An End To The Death Penalty
Since when did the electric chair or lethal injection bring a dead victim back to life? What is the purpose of the death penalty? Is it to make a convicted criminal pay for his or her crimes against others? Is it to ease the suffering of a victim's family? If the latter is the case, what about the families of the accused? Killing a convicted murderer, for example, creates a new set of grief by his or her family. What pleasure can anyone, even the family member of murder victim, take in the death of the one accused of said murder? No matter how many lives are taken our loved ones are not coming back. It seems to me that capital punishment is not an attempt to punish those who commit capital murder. After all, if their is no heaven or hell no one has paid anything. They're just dead. So while the convicted sleep "eternally", the baggage of grief is still carried by not one, but now two families. Capital punishment is nothing more than a "you made me suffer so now your family will suffer" remedy to our problems. Is that really what we want to teach our children? He killed your family so now his must suffer? There is no moral justification for the death penalty especially when there is obviously other options such as life without parole. A lot of prisoners on deathrow are there because their economic situation was as such that they could not afford adequate representation. Let's not forget those who are there because of overzealous prosecution or are wrongfully accused. Let's not forget that the overwhelming percentage of deathrow inmates are African American when it is obvious that they don't commit an overwhelming percentage of capital crimes. The death penalty has outlived its use in a "civilized" society.
External Links
http://www.aclu.org/capital/index.html
http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/issues/pu-vscap.htm
http://members.aol.com/dignews/stats80.htm
http://users.rcn.com/mwood/deathpen.html
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0503/S00051.htm
Email: manedavis@hotmail.com
