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a sick and perverted spectacle

a sick and perverted spectacle

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A sick and perverted spectacle …

Those are the words Stanley Tookie Williams used to characterize his impending execution. Williams was executed early this morning, after appeals for a stay of execution were denied by the California Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court, and after a plea for clemency was rejected by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It was a sick and perverted spectacle …

… not because an innocent man was put to death. It is entirely possible that Williams did not commit the murders for which he was convicted; he always maintained his innocence. Or, as is likely and most believe, he really did do the crimes. Either way, it doesn’t matter.

… not because a changed man, a redeemed man, a man doing society much good was put to death. He may well have become a transformed man, a good man; those nominating him for Nobel Prizes for peace and literature certainly thought so. Or maybe it was all a fraud or a too convenient way to earn pity and support. Either way, it doesn’t matter.

… not because the courts or the governor failed to step in and acknowledge his transformation and show him mercy. They were simply doing their job, interpreting and enforcing the law as it stands. It doesn’t matter.

No, what matters is the law itself, the law of the land that permits this most cruel and unusual punishment. That law is sick and perverted and must be changed. That law accomplishes no useful purpose other than retribution — society exacting its revenge and satisfying its blood lust against those who have done it injury, whether real or perceived. That law diminishes our humanity, devalues human life, and damages the integrity of our advocacy of human rights.

Our need for revenge (a need that can never be satisfied) is a sickness, a sickness that eats away at the soul of our society and only proliferates a culture of violence. Our demand for the forfeiture of a life is a perversion, a perversion of the values and principles for which we claim to stand — justice, mercy, freedom, generosity, the precedence of right over might, and inalienable human dignity.

It was a sick and perverted spectacle …

a shameful milestone

a shameful milestone

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The execution by lethal injection of Kenneth Lee Boyd in North Carolina marked the 1000th execution in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. A report by Amnesty International reveals that in 2004, the United States executed more human beings than any other nation with the exception of China, Iran, and Vietnam. For more on today’s execution and the reaction to it, click on the following link:

World News Article | Reuters.co.uk

why the death penalty is wrong

why the death penalty is wrong

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The death penalty is wrong because it serves no moral or practical purpose.

1) The death penalty is not an effective deterrent. Jeffrey Fagan, Columbia Law School professor, offers this testimony:

Recent studies claiming that executions reduce murders have fueled the revival of deterrence as a rationale to expand the use of capital punishment. Such strong claims are not unusual in either the social or natural sciences, but like nearly all claims of strong causal effects from any social or legal intervention, the claims of deterrenceĀ fall apart under close scrutiny. These new studies are fraught with technical and conceptual errors … These studies fail to reach the demanding standards of social science to make such strong claims, standards such as replication and basic comparisons with other scenarios. Some simple examples and contrasts, including a careful analysis of the experience in New York State compared to others, lead to a rejection of the idea that either death sentences or executions deter murder.

2) The death penalty does not do justice, if justice is understood as upholding and encouraging lawfulness and as improving the moral and civic character of a society as a whole. The death penalty debases a society, encourages the belief in violence as an appropriate tool for solving social problems, and appeals to the perhaps understandable, but abhorrent and indefensible, desire for revenge.

3) The use of the death penalty in the “best” of circumstances is subject to the horrifying risk of executing innocent people and the unconscionable reality of unequal application. And in the “worst” of circumstances? In the hands of unethical and self-serving political leadership, the death penalty is a tool of oppression and outright injustice.

I am saddened — and angry — that Iowa legislators are once more trying to reintroduce the death penalty into the Iowa criminal code after an absence of forty years. They exploit our feelings of anger and horror and helplessness at a very public and heinous act of violence to advance their political agenda, while careful analysis and moral leadership go out the window. Again and again, Iowa’s lawmakers have said “No!” to the reintroduction of the death penalty, even in the face of other terrible acts of violence. I do hope and pray that a comparable commitment to real justice will once more prevail.