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This is my personal view—not shared by many of my friends, not by most organizations, not even by many churches. But I am very much opposed to the death penalty. I cannot understand how a civilized nation beginning the 21st Century still goes back to making murder by the state legal and acceptable. It’s a throwback to the days of stoning an offender to death, of the time when public hanging or using the blade of a guillotine had a carnival atmosphere. Years ago I took a
University of Maryland course where the incident was told of a prominent
New York business man who was charged with murdering and cannibalizing
five people. He admitted it, not comprehending why someone thought that
was wrong. With his consent and the family’s blessing, he was quietly
executed and the obituary said that John Doe had died and been buried. He was obviously insane.
But everyone wanted to dispose of the embarrassment and the problem.
They did. If we executed all the
mentally disturbed people, as Hitler did, we might have a
"purer" race by his standards. Society could save money on
housing the insane. But it wouldn't be very humane. Execution has always been
the method of removing someone a leader or the majority doesn’t want,
whether it be a Jack the Ripper or a Socrates. It makes it all the more
puzzling how a Christian can use religion to oppose the teachings of the
Man who said "turn the other cheek." It’s more like the
ancient Mosaic laws of "eye for an eye. . ." America is the
only so-called civilized country still using state sanctioning killing. And it doesn’t work to
overall reduce crime. Texas has become the wholesale execution state.
They kill more people there than in any other state. According to then
Gov. George W. Bush, everyone convicted of a crime is guilty of that
crime. There is never any miscarriage of justice, the argument went. Everyone convicted of
a capital crime and sentenced to death is guilty. No innocent man is
ever executed. How could an intelligent person seriously make such a
statement. Some years ago I met
Shirley Dicks and advised her on a manuscript she worked on. It was her
own story, about her son Jeffrey who was on Death Row at Nashville in
Tennessee. He said he was driving a car for another man when he stopped
and waited for the friend to go inside a store. When he came out, the
friend said he had robbed and killed the old man who ran the store. Jeffrey
said he didn't know what the friend was going to do. But he was charged
as an accessory and sentenced to death. He sat there over 20 years and
finally died of a heart attack while still praying for an appeal that
would release him. Only Jeff and his
companion knew the true story. Jeff took that to his grave. If he was
innocent, he suffered a tragic life, waiting for the day when he would
be marched to the electric chair. If he was guilty, he deserved
punishment--but not that severe. Not
to be killed. There is no equity to the
disposition of the death sentence. A man at one place murders several
people and serves a few years. Another, in a moment of insane rage,
commits one murder and gets executed. Proponents argue the
death penalty reduces the crime rate. Are there less murders in Texas
than in a state that doesn't execute people? A person committing murder
doesn't stop and think about being caught. That happens to other people.
And death doesn't frighten the abused child growing up with violence in
the ghetto. Death is a way of life to him. There are many reasons to
oppose the death penalty. The most compelling is
it’s always the poor man led to the gallows. He receives no sympathy,
has no press agent and, mainly, no high paid legal counsel. You would never see an
O.J. Simpson, even if he were found guilty, or the Ramseys go to the gas
chamber. That fate is reserved for the destitute and the hopeless. They only execute poor people.
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