Opinion Alert
I hate everything about the death penalty.
It's reactionary, ineffective, inactive, defensive, immoral, close-minded, and small.
You all know that I like to try to see lots of angles towards issues. Nope. Not on this.
posted by Teodoro Callate @ 6:53 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
See, this is one of those issues where I'm not sure what I think. Because the left-leaning part of me advocates rehabilitation, and prevention, education... and the natural born mom in me would want to personally slay anyone that laid a hand on my child. Yes, forgiveness is more useful to the victim than the criminal, I'm sure - but that's my honest feeling. And the whole thing with the dude who just got executed - yes, he has a positive message now, but he is responsible for the founding of a nationwide gang, and when you think about the generations of kids who were harmed in one way or another by that... sigh, ok, I'll just go crawl under a big old republican rock now.
The most convincing evidence that I ever heard against the death penalty was from a defense laywer who very clearly spelled out that it was MORE EXPENSIVE for put prisoners to death that to simply put them away.
This as well as the death penalty never being applied unfairly in the US makes it a crime to put people to death.
I like Prejeans comment. I can wrap my head around that.
Bets, I don't think your instinct is wrong. I totally understand why moms and dads have the instinct to slay the perpetrator of horrific crimes on their children (be they kids or adults). I even think the instinct is appropriate on a societal level. Wanting revenge or wanting an ultimate punishment is a natural, reflexive reaction. I get it.
BUT.
We need to help those in need, be they perpetrators or victims or families of victims. Perpetrators need punishment and rehabilitation, likely in various proportions depending on the person and crime. Which is fine with me, as long as the punishment doesn't include killing them. More on that later. As for helping victims, that's pretty clear, too. As for helping victims families, I suggest to the three people that are on this blog that killing the perpetrator does not help the victim's families one iota. I suggest that the original pain is not resolved at all by the death of the criminal. They need help in many other ways than just killing someone. They may think they feel better in the moment, but I think these are wounds that go far deeper than the reflexive killing will heal.
As for punishment not including executions? I think you guys are already onto my take of this. I think it's barbaric and that we need to be above that. I think we need moral leadership that is not based on base desires. I think we need deep philosophers making decisions based upon a moral code that props up all of humanity, rather than pandering to the lowest common denomenator of the formalized town square mob.
We are thugs when we execute people. We are not thinking things through. We are taking the chance of killing another innocent person. We are trying to close a gaping wound with less than a single stitch.
I think the solution is compassion rather than reaction. Philosophy and deep moral thought rather than base desires.
In these cases we're all id and no superego. I'm all for the id, believe me. The id is fun. And the id needs some release sometimes. But man, a good superego can save the day and make the id safe to come out and play. Without any superego, the id is out of control, and we kill people.
Holy god, you guys will never read Tres Hombres again. Somebody take that guys license away from him!
Ha! No, that was very well articulated Ted, as usual, and of course I can't disagree with anything you say, especially the psychological aspect. I saw the mother of... Carly something? Who was so angry and bitter and was like, I want him dead now, and it was pretty clear to me that that wasn't going to do much at all to take away her pain.
I feel so hopeless about all your good suggestions ever happening though, Ted. I don't say that to justify my instinct for revenge at all, just adding another thought.
Okay, Ted. No death penalty. I can sign my Move On petitions with my head held high again.
I'm a big fan of grace and mercy. Always have been, always will be. I need both a whole lot, although when it's my turn to dispense either, I'm less generous than I ought to be.
I wrote a research paper on the death penalty when I was a senior in high school. I was taking freshman college English at a local university to get some credits out of the way and had to do an in depth research paper. I took that paper more seriously than any paper I wrote later on in college; in fact, I probably did more honest-to-goodness research on that paper than I did on anything except my master's thesis. (The gist of my master's thesis: Music will never fly on the internet. So don't look to me for your prophecy needs, okay?)
Anyway, the thing that struck me in all of my digging was how overwhelmingly non-white death row is and has been. Prof. David Baldus of the University of Iowa has done a whole lot of research and study about the administration of the death penalty with regard to race and the conclusions have been sobering. At the risk of oversimplyfing some pretty complex relationships between causes and effects, he has found that even after controlling for variables, black americans are far more likely to be sent to death row than are white americans who have committed comparable crimes. If you find that interesting, you can google his name and find better written and less foggily remembered summaries of his work.
I live in SoCal, so the Stanley Tookie Williams issue is pretty big here. I know that many people maintain that he was innocent of the charges and should have been released from prison. Others just felt that he was reformed and should have been granted life in prison instead of put to death. He never did repent, although to do so would be to embrace responsibility for a crime he repeatedly denied having committed. So that's kind of complicated.
Anyway, I like grace and mercy a lot. Those are both pretty big for me, both personally/pragmatically and theologically.
I am the global citizen who would rather compare and contrast systems than judge then. As far as my knowledge extends, Japan is the only developed country besides the US that utilizes the death penalty and Japan is a country with ritualized suicides; many criminals simply do away with themselves before the ultimate punishment is metted out. the US does not put to death as many as Iran but it comes close. I feel the important quesiton is why is this? To me it doesn't seem a good deterent if countries with lower crime stats don't use the death penalty and the US does yet has across the board higher crime stats.
this is only the extent of my knowledge, others should weigh in if they know otherwise.
gosh. lots of stuff here. i just have no room for the death penalty.
lots of good stuff here. my mind is too cluttered right now. but i just have no room for it.
Yeah, great stuff indeed. More questions than answers, but a great dialogue. Thanks to everyone for some great thoughts.
I wish I had more.
Grace and mercy are good. In spite of my admitted thoughts of revenge, I aim for those things too.
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