Among the most over-written topics of column writers are abortion, the war on Iraq and the death penalty. As the author of a bi-monthly column, I vowed not to write about such hacky topics as these.
I recently changed my mind after seeing "The Life of David Gale," an exceedingly interesting film starring Kevin Spacey and Kate Winslet. The film shows the extremes three people go to in order to convey how wrong the death penalty is. Not to spoil the ending for you, but one of them is even put to death for it.
While I myself am not ready to die for my stance on the death penalty, I am willing to succumb to the vast amount of columns in the world dedicated to the topic.
The death penalty is not only morally wrong, but it is a contradictory system of the U.S. government.
The death penalty is like smacking a child in the face for hitting another. It is like getting angry with your spouse for cheating on you when you have been cheating on them all along. In other words, one learns from what they see, not from what they are told.
The death penalty is legalized killing and to tell someone killing is wrong, only to kill him or her when he or she does so, is infinitely contradictory. To back me up is the fact that there are more murders in the United States than any other country in the world. The United States is also one of the last civilized countries to condone legalized killing. Do I sense some sort of correlation?
Supporters of the death penalty typically choose to do so for reasons based purely on their emotions. They think that a man who, lets say...kills his wife and children, does not deserve to live. He deserves to die because he does not respect inherent laws of civilization.
But what they do not understand is that his government, by practicing legalized killing, has taught him that killing is a viable punishment.
This is not a two-way street. Killing is either right or wrong, and under no circumstances can it possibly be both.
Furthermore, killing 500 guilty men is not worth killing one innocent one. It has been proven time and time again that innocent people are put to death. Only later is it proven that they were not guilty of anything but not having the right evidence to exonerate them. Had they been sentenced to life, new evidence could free them. But if they are killed, there is no way to make up for it.
Can you just imagine being on death row and going through the ordeal of being electrocuted or lethally injected when you know you are innocent? It must be shear torture.
God forbid if either me or a member of my family is murdered, but if anything like that were to happen, I would not wish death on the perpetrator. What I would want is for that person to sit in a six by eight foot cell for the rest of their life, thinking how wrong and utterly stupid it is to kill. I would take comfort in knowing they are living the rest of their life with regret and loss, not given the easy way out with death.
A colleague of mine recently debated with me on the issue and brought up the terrorists of Sept. 11, 2001. "So you don't think we should have put them to death if they had survived?" he asked me incredulously.
Again, I say absolutely not. While I understand their death could bring some sort of closure for the families of victims, I can't help but think what sheer torture they would endure spending the rest of their lives in an American institution surrounded by Americans who hate them. For people to whom death is not a punishment, but something that makes them martyrs, living out a life in America would be more representative of a justice system I want to live under.
So, while I have conformed to writing on such an over-written topic, I think the only conclusion you should come to after reading it is that the death penalty is an illogical system and should, under no circumstances, be accepted as right or as a solution to killing.
After all, would you really teach your dog not to pee on the carpet by peeing on it yourself?
Amanda Lee Myers is the Editor-in-Chief of the Web Devil. Reach her at amanda.l.myers@asu.edu.
