If someone kills my beloved, I might do my best to punish them any way I could, maybe I'd kill them, if I could, but that's my id speaking.
We're talking about the state killing its citizens, and how we feel about that as policy.
I think that if it worked perfectly, I might consider supporting it. Even close to perfectly, maybe I would! Even if it weren't deterrent, but only punishment, as in, a statement about right and wrong made by the citizenry. I might be able to get behind that.
But here are a FEW of the things that make me ill about the state killing:
It's a lottery rigged by
~income. the rich live, the poor die, for the same crime.
~race, especially race of victim (you're about 4 times more likely to be punished if you kill a white than if you kill a black.)
~income. the rich live, the poor die.
~educational level
~income. the rich live, the poor die.
~celebrity. remember oj?
~income. the rich live, the poor die.
~what state you happen to live in
~income. the rich live, the poor die.
~gender (want to kill? be female.)
~income. the rich live, the poor die.
And there are lots of other accidental factors that enter the picture. Some jurors, people like JC, would put you to death gleefully whether you had done the crime or not if they felt you weren't an 'innocent' enough person in other ways.
There are other reasons I don't want to give the state permission to kill in my name.
The money can be used to deter crime. Put cops on the street.
I don't like the company we're keeping. It suggests something to me:
No death penalty in Italy, France, England, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Ireland, Canada, Austria, Belgium, Costa Rica, Switzerland....
Death penalty in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Cuba, Myanmar, Rwanda, Egypt, Guatamala, Ethiopia, North Korea, Libya, Liberia, Philippines (sorry, Steven) and...The United States of America.
And... punishment of life imprisonment without parole with the prisoner working to make restitution to victims is favored over the death penalty by more than half of Americans.
There's more, but that's enough for me. Except I'm also not thrilled with the fact that in this country we execute juveniles and the mentally retarded. Lovely.
Did I mention the innocent? Unlike some rape victims, and some who are wrongfully convicted of murder but get life in prison and are later found to have been innocent, they never get a chance to prove their innocence. |
