Republicans don't like that people on death row keep appealing their sentenc.e They like even less the fact that in federal appeals, some 40% of those cases were actually overturned. To fix the situation, reasonable people might consider making the capital punishment process more fair. Nope. Republicans want to reduce appeals. The bloodlust in this country is appalling. Evidence mounts that our process is unbelievably biased toward people of color and the poor. If you are both of those and charged in Texas, your odds drop even further.
I hear how great out country is. I even believe some of it. Then I see something like this that makes me think of barbaric countries where people are executed haphazardly, or of our own history where people were lynched publicly and then sold postcards to commemorate.
This disgusts me.
6 comments:
And if you're mentally retarded and George W. is the one in charge of the voltage switch, God help you.
It's the culture of death in action. Americans seem to have a mythology around killing, that's its somehow redemptive.
The "Christian" Right, I'm sure, will applaude this. They'll pull the same old OT passages to justify their thinly veiled hatred of criminals. No love. Just vengence. And Jesus wepts.
kgp
I think kgp answered Greg's question. I don't think Christians on the right care about people on death row.
Alice brings up a good point. There has been such resistance on the right to such movements as the Innocence Project and death row inmates using new technology on existing DNA samples to prove their innocence. Whether the inmate is innocent or truly guilty, they deserve to have every opportunity to prove it one way or the other. Now I certainly don't agree with the appeals process lasting 15 to 25 years, which results in things like California death row inmates dying of old age in prison before their execution date. Quite frankly, I'm not totally sure how I feel about the death penalty in general. But regardless of how I feel, you are dealing with ending a human life. You'd better make for damn sure that the right person is behind bars before sticking the lethal injection in their arm.
For what it is worth, I think the death penalty is the public policy equivalent of a bug light. People buy them and hang them on the porch thinking it kills mosquitoes, but it doesn't. It kills the wrong bugs.
People tolerate the death penalty partially for what kgp says (a culture of death and cult of violence) and partially because it is dramatic and makes them think they are doing something about crime. But with no proof of deterence and much proof of executing the wrong people, that bug light just starts to look barbaric.
And the public outcry against the Court's decision to stop executing juveniles was simply outlandish. So what if the court made note of the fact that country after country is considering it cruel and unusual punishment? There are times that world view needs to be looked at when considering standards for what counts as cruel and unusual. But the final decision was still based on our own laws and Constitution. And for anyone to object to a ruling against killing kids or the mentally retarded is ... well ... retarded!
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