I would
like to comment on Rebekah Devlin’s article: What good will come from yet another person dying? written on Wednesday 25 July 2012. There is one point I
agree with what she wrote, the US should be closely examining its
gun laws. However, I do not agree with most of what she wrote.
AN eye for
an eye. It's the Bible verse that so often gets quoted when people try to
justify the death penalty. But if they bothered to read the rest of the book
they'd see it also teaches about love, compassion and forgiveness.
Comment: Do not
mix up the love and justice of God. Matthew Henry, John Calvin and St. Thomas Aquinas all acknowledge that the state has the right to protect its citizens
from evildoers.
But what
good will come from yet another person dying?
Comment: It
prevents the violent criminal from killing again and it provides justice for
the victims and their families. Immanuel Kant, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Alex Kozinski, Chalerm Ubumrung and Lech Aleksander Kaczyński all agree that it is good for a killer to pay
with his life.
Will it
bring back those beautiful people, like six-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan
who was killed, while her pregnant mother was seriously injured?
Comment: Of
course, it will never bring those innocent victims back to life but putting
James Holmes in prison, will not either. No punishment will.
Becoming a
murderer in response to murder is not the answer. James Holmes is still a human
being.
Comment: The state
is not being a murderer in response to murder, the state is being an
executioner. To compare execution to murder is like comparing incarceration to
kidnapping and slavery, fines to extortions, restitutions to thefts and a
defensive war to an aggressive war. James Holmes is still a human being but his
crime was guilty beyond any doubt and he has taken lives, so he must forfeit
his.
Whether you
believe some people are just plain evil or whether there are some very serious
mental health issues at work, the death penalty is not the answer.
Death is
perhaps too good for him.
Why do we
think ending someone's life is the worst punishment?
Comment: Please
refer to Erich Maria Remarque. If death is not an answer, I do not think life
imprisonment is either.
By killing
Holmes, you are removing the possibility of him ever coming to a genuine place
of remorse. No person is a lost cause.
Comment: For the
worst murderers, life in prison is just not enough punishment.
People will
say why waste taxpayer dollars fitting the bill to house, feed and keep
murderers for the rest of their lives? It's the price we pay for a civilized
society.
Comment: Immanuel
Kant once said, “A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has
taken somebody else's life is simply immoral.”
And there
is always the risk that an innocent person will be put to death. Since 1973,
140 people in 26 states in the US have been released from death row because
evidence has been found to clear them. Imagine how many more innocent people
have been put to death.
Comment:
Of
those 140 people, only a fraction of them are factually innocent and the rest
are legally innocent. The justice system will learn from their mistakes by
having proper safeguard procedures. However, every year, there are many
American people being murdered by criminals being released from prisons. This
is even a more important thing to be concerned about.
Only 21 out
of 198 countries carried out executions in 2011 - a drop of a third on a decade
earlier, however there has been a significant increase in deaths in Iran, Iraq
and Saudi Arabia.
At least
680 people were put to death last year and that doesn't include China's figures
where thousands of people are executed each year. North Korea, Somalia, Saudi
Arabia, Yemen and the US are the most prolific executioners of people. Are
these the countries America really wants as its contemporaries?
Comment:
It
is pointless comparing America to all these countries. America’s neighbor
across the Pacific, Japan has the death penalty too. I do not agree with what
most of the rulers of those countries above does but I have to admit that countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia are excellent
in fighting crime.
In 2011, Illinois
became the 16th US state to abolish the death penalty. More must follow. There
are no statistics to back up the fact that the death penalty actually deters
criminals.
Comment:
By
telling more states to abolish the death penalty, do not be surprise to see an
increase in the homicide rates in those states, just take a look at what happen
to Illinois this year. There are a few examples to back up that the death
penalty actually deters criminals. Since the
restoration of the death penalty in 1976, further evidence confirms the
deterrent effect of the death penalty. Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, a
strong opponent of the death penalty, has conceded as much. “Of course,
the death penalty deters some crimes, that’s why you have to pay more for a hit
man in a death penalty state than a non-death penalty state.” [Debate
among Paul Cassell, Alan Dershowitz, and Wendy Kamenar on the death penalty (Harvard
Law School, Mar. 22, 1995)]
Two more examples
are:
The murder of Jitka Vesel
Officer
According
to the Death Penalty Information Center in the US, in 2010, the average murder
rate of death penalty states was 4.6 (murder rates per 100,000 people), while
the average for those states without the death penalty was 2.9.
And a
survey of leading US criminologists found that the overwhelming majority did
not believe that the death penalty did anything to deter homicide.
Some 87 per
cent believed that the abolition of the death penalty would not have any
significant effect on murder rates.
Comment:
Saying
that states without the death penalty has lower homicide than states that have
it is like comparing America to Brazil. Brazil (has no death penalty except for
war crimes) and they have a higher homicide rates than America. P.S Some 87 per cent believed that the abolition
of the death penalty would not have any significant effect on murder rates.
– it will lead to an increase in homicide! In sum, between 1965 and 1980,
there was practically no death penalty in the United States, and for 10 of
those 16 years - 1967-76 - there was literally no death penalty: a
national moratorium.
What was the effect of
making capital punishment unavailable for a decade and a half? Did a moratorium
on executions save innocent lives - or cost them?
The data
are brutal. Between 1965 and 1980, annual murders in the United States
skyrocketed, rising from 9,960 to 23,040. The murder rate - homicides per
100,000 persons - doubled from 5.1 to 10.2.
American
Renny Cushing's father was shot dead in front of his mother in 1998. Since then
he has become an anti-death penalty campaigner.
"If we
let those who kill turn us into murderers, evil triumphs and we're all worse
off," he said.
Comment:
Cushing belongs to victims’ families who are
against the death penalty, the vast majority of victims’ families want their
killers to be executed. 