One of Two Rejected Columns

Last summer I tried to get a position as one of the Journal Sentinel's community columnists. Here is one of the two essays I submitted to the paper. Unfortunately I wasn't good enough to make the cut. Instead they chose a person who, in his essay on the death penalty, claimed that people who would be qualified for death are actually getting out of jail. Of course, we all know that people who the death penalty, especially in Wisconsin, is being suggested for will not get out of jail. Yet the Journal printed his crap. Maybe I shouldn't have called myself a Marxist Socialist in my cover letter. Oh well.



How is it that at a time when the entire world is moving in more humane directions Wisconsin has decided to join the ranks of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, Egypt, Sudan and Afghanistan? How has it come that keeping criminals locked up for good is no longer good enough? With everything facing us in the world today why are people clamoring to bring back the death penalty? Unless people see it as some sort of deterent there is no logic in bringing it back. The only problem is it isn’t a deterent.
The law that this referendum proposes we enact would require DNA evidence to support the conviction in order for the death penalty to be administered. Why is that? It is because both the authors of this bill, and the voting public, know that far too many people have been let off of death row due to DNA evidence. So by putting it into the bill they are admitting that in the past the death penalty had some major problems but this will “correct” those flaws. They also should have set it up in a way so that it wouldn’t be used against minorities in a disproportional way that it has been used in the past.
The law would be set up so only the vilest of murderers would be killed. The type of person who commits the crimes necessary of this threshold doesn’t think of anything reality based. It is ridiculous to think that someone who is getting ready to go out and act in such horrendous way thinks beforehand. The people who commit these hideous crimes don’t sit down before and make a pro and cons list. This law is designed for people who don’t think about consequences. So where is the deterent?
In the last several years we have seen a nationwide switch on the death penalty. Say what you want about Former Illinios Governor George Ryan but even he, a Republican, put a moratorium on the use of the death penalty because so many death row inmates had been exonerated. The Supreme Court has dealt with a number of cases involving the adminstration of the death penalty when the crime was committed by a child or of some one who is mentally handicapped. In both instance they sided with life.
On my walk home from work one day I saw a bumper sticker that stuck with me, it said, “Our Government kills people who kill people to show it is wrong to kill people.” That pretty much sums up the logic behind the death penalty. What really is the benefit of having the state kill some of the worst murderers, who obviously the death penalty was no deterrent, instead of keep them behind bars for life?
Often the same people who advocate using the state to kill people are the same ones who oppose allowing a person near death from taking their own life and/or believe aborting a zygote is murder. Many of them use the Bible as their moral justification by going back to Exodus, Leviticus or Duetoronomy, the law books, yet they do so in a disingenuous self-serving way. These people are called Christians presumably because they follow the teachings of Christ. Christ never called for this type of punishment to be handed out. He asked for the opposite. While it may be impossible to “turn the other cheek” with murderers like these, once they are locked up behind bars they no longer are a threat to humanity.
So if the death penalty doesn’t serve as a detterent and locking up people makes them no longer a threat to society then why the need to kill these people? It must be that they feel murdering a murderer is a just punishment. Murder is wrong plain and simple. Being a resident of Wisconsin I would feel more comfortable knowing my state isn’t taking part in the killing of another human being no matter how terrible.