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Category: death penalty

barbaric

barbaric

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Last night, Arkansas executed two men by lethal injection, after carrying out its first execution in twelve years last Thursday, making three men put to death in five days. It seems the state will not achieve its objective of executing eight men in eleven days, but a fourth is scheduled to be put to death later this week.

Is this justice? Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, says it is: “After more than 20 years, justice has prevailed for the family of Stacey Errickson. I reviewed this case thoroughly and determined that clemency should not be granted. I appreciate the patience and long-suffering of the Errickson family through this ordeal. This is a serious and reflective time in our state and it is important for the Errickson family and all Arkansans to know that in this case our laws ended in justice.” Will justice not be satisfied, can an aggrieved family not heal, unless and until a life is taken? Can we only absolve blood by taking more blood?

Aren’t we better than that? Can’t we be better than that?

Here is the roll call of the countries of the world which carried out the most executions in 2016: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, North Korea, and the United States. Is this the company we want to keep? Are these the nations whose justice systems we want to emulate? Granted, we do not carry out the nearly the number of executions that China and Iran and Saudi Arabia do, but killing is killing. Killing more or less doesn’t make it better or worse.

One hundred and seven nations of the world have absolutely prohibited capital punishment. Because they understand it is barbaric …

a tale of two florida prosecutors

a tale of two florida prosecutors

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1) Miami-Dade prosecutor Katherine Fernandez Rundle declined to press charges in the case of Darren Rainey, a schizophrenic prison inmate who died in June 2012 after being locked in a hot shower for two hours, saying that “the evidence does not show that Rainey’s well-being was grossly disregarded by the correctional staff.”

However,

witnesses [interviewed by the Miami Herald] including a nurse on duty that night, and several inmates interviewed by the Herald over the past two years, have said that two corrections officers, Cornelius Thompson and Roland Clark, forced Rainey into an enclosed, locked shower stall and that the water had been cranked as high as 180 degrees from a neighboring room, where the heat controls were. … Rainey screamed in terror and begged to be let out for more than an hour until he collapsed and died.

And,

when his body was pulled out, nurses said there were burns on 90 percent of his body. A nurse said his body temperature was too high to register with a thermometer. And his skin fell off at the touch.

Rainey was serving a two-year sentence for cocaine possession.

When a mentally-ill minor drug offender is imprisoned, does he forfeit all his rights, all his human rights, including the right to live? Who protects him? (If not us?) Who will ensure him justice? (If not us?)

2) Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala announced last Thursday that she will not pursue death sentences for any capital cases during her time in office. That earned her a angry rebuke from Florida governor Rick Scott who removed from her jurisdiction the high profile case of a man charged with killing a police officer, saying she “has made it clear that she will not fight for justice.”

Because only a death satisfies justice? If blood revenge is the only means of “fighting for justice” (which is what the death penalty is, after all, blood revenge), what does that say about us?

Death sentences are notoriously inequitable in their application, do not provide any deterrence, cost taxpayers more, do not bring “resolution” to grieving families, rather, and as Ayala observed, “cases drag on for years, adding to victims’ anguish.” Could it be that refusing to pursue death sentences is in fact “fighting for justice?” Because the question remains, beyond any concerns about fairness and effectiveness, is killing by the state just? Or is it an overreach and abuse of power and a corrosive threat to our humanity?

Which of these prosecutors is fighting for justice? Which showed courage? Which represents the best of who we are as human beings?

amen!

amen!

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By a 82-56 margin, the Maryland House of Delegates voted Friday to ban the death penalty in that state. The bill now goes to the desk of Gov. Martin O’Malley, who has pledged to sign it.

“To govern is to choose, and at a time where we understand the things that actually work to reduce violent crime, when we understand how lives can be saved, we have a moral responsibility to do more of the things that work to save lives,” O’Malley said at a news conference.

“We also have a moral responsibility to stop doing the things that are wasteful, and that are expensive, and do not work, and do not save lives, and that I would argue run contrary to the deeper principles that unite us as Marylanders, as Americans, and as human beings,” O’Malley added.

one more state gives up the death penalty

one more state gives up the death penalty

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Yesterday, Connecticut became the seventeenth state to vote to outlaw the death penalty. May the thirty-three remaining states with death penalty provisions still enacted in state law be soon to follow!

Capital punishment can certainly be a hot button political issue, but it is difficult to imagine how a group of legislators voting to abolish the death penalty would do so to score political points.  Such a vote seems to me to be purely a matter of conscience …

  • feeling that the risks of a miscarriage of justice are too high;
  • feeling that the punishment is too often unevenly applied;
  • feeling that empowering the state to take life is putting too much power in the hands of fallible people;
  • feeling that the virtues of mercy far outweigh the questionable satisfactions of vengeance.

Just as mercy in a single human being is a sign of strength and character and spiritual maturity, just so is mercy in a human society a mark of strength and character and spiritual maturity.

Death Penalty Repeal Goes to Connecticut Governor

For Connecticut Nun, Death Penalty Debate Is Personal

justice stevens disavows the death penalty

justice stevens disavows the death penalty

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In an opinion released on Wednesday, United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote:

I have relied on my own experience in reaching the conclusion that the imposition of the death penalty represents “the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes. A penalty with such negligible returns to the state (is) patently excessive and cruel and unusual punishment violative of the Eighth Amendment.”

Absolutely right …

It is difficult for me to discern even a “marginal” contribution to the public good. What does the death penalty accomplish, except to satisfy an unholy desire for retribution or revenge? It does not make people better or society safer. On the contrary, it reinforces a culture of violence and encourages the least helpful — and the least noble — impulses in a victimized society.

As a nation that proclaims itself a defender of liberty and human rights, it would only be right for us to lead the rest of the world toward the total abolition of the death penalty, but we aren’t. We aren’t leading. We’re not even following.

a prayer for good friday

a prayer for good friday

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Lord Jesus, forgive us for all the ways we deny you …

… by remaining quiet in the shadows, not daring to speak our faith in the public arena
… by quietly going about our own business, while neglecting to wonder what your business might be
… by being more American than Christian, more the children of our culture than the children of God
… by adopting a lifestyle and a system of values that are indistinguishable from the rest of the world, pursuing wealth instead of justice, accumulating things instead of sharing generously, protecting ourselves whatever the cost instead of showing mercy whatever the cost
… by approving of revenge, calling it “being tough on crime” or “protecting our national interest”
… by approving of greed, calling it “the entreprenurial spirit” or “the natural workings of a market economy”
… by approving of hate, calling it “defending the faith” or “protecting family values”

Forgive us, Lord Jesus …

We know that you will. We know that you will never deny us. We know that you will welcome us with joy when we confess our sins and confess our need of you. We know that you know that we do love you and want to learn to love you better.

May it be so. May we love you as you have loved us and love us still … and may we show it by refusing to deny you.

renewed debate about lethal injection

renewed debate about lethal injection

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From an article by Oren Dorell and Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY:

The questions over lethal injection that have led executions to be halted in Florida and California are likely to curb the use of the death penalty across the USA, according to analysts who support capital punishment and others who oppose it.

However, it’s unclear whether the increasing focus on whether lethal injection is unconstitutionally painful represents a significant and lasting turn against the death penalty or a temporary slowdown in executions that will end once procedures for injections are improved.

“I think we’re headed towards fewer executions,” says Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham University Law School who was on the U.S. Sentencing Commission from 1994 to 1997. She says a range of problems in the nation’s death penalty system – unqualified public defenders, the need for more DNA testing and questions about lethal injections, for example – have prevented capital punishment from being applied fairly.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty, disagrees that the decline will last.

He calls the controversy over lethal injection – which is used in nearly all of the 38 states that have the death penalty – “a significant but temporary setback” for capital punishment that will lead to fewer executions only until problems with injections are resolved.

He notes that public opinion surveys consistently have shown that about two-thirds of Americans support the death penalty.

Scheidegger says the debate over injections is somewhat overblown. “Why are we that concerned about whether a convicted murderer feels some pain at death?” he asks. “It’s supposed to be punishment.”

I agree with Mr. Scheidegger, that whether a convicted murdered feels some pain at death is not the issue. In fact, I have long believed that lethal injection is an especially cruel form of punishment precisely because it is too easy and too painless, because it masks the horror of what we are doing — intentionally taking the life of another human being. Lethal injection makes it too easy for us to pretend we are being “humane” even as we are destroying a piece of humanity … a piece of our humanity. Any execution, by any means, devalues human life and cedes to us a power which does not belong to us and which we are incapable of wielding fairly even if it were.

wise words from amnesty international on the saddam verdict

wise words from amnesty international on the saddam verdict

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From Malcolm Smart of Amnesty International:

Every accused has a right to a fair trial, whatever the magnitude of the charge against them. This plain fact was routinely ignored through the decades of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. His overthrow opened the opportunity to restore this basic right and, at the same time, to ensure, fairly, accountability for the crimes of the past. It is an opportunity missed and made worse by the imposition of the death penalty.

Read the rest of the Amnesty International commentary on the Saddam trial.

Tony Blair also acknowledged Britain’s opposition to the death sentence: We are against the death penalty … whether it’s Saddam or anybody else.