I am trying to write more serious pieces, and this one is the first. If you're averse to darker subject matter, light vulgarity, or if reading things that you disagree with inspires you to send me threats, please show yourself out.
Today, I am a murderer.
I wrote that sentence and then had to walk away from my computer, watch some cartoons, and try not to think about it for a while. While I didn't personally pull a trigger, administer poison, or brandish a knife, I am nonetheless a murderer. And so is everyone in Arizona today.
Wednesday at about 4:00pm a terrible person was killed in a terrible way, by representatives of my government, acting on my behalf.
Another break to compose myself. This is important stuff, guys.
I have no sympathy for the man we Arizonans killed yesterday. There was no question of his guilt, and he needed to be kept away from society and prevented from harming anyone else. We didn't need to kill him. In our modern times, we are perfectly capable of housing a dangerous person in a facility for the rest of their lives. Our collective conscious doesn't have to be stained by the grotesque act of state murder and we are protected from further harm from the dangerous individual. But we choose to do otherwise, and that's a mistake.
I've had strong feelings about the death penalty since college. Even when I was card-carrying libertarian, hating on the minimum wage and advocating for the privatization of national parks, I knew the death penalty was wrong. Killing is wrong. It says so in the Ten Commandments some Christians want displayed on our courthouses and in our schools. And yet, we still kill. Collectively, as a group, we murder people we claim deserve it on a semi-regular basis, something we did again yesterday afternoon.
Lethal injection has been the method of choice, for discerning states holding the legal belief that revenge is a necessary component of justice. One drug: the condemned goes to sleep. Two: their heart is peacefully stopped and they die. Unfortunately, that's not how it works in reality. Those peaceful drugs that put a human to sleep so they can be killed just aren't available anymore. The pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the drugs used won't ship it to prisons to be used in executions.
If you're thinking companies shouldn't take sides on a hot-button issue like the death penalty, I refer you to the recent Supreme Court case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which allowed that companies are allowed to make decisions based on sincerely held religious beliefs. Murder or not to murder is a pretty spiritual question, no?
So, without the three-drug cocktail used for a couple decades without much ado, what do we do? Every state does it differently.
One thing states have done is purchase the drug on the black market. In 2010, Arizona and California swapped some killing drugs in a "secret" mission. According to emails, it was done in precisely the way drug deals are depicted on television. Two parties meet in the desert and an exchange takes place. This is not how I want my government to operate.
Other states just play it by ear and use whatever drugs they can get their hot little hands on. This turns each execution in a new and exciting experiment. I wouldn't be surprised if employees in facilities with death chambers have started gambling on the over-under for how long it takes a human to die. Sometimes black humor is the only way to deal with a horrible situation.
A few states have been considering going back to a classic execution method: hanging, electric chair, firing squad. As yet, no state has proposed building a guillotine, but give it time. Eventually we'll either move beyond the death penalty, or we'll have made enough mistakes in chemical executions to overcome our anti-french prejudice.
Some states have put a moratorium on executions until issues about the method and the drug cocktails can be resolved. That seems like a smart move. I honestly can't imagine being one of the people directly involved in an execution. Even a "perfect" execution still results in a dead person. A human corpse, devoid of life and dignity, still and cold: a state you created. It takes a toll emotionally, even doing one's job, and many wardens and correctional officers have described how their jobs affected them. One warden, now an anti-death penalty activist, describes his time as a warden, and the hard lesson he learned (convicts are people) here.
Perhaps you think all the points I've been hammering on are emotional appeals (and they are), and so they shouldn't be taken seriously. In that case, I'd like to get statistical with you about the death penalty.
144 people have been released from death row because of evidence of their innocence since 1973. In the grand scheme of things, that may not sound like a large number. But if we had executed all of those people, America would be among the most prolific serial killers of all time. Benjamin Franklin, paraphrasing a quote from a british jurist, wrote "better than one hundred guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person should suffer."
Perhaps you have a financial reason for supporting the death penalty. The cost of feeding and housing a person can run over $20,000 a year. That's a lot scratch. If a person is sentenced to life without parole at age 18 and they live until age 80, the total cost for their imprisonment is a staggering $1.2 million. I just did that calculation and I'm a little shocked.
But even though $1.2 million is a lot of money, pursuing the death penalty is still more costly. In Maryland, it costs the state (meaning taxpayers) $3 million for a single executed prisoner. That's fiscally irresponsible!
The excess cost of killing someone versus just putting them in a concrete box for the rest of their life might be justified if the death penalty was a deterrent to crime. But it's not. The states with the highest number of executions, mostly the in the South, also have the highest murder rates. If the death penalty was a deterrent to crime, numbers should show murder rates decreasing when execution rates are higher. This is not the case. False assumptions should never be used to justify policy, especially if we are concerned about truth in justice.
And to finally, here's a piece written by the parents of a murdered young woman.
I don't have any more to say, so John Oliver on Last Week Tonight will finish for me.
Today, I am a murderer.
I wrote that sentence and then had to walk away from my computer, watch some cartoons, and try not to think about it for a while. While I didn't personally pull a trigger, administer poison, or brandish a knife, I am nonetheless a murderer. And so is everyone in Arizona today.
Wednesday at about 4:00pm a terrible person was killed in a terrible way, by representatives of my government, acting on my behalf.
Another break to compose myself. This is important stuff, guys.
 |
| TGIFrasier |
I have no sympathy for the man we Arizonans killed yesterday. There was no question of his guilt, and he needed to be kept away from society and prevented from harming anyone else. We didn't need to kill him. In our modern times, we are perfectly capable of housing a dangerous person in a facility for the rest of their lives. Our collective conscious doesn't have to be stained by the grotesque act of state murder and we are protected from further harm from the dangerous individual. But we choose to do otherwise, and that's a mistake.
I've had strong feelings about the death penalty since college. Even when I was card-carrying libertarian, hating on the minimum wage and advocating for the privatization of national parks, I knew the death penalty was wrong. Killing is wrong. It says so in the Ten Commandments some Christians want displayed on our courthouses and in our schools. And yet, we still kill. Collectively, as a group, we murder people we claim deserve it on a semi-regular basis, something we did again yesterday afternoon.
Lethal injection has been the method of choice, for discerning states holding the legal belief that revenge is a necessary component of justice. One drug: the condemned goes to sleep. Two: their heart is peacefully stopped and they die. Unfortunately, that's not how it works in reality. Those peaceful drugs that put a human to sleep so they can be killed just aren't available anymore. The pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the drugs used won't ship it to prisons to be used in executions.
If you're thinking companies shouldn't take sides on a hot-button issue like the death penalty, I refer you to the recent Supreme Court case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which allowed that companies are allowed to make decisions based on sincerely held religious beliefs. Murder or not to murder is a pretty spiritual question, no?
So, without the three-drug cocktail used for a couple decades without much ado, what do we do? Every state does it differently.
One thing states have done is purchase the drug on the black market. In 2010, Arizona and California swapped some killing drugs in a "secret" mission. According to emails, it was done in precisely the way drug deals are depicted on television. Two parties meet in the desert and an exchange takes place. This is not how I want my government to operate.
Other states just play it by ear and use whatever drugs they can get their hot little hands on. This turns each execution in a new and exciting experiment. I wouldn't be surprised if employees in facilities with death chambers have started gambling on the over-under for how long it takes a human to die. Sometimes black humor is the only way to deal with a horrible situation.
 |
| Wrong black humor |
A few states have been considering going back to a classic execution method: hanging, electric chair, firing squad. As yet, no state has proposed building a guillotine, but give it time. Eventually we'll either move beyond the death penalty, or we'll have made enough mistakes in chemical executions to overcome our anti-french prejudice.
 |
| Freedom Fries! |
Some states have put a moratorium on executions until issues about the method and the drug cocktails can be resolved. That seems like a smart move. I honestly can't imagine being one of the people directly involved in an execution. Even a "perfect" execution still results in a dead person. A human corpse, devoid of life and dignity, still and cold: a state you created. It takes a toll emotionally, even doing one's job, and many wardens and correctional officers have described how their jobs affected them. One warden, now an anti-death penalty activist, describes his time as a warden, and the hard lesson he learned (convicts are people) here.
Perhaps you think all the points I've been hammering on are emotional appeals (and they are), and so they shouldn't be taken seriously. In that case, I'd like to get statistical with you about the death penalty.
144 people have been released from death row because of evidence of their innocence since 1973. In the grand scheme of things, that may not sound like a large number. But if we had executed all of those people, America would be among the most prolific serial killers of all time. Benjamin Franklin, paraphrasing a quote from a british jurist, wrote "better than one hundred guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person should suffer."
Perhaps you have a financial reason for supporting the death penalty. The cost of feeding and housing a person can run over $20,000 a year. That's a lot scratch. If a person is sentenced to life without parole at age 18 and they live until age 80, the total cost for their imprisonment is a staggering $1.2 million. I just did that calculation and I'm a little shocked.
 |
| I could buy an island with that money! |
But even though $1.2 million is a lot of money, pursuing the death penalty is still more costly. In Maryland, it costs the state (meaning taxpayers) $3 million for a single executed prisoner. That's fiscally irresponsible!
The excess cost of killing someone versus just putting them in a concrete box for the rest of their life might be justified if the death penalty was a deterrent to crime. But it's not. The states with the highest number of executions, mostly the in the South, also have the highest murder rates. If the death penalty was a deterrent to crime, numbers should show murder rates decreasing when execution rates are higher. This is not the case. False assumptions should never be used to justify policy, especially if we are concerned about truth in justice.
And to finally, here's a piece written by the parents of a murdered young woman.
I don't have any more to say, so John Oliver on Last Week Tonight will finish for me.
