First off, I do not believe in state-sanctioned killing. I think the death penalty is medieval, immoral, and a non-deterrent. Basically, the death penalty is all about punishment and vengeance by the state, which to me is a bit too fascistic for my taste. Plus, from an economic standpoint, it costs far more to society in terms of court and legal costs to litigate a death sentence through the appeal process than warehousing a killer for life.
However, the main reason I don't believe in the death penalty is because I don't have the stomach as a citizen to condemn another human being to death. Since I'm not convinced of the existence of an afterlife, I couldn't be the one to usher another person into the eternal void, no matter the heinous nature of his or her offense. So if I can't accept that responsibility, then I have no right to expect others to; hence, my opposition.
With that said, capital punishment is still legal in many states and many states are having a hard time finding merciful ways of murdering criminals. We've seen stories of strapped-down convicts writhing in agony for minutes on end because the executioners couldn't get the drugs quite right. Or how about Mr. Sparky and the tendency in some past executions not to get the voltages right, resulting in badly scorched, though not quite dead, electric chair occupants.
And there is also the problem of gaining cooperation from the medical community and drug companies to provide expertise and reliably effective materials for killing purposes.
Even with those concerns, my sympathy doesn't lie with the perps so much, but with the poor souls who are tasked with administering the coup de grace. Would you want to be the one responsible for injecting the deadly dose, throwing the switch, turning on the gas? I know it would cause me some sleepless nights.
So what I propose is a blameless procedure that is nearly foolproof and merciful. It's called the firing squad. Five professional marksmen, four bullets and one blank. In that way, each shooter has plausible deniability that he didn't commit murder. And, the likelihood that anyone could survive four professionally delivered rounds to the head is extremely remote.
Sure, it could get a little messy, even if the guy is wearing a dark hood, but why shouldn't it be messy? Even when carried out by the state.
However, the main reason I don't believe in the death penalty is because I don't have the stomach as a citizen to condemn another human being to death. Since I'm not convinced of the existence of an afterlife, I couldn't be the one to usher another person into the eternal void, no matter the heinous nature of his or her offense. So if I can't accept that responsibility, then I have no right to expect others to; hence, my opposition.
With that said, capital punishment is still legal in many states and many states are having a hard time finding merciful ways of murdering criminals. We've seen stories of strapped-down convicts writhing in agony for minutes on end because the executioners couldn't get the drugs quite right. Or how about Mr. Sparky and the tendency in some past executions not to get the voltages right, resulting in badly scorched, though not quite dead, electric chair occupants.
And there is also the problem of gaining cooperation from the medical community and drug companies to provide expertise and reliably effective materials for killing purposes.
Even with those concerns, my sympathy doesn't lie with the perps so much, but with the poor souls who are tasked with administering the coup de grace. Would you want to be the one responsible for injecting the deadly dose, throwing the switch, turning on the gas? I know it would cause me some sleepless nights.
So what I propose is a blameless procedure that is nearly foolproof and merciful. It's called the firing squad. Five professional marksmen, four bullets and one blank. In that way, each shooter has plausible deniability that he didn't commit murder. And, the likelihood that anyone could survive four professionally delivered rounds to the head is extremely remote.
Sure, it could get a little messy, even if the guy is wearing a dark hood, but why shouldn't it be messy? Even when carried out by the state.
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