that is is more fiscally responsible to execute someone than it is to house and feed them for years."
The argument against this is, that the long appeals process is very expensive and housing them on death row is (at least it was at one point) more expensive than simply locking them up. I suppose we could cut short the appeals process and focus on DNA and modern forensic techniques. Doing this might draw the ire of civil libertarians, but who cares as long as we get to the truth. I don't really buy into the "it's expensive" argument against the death penalty.
"As long as "Life" means 15 to 20 years, society is not being protected from the predators..."
Life should mean until they die (naturally). Regrettably, in states where "natural life without parole" is not an option (as here in Texas) the death penalty should be an alternative. However I myself would lobby the legislature for the natural life without parole option.
Anyhow, just my .04 worth.
You don't even seem to be aware that Charles Manson is not in prison for murder. He didn't do the stabbing in the Tate and LaBianca murders. I don't even think he was on the scene. He's not a murderer -- he is merely dangerous. Yet, you seem to want to hang him. Yer priorities is all messed up, bub.
Name 'em.
Not to mention heart-transplants.
The sanctity of human life is not preserved by forcing society to provide someone food, clothing and shelter for the rest of his life while his victim has nothing, not even life.
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