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Abolish the Death Penalty Now!
"The death penalty will be abolished. It's just a matter of time now." So said Mike Farrell, star of M*A*S*H and a leading opponent of the death penalty, in a recent visit to Santa Fe. Such words a decade ago might have rung hollow. But now they strike a loud chord. New Jersey's abolishing the death penalty this past January fills the air with hope.
We draw hope, too, from Illinois, where a few years ago the governor put a moratorium on executions because he regarded the process of capital punishment as "arbitrary, capricious and therefore immoral." And of the 167 in his state condemned to die, the governor commuted the sentences, most to life without parole. My own state, New Mexico, may be next in putting this barbaric injustice behind us.
New Mexico -- a land long ago roamed by fierce conquistadors and in the 1800s full of hangin' trees and frontier justice and today home to the nuclear industry-- last conducted an execution in 2001. It was the first in 41 years. Today two men languish on death row, one at the remote state prison not far from where I live.
The state legislature nearly has the votes to put executions to an end. I and others have met with Governor Bill Richardson and urged him to sign. But each year he employs a procedural tactic to keep the bill in limbo. Should he leave office early next year to accept a role in the new presidential administration, Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish has promised to affix her name. (see: www.nmrepeal.org)
Only the U.S. among the Western nations puts criminals to death. More than forty countries have abolished the practice since 1976. During those same 32 years the U.S. has executed 1100. At the moment, there are 3,263 prisoners nationwide waiting to die.
A breeze of hope billowed recently as the Supreme Court "investigated" the humaneness of lethal injection -- this in an air of marked public opinion According to polls, most Americans support alternatives to the death penalty. Most favor life without parole along with restitution to the victims' families. But the breeze of hope passed; last month executions resumed.
Our national barbarity strikes me most sharply whenever I travel to Europe. There the people I meet loquaciously express dismay at American notions of justice. Especially in Italy. Catholic groups in Italy regularly hold conferences and prayer vigils against our capital punishment. Every time someone is executed, the lights of the Coliseum in Rome are illuminated all night. Here is a symbolic gesture to set us blushing, a censure lighting the dark: namely, American jurisprudence bears resemblance to the savage Roman Caesars'.
With their dour appraisal, I readily subscribe. Capital punishment can claim nothing to commend it. It will not bring healing or justice or restitution. It offers no hope for a nonviolent society. It reinforces the heart-rending cycle of violence; it lays the burden of yet another murder. Execution gives death as social purpose ever greater sway. When a nation decides who lives, who dies, it becomes small potatoes indeed for it to manipulate who enjoys full civil rights, who doesn''t, who partakes of the fat of the suburbs, who subsists in the crumbling cities. And of course who goes off to war to fatten the American way of life, and who remains home to pluck the fat fruit and pursue affluent careers.
More, capital punishment is freighted with inconsistencies. Behind it lies an illogical maxim: we kill those who kill to show that killing is wrong. If we really believed that killing was wrong, the state would set an example; official killing would be banished.
Capital punishment is freighted too with the burden of racism. In cases in which the murderer was found and executed, about 80 percent of the murder victims were white. Nationally, 50 percent of murder victims are white. There emerges a chilling picture. The whiter one's victim, the more likely the court will consign the murderer to death row.
Capital punishment takes down the innocent. Since 1973, 123 innocent men and women have been released from death rows across the country. Researchers Radelet and Bedau found 23 cases since 1900 where innocent people were executed.
Research also indicates that the death penalty fails at deterrence. In fact, states without the death penalty have lower homicide rates than states with the death penalty. And applying principles of accounting raises the specter of cost. A 1993 Duke University study showed that the death penalty in North Carolina costs 2.16 million dollars more per execution than a non-death penalty murder trial. Recently, it was announced that the price of California's brand new death row will double to over $400 million.
The need for revenge and closure, insists the media, makes execution necessary. Victims'' families will rest easier, they say, when the murderer breathes his last. But such a notion is not widely true. Many families of victims see no use in putting the assailant to death, and many oppose executions publicly.
One coalition of them, "Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation," tours the nation regularly, points out inconsistencies and speaks out against it. They declare that killing those who killed their loved ones will not end the violence. It will, they say, mitigate violence not a bit. (see: www.mvfr.org)
The media implies, too, a religious justification for the death penalty. But again they''re wrong -- a large bloc of religious groups opposes the death penalty. "People of Faith Against the Death Penalty," an interfaith organization that seeks the repeal of the death penalty in North Carolina, (see: www.pfdp.org), led by my brother Steve, is one of many grassroots organizations that bring together a variety of religious congregations to take a stand for life.
Catholic Social Teaching, in particular, categorically forbids Catholics from supporting the death penalty. "We maintain that abolition of the death penalty would promote values that are important to us as citizens and as Christians," the US. Bishops' Conference has said.
Abolition sends a message that we can break the cycle of violence, that we need not take life for life, that we can envisage more humane and more hopeful and effective responses to the growth of violent crime. Abolition is also a manifestation of our belief in the unique worth and dignity of each person Abolition is further testimony to our conviction that God is indeed the Lord of life. Abolition is most consonant with the example of Jesus who both taught and practiced the forgiveness of injustice and who came "to give his life as a ransom for many.""
It is incumbent, I believe, on anyone who claims to be Christian to regard the last sentence as a kind of fundament, a kind of bottom line.
Jesus opposed all killings. He taught nonviolence, forgiveness, justice and reconciliation. When religious leaders condemned a woman in the court of the Temple (a condemnation according to the Law, no less), a frenzied mob formed, reaching for stones, ravenous for blood. Jesus intervened, the air charged with peril, and dared say to them: "Let the one without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."
The spell broken, they drifted away. We're inclined to say admiringly, Jesus saved her life. But more, with a sentence, he destroyed capital punishment's legitimacy. He struck the stone -- the pyre, the noose, the chair, the firing squad, the death chamber -- from authority's hands.
But authorities, those who deploy death in service to their lofty status, do not abandon their trump card so easily. Jesus sided with the condemned, and in the end was forced to join them. He himself was led off to the via dolorosa of capital punishment. And as for the law, there was nothing irregular in the legality of the proceedings. Not many troubled consciences. An open and shut case.
Officials, says Mike Farrell, carry on capital punishment to obscure the system's corruption. Given an unvarnished look -- at the injustice, the shadiness, the arbitrary sentences, the capricious drug laws, the imposition of unwarranted suffering, the draconian treatment of immigrants, the kept judges and prosecutors and police forces -- the public would blanch and recoil. It keeps a lid on the whole messy business of state punishment.
People of faith regard matters without ambiguity and declare some patent truisms: God sides with all victims; God does not want us to execute one another; God calls us to be people of nonviolence; God invites us to live and let live.
We, like Jesus, should feel free to side with the condemned, forgive those who hurt us, who injure or kill those we love, and in this way put an end to wheel of violence that keeps going around. We should say freely: the death penalty is immoral, evil and sinful.
Mike Farrell says he's optimistic. "I'm optimistic, too," Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center told me.
It will be abolished within ten years. It's not going to happen with one full swoop from the Supreme Court, or the U.S. president, or the Congress. It's going to be a state-by-state process. People have to be convinced, so it's going to require a lot of grassroots education, organizing and action. The revelation of the innocence cases and the DNA evidence has opened the door to a new understanding of the death penalty. Plus there are fewer executions and a smaller number of people on death row than in the past, and all of this is happening under a conservative administration. For the first time, the debate has moved. If you combine that with an international movement against the death penalty, it may be well that it's time is coming. There's an inevitably of the stream of human rights which is gathering momentum.
These are the currents we're trying to get moving in New Mexico. We've begun organizing a march, set for December 6th, from the Capitol building in Santa Fe to the death-row prison. There we'll hold a prayer vigil to put executions to an end.
And before that, some five months prior on August 1st, we'll host Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, outspoken critic of the death penalty. She will join our annual Hiroshima day disarmament vigil the next day at Los Alamos where we will don sackcloth and ashes to repent of the mortal sin of war and nuclear weapons. (See: www.paxchristinewmexico.org)
Please come if you can. But by all means, let's push for an end to state-sanctioned murder, once and for all.
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35 Comments so far
Show AllPlease...just wait until we hang the administration.... or until we come up with something more painful and longer lasting.
How do you feel about life without parole?
Yep, barbaric. But Americans were always rather enthusiastic about kiling each other, probably from the times of good old wild west..
More appreciation for value of ANY human life is needed.
Not just the usual BS on MS about human rights.
Life without parole is far more punishing than simply killing someone. The dead are gone, none of us know if they do anything other than rotting in the dirt.
But the fellon who's condemned to spend the rest of their life in a cage, never to see the sun without seeing the walls that surround them, never to see grass under their feet, never to feel secure while surrounded by other killers, rapists and violent people. That person, we do know he or she is suffering, moerover if a mistake is made it can be corrected. We cannot correct an execution gone wrong.
The greatest fear of a convict is that they die forgotten, behind a wall, then be buried behind that same wall. Make that the death penalty. Let them live their natural lives in a cage, only to be put into another cage when they die. Think of how nice it would be to have a state funeral for bush held at the supermax.
Skippyagogo41 you are almost there--The proper cry is not "abolilsh the death penalty", it is "replace the death penalty with enforced exile and isolation on some remote island".
This way, the most violent of the violent will either kill themselves off or reform themselves and learn to get along apart from any dangerous contact with the rest of us. Either way we do not pervert ourselves by imitating their level of violence.
I used to support the death penalty. I was such an advocate of victim's rights that I failed to acknowledge any of the suspect's rights. I didn't realize as I was shouting "Fry the Bastard!" that I was becoming my own enemy.
I am still an advocate of victim's rights and I'm annoyed by criminals. I cannot support executing them though. If you are like I was, and still think people should be executed, I urge you to reconsider your stance.
Bob Dylan said "In a soldier's stance I aimed my hand at the mongrel dogs who teach. Fearing not I'd become my enemy in the instant that I preach." Those words don't always apply to racism.
Maybe if this was not the land of Homicide,
Rape and Serial Murder, there would be no support for the death penalty.
If someone executes four people on camera for the cash drawer in a convenience store, hang them.
Because it is wrong for them to literally be given LIFE when they have SENTENCED OTHERS TO DEATH. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
I love children and women, typical victims, much more than these vicous animals' or their 'rights'.
The author in the article fails to note how rare violence is in most countries w/o a dp.
Peace. Except for those who coldly kill children and women for money and pleasure.
Gallows Pole. Led Zep 3. Play it.
We kill people who have killed people to demonstrate that killing is wrong. We hit children who hit each other to teach them that hitting is wrong. Almost every aspect of our culture is steeped in one party forcing its will on another party. We are violent in our language, our imagery, our entertainment, our politics, our driving, our eating, our interactions on a daily basis. Because we have been born and raised in a constant stream of violence, we are not able to consider any solution that does not have violence and domination in it. Get them before they get us. Make them pay for what they have done. Kill them all and let god sort them out. Shut them up. Kick them out. Nuke them. You're either with us or against us. The list goes on.
The death penalty, and the debate about it, is just another tactic to keep us fighting each other, instead of banding together to stop the real people who continue to grind us up to grease the machine. Keep the lower classes (and unless you are a billionaire, you are part of the lower classes)tearing each other apart for scraps.
We are not going to stop until we can SEE the violence we are soaked in, AND then, reject it.
Killing is still seen as an acceptable solution, in fact, the first solution, the only solution we can even think of. Any other solution is insulted as weak, or "touchy feely". Why is compassion so dispised? Because violence is so glorified. Soldiers who kill strangers in another country are called heroes. In fact, to imply otherwise is treason.
We must see this indoctrination to the love of, and trust in violence for what it is. A trick to keep us separate. We must see that criminals, immigrants, foriegners, the poor, the uneducated, other races, are drowning in the same pool we are. Those in power watch from the deck, trying to keep us busy pulling each other under, when our only chance is to work together, stop killing each other and focus on getting everyone out of the pool.
lisa3210peace: (an odd name for someone so filled with hatred)
You wrote "If someone executes four people on camera for the cash drawer in a convenience store, hang them. Because it is wrong for them to literally be given LIFE when they have SENTENCED OTHERS TO DEATH."
Criminals do not sentence people to death, and they do not execute death sentences. Please consider what Albert Camus wrote about this:
"An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the privation of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It adds to death a rule, a public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization which is itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death. Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."
Albert Camus---"Reflections on the Guillotine, Resistance, Rebellion & Death" (1966).
Peace.
Murder "execution stye" is just that.
Peace.
The sheer number of prisoners released from Death Row due to DNA testing that at last proved their innocence would be enough to convince me that the death penalty should be abolished.
This means that without a doubt we have executed innocent people.
I need no other arguments.
Pissant is deep red with rage. Very deep red.
Loudly demanding a communist revolution sure is going to bring better results than those pernicious robed throwbacks who keep waving their little worn books full of alien ideas at us.
Sure.
Pissant - My wife's parents wet through the Cultural Revolution under Mao. He killed upwards of 30 million people. Stalin, same deal.
Not a good way to abolish the death penalty, and hardly a convincing argument against religion.
There are only two kinds of murderers: Those who feel justified, and those that are mentally ill (psychopaths). Both of them deserve our sympathy. Those who feel justified must have been victims. This should be acknowledged. Those who are sick should be treated. There should be no punishment, however, they must never be able to kill again. I favor confinement within a community approaching normality, but no release if there is any doubt whatsoever that they could kill again. I favor confinement in a place where they may want to stay forever, where they can have a sense of belonging, perhaps for the very first time.
lizard; they'd kill to get to paradise.
I too though favor an island, beautiful and with the basics, rather than cages, for all but the most heinous premeditated executioners of children and women.
But mass murderers and child killers now roam and have socially dynamic lives with others of their ilk in our prison
Peace of heart. Maybe learned in nature, far from the ghettos. There are precedents. Eskimos.
Lizard,you would reward people for killing someone?Would you give the punishment to someone who killed a disabled person that you would give someone who killed a non disabled person?The same punishment I mean.
Pissant - I fear even Lenin had extremely bloody hands. I am all for change, but not at the expense of slaughtering millions of people only to install a different king.
Lenin began his career by waging war on intellectuals who disagreed with him. And the Bolsheviks were hardly a progressive bunch.
You do not have a convincing argument. Do not use murderers as examples of how to build a political party.
To those who support the death penalty:
Isn't it more of a punishment for murderers and rapists to be traded, man to man, for a couple of bags of corn chips and some smokes for the rest of their lives?
SOFT SPOKEN: Good post. I term all this pro-violence conditioning homage to Mars (god of war), or Mars rules! It leads to tragic consequences, inclusive of acts of lethal force against Earth Mother and the ecosystems necessary for sustaining the web of life that ALL species might endure, inclusive of our own.
LauraJ: I see no need for punishment.The purpose of punishment is deterrance. If you are confined you need no deterrance. If you think punishment prevents crime, I don't think that is true. Separating someone from society at large is not a reward, it is what is needed to prevent more killing. Violence is reduced by the generation of the proper national mentality. A society that believes in evil and severe punishment breeds injustice and hatred and it splits people into good and bad when mostly the difference is perceptual only. Societies without death penalty tend to be more peaceful ones. Those with the penalty tend to be violent and criminal. What produces that criminality if not the nature and mentality of a society? Criminals say they feel justified because noone ever cared for them. That means that others must bear responsability for not caring about this person when he was a child. Severe punishment damages children. Abuse of children breeds personality disorders and crime. Revenge for injustice is the rationalization for crime. Seeking to kill that person is the same mentality that produced him. A society that doesn't do that is gentler and breeds less crime. That is my opinion.
Lisa 32: I prefer the creation of a remote city where you have to get a job to live as in any society. I believe many non-criminals would be willing to live there. Such a city would have to be run like a police state but I do believe it would work and save money so that criminals aren't returned prematurely to save money. I would also add that most incarcerated people aren't criminals at all but rather victims of unfair laws which are disobeyed because they defy logic and are a product of puritanical thinking that condemns other people for being different. I am referring to drug convictions.
Piissantnobody,
Rev. Dear has spoken out against the war many times.
The Catholic church includes a teaching call "liberation theology". It was the heart of the socialist movements of liberation throughout Latin America, and in East Timor. Ever heard of it? Bishop Romero and a number of oher priests died speaking for the liberation of the downtrodden of El Salvador.
There is also the anarchist Catholic Worker movement. Ever heard of it? Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin - ever heard of them?
Practically, all the enduring antiwar organizations in the US are Catholic - the Daniel and the late Phil Berrigan and Jonah House, the plowshares movement, Pax Christi, Fr. Roy Bourgeois and the close the SOA movement. Heard of any of them?
Now, tell me what scowl-faced atheists like yourself have done for the struggle?
I'm an atheist and and most atheists I know are against the death penalty.
However, Obama is not.
That is why I'm voting either green party or Ralph Nader.
You can have oppression by communism, marxism, or democracy. Oppression is oppression, no matter who is doing it and for what purpose.
The death penalty is wrong because it is wrong. Doesn't mean that you can't wish someone dead. But in the long run we all lose when the death sentence is carried out by a government or society, because it shows the ultimate failure of a just and compassionate society.
I don't believe that you should love your enemy, but I also don't want to spend my life hating my enemy. I would rather be doing other things.
peace
I didn't mean to imply that Obama is an atheist. I don't know what he is, but I think that the change he was talking about was on changing his positions.
A flip flopper.
A really brilliant article!
As an American living in Europe, I am often asked about America's big "disconnect" when it comes to the death penalty. We loudly condemn abortion, but don't mind killing some poor mother's son when he's grown up. We "deplore" human rights abuses in countries like Cuba but call the thousands of dead innocents in Iraq "collateral damage". After 9-11 governments all over Europe had to wrestle with the question of whether it was ok to shoot down a hijacked plane with innocent passengers to prevent more deaths on the ground. The German courts came up with an opinion stating roughly "it is not the policy of the German government to deliberately kill any its own citizens-in deciding who lives and dies essentially playing God." It is my opinion that their own violent history has taught them what can happen when the "state" decides who can live and who must die. Do we have to go through such an experience ourselves before we learn that all killing is murder? Now we have to read that Obama is in favor of the death penalty for sex crimes against children. But for what purpose? Revenge? Prevention? Does he think that such a crazy person would stop and say, "gee, I'd better not do this, or maybe I'll get the death penalty". Such a sick person needs to be kept away from children, but killed?? America has become such a violent place, I think we don't even realize that most other countries in the world are managing quite well without killing their own citizens.
I find this one of the most troubling questions. If you see violent death, you recoil from it. Killing is a terrible thing, you cannot remove it from the mind.
So first thing I think of is life without parole. I'd certainly go for someones suggestion of poet to "replace the death penalty with enforced exile and isolation on some remote island".
Then I run into something like the case where this piece of dirt raped an 8 year old girl. I could get by with life without parole for a murderer I think, but that...God forgive me I'd cheerfully pull the trigger myself. I can't believe that scum that would rape a child were meant to live.
This is not a simple question to answer.
I think lizard has an excellent idea.
As for punishment, it is the least effective means of modifying behavior, and it has many unpredictable side effects, one of the worst being that it is an escalator. It often does not work, and so, the punishers only escalate to harsher and harsher punishments. This does not do anything in the punishee except cause anger, and the desparate feeling that they must defend themselves. When you are being attacked, your need to defend yourself disconnects you from the concept that you brought this on yourself. This causes a viscious cycle. Again, because we are a violent and punishment oriented society, with most of our own learning experiences being steeped in violence and punishment, it is the first, and often only tool we reach for. Punishment, violence, fear. These things do not serve us well. We need to let them go and play with other toys instead.
Also, as for the "what about the child rapist, surely they deserve to die" argument; well, of course heinous crimes bring out strong reactions in people. Of course we are horrified by such a violation of a child. But the death penalty is not going to prevent, or fix crimes against women, children, the vulnerable of our society. It is a red herring. It is not fair to ask a family of a victim..of course they are full of rage, and want nothing but the most painful of deaths for their attacker. Again, violence brings out violence.
The place where the solution oriented discussion needs to be is in prevention. People who do the really vile crimes are, themselves, supremely damaged people. If you want to stop those crimes, you have two paths to address. Those who are already damaged and dangerous need to be contained - as lizard suggested. Not so much for punishment, but because they are unsafe for the rest of us. True rehabilitation can be a part of that option, with the understanding that they would be contained, supervised, etc. for the rest of their lives. Not so they can suffer, but so society can be safe from the dangers they cannot control. Treating them with even this much compassion could go a long way towards getting them to a more normal semblance of existance. The second path is the prevention of the damage that tweaks someone in the first place. First, for current victims of violent and/or sexual crimes - lots of counseling..good counseling. Second, we MUST begin to care about the children who are being neglected, abused, economically crushed, diseducated, ignored, thrown away, etc. We cannot continue to crush and impoverish such large chunks of our society, leaving them to soak in hopelessness, dispair, violence, fear, and abuse, and then be shocked and angered when they grow up to be dangerous people lashing out at innocent bystanders. Rape and violent crime is about someone who has been made to feel powerless for too long, grabbing up something that makes them finally feel powerful (a gun, a knife, a bat) and pouncing on someone who they can feel is smaller than them (a child, a woman, an elderly person) and demonstrating to themselves that they do have power over something. It is a normal reaction to a long series of being crushed down. Stop damaging people, and they will stop malfunctioning and becoming dangerous.
But what about a Jeffery Dahmer?He wasn't abuse,mistreated or anything.He life was so normal it was boring.
opeluboy said:
"Pissant - I fear even Lenin had extremely bloody hands. I am all for change, but not at the expense of slaughtering millions of people only to install a different king."
Lenin 'slaughtered millions'? Are you an idiot, or just a right-winger haunting a progressive board?
Lenin made plenty of mistakes, and his Cheka did indeed kill several thousand Russians without trial. Of course, it did so in the midst of an imperialist invasion by the U.S. and British, so I have to wonder - if Bush is to blame for creating terrorists, by the same logic shouldn't we put some of the blame for Bolshevik terror on those who initiated imperialist military action against them as they were trying to establish a new government?
As it so happens, I am not a Leninist, not even a Marxist really--just a guy who tries not to repeat outrageous lies about people, such as saying that they "slaughtered millions" when they verifiably (just check Wikipedia) did no such thing.
"And indeed, there have been no shortage of capitalist tyrrants (say, Hitler, Bush, etc.)"
I don't think you can call Hitler a capitalist by any stretch of the imagination.
The Catholic church has no business being involved in politics. Usually its local Bishops or Priests that mistake their own feelings for their clerical duty.
"Lenin made plenty of mistakes, and his Cheka did indeed kill several thousand Russians without trial. Of course, it did so in the midst of an imperialist invasion by the U.S. and British"
I'd hardly call a regiment of Marines an invasion along with the Brits and others. Especially when they were siding with the Whites in the civil war. That was WW1 after all and we were at war with Germany. Yes? Protecting the ports was hardly an invasion, imperalist or otherwise.
Would we have to include a bush or two in that ban?
When W was governor here in Texass, I think he executed a record number of people. I wonder if at home in the Governor's mansion,he would sit watching video tapes of the executions with a gallon of Lube on the table next to him.
Seems that many crazed evangelicals have a twisted fetish for executing and killing (and torture)
Thomas More said:
"I'd hardly call a regiment of Marines an invasion along with the Brits and others."
Just how many soldiers must be involved in order for an invasion to be called an invasion, according to your thinking?
(For instance the Bay of Pigs only involved a few hundred exiles--so was that just a friendly little "Hello"?)
"Especially when they were siding with the Whites in the civil war."
Yes, the Whites, that is the Tsarist forces, who were trying to reestablish monarchy in Russia. You now seem to be defending monarchy as preferable to socialism--you certainly are a progessive individual.
"That was WW1 after all and we were at war with Germany. Yes? Protecting the ports was hardly an invasion, imperalist or otherwise."
It's been a hell of a long time since I've heard someone invoke "well that was just part of World War I" as a defense for some action. Actually, this is the first time I've heard that. Not surprisingly.