The American state of Missouri may have just executed an innocent man, even after serious reasons to doubt his conviction emerged. What do the inmates on death row tend to say before they die?
Maybe such testament humanizes these departed, maybe not. But it DOES dehumanize us, the living. The hypocrisy re: the value of life is abundantly clear. If life itself has meaning, taking it in vengeance (or for any reason, really) cancels that meaning. One would hope we had evolved further but disappointingly not.
This makes me terribly sad. There is such a culture of death here. I am opposed to the death penalty (as is the rest of the Western world), because of our broken judicial system, because it isn’t a deterrent, and because it makes us a worse society. I’m not saying I wouldn’t privately wish someone dead who, say, murdered someone close to me, but it is still is wrong.
Immediately after reading this, Substack coincidentally invited me to a pro-life podcast subscription captioned “Without the right to life all other rights are meaningless”. I wonder if those who are strongly pro-life are equally in favour of the death penalty or not – a subject for Brian’s intellect perhaps ? Albeit a perilous subject, there is nowhere he fears to tread it seems. I wouldn’t blame him for taking Zorro for a walk instead though😉. Appalling violence is horrendous, harrowing, it tears at your heart, and we can only have the utmost compassion for the victims and their families. At the same time I am against the death penalty and always have been – it’s not because of any doctrine - I simply feel it in my being. I am grateful I live in one of the 112 countries in which the death penalty is not used (compared with 48 in 1991).
While I do not agree with the death penalty, I think those that sentenced the soul should have to watch. Now that I think about it, I think we should ALL have to watch. How dare we look the other way. It is horrific and cruel. I believe we have failed as a society long before heinous crimes are committed.
Thank you Brian. We should not rest in peace with accepting unjustifiable things we justify as justice. Man's capacity to accept the unacceptable to justify the unjustifiable may be his greatest vulnerability as the story telling rationalizing species
Brian might have ended his exposure of this inhumanity by adding if you live in a state with the death penalty on the books, let your state representives know you are against the death penalty.
I've never been able to figure out what the death penalty actually accomplishes, beyond some savings on room and board. It certainly doesn't seem to be a disincentive. I have to admit that my reaction to a couple of executions has been "good!" Those were primarily Timothy McVeigh and a guy called Charles Rodham Campbell who killed the woman he had raped a decade earlier along with her young daughter and a neighbor--all in the most brutal way. I haven't LIKED myself for thinking "good" but it reminds me that all of us are prey to the urge for revenge.
But there was no doubt at all about the guilt of those two. I agree that with our faulty criminal justice system, where prosecutorial misconduct is all too often at the root of a conviction, there should NEVER be an execution where the slightest evidence of innocence is still open. As to whether there should be a death penalty for the clearly guilty of clearly horrendous crimes, I remain agnostic, always remembering that occasional thought "good" and shaking my head at myself.
A court that ignores CONSIDERABLE evidence of innocence, as with Marcellus Williams, is beyond the pale.
Maybe such testament humanizes these departed, maybe not. But it DOES dehumanize us, the living. The hypocrisy re: the value of life is abundantly clear. If life itself has meaning, taking it in vengeance (or for any reason, really) cancels that meaning. One would hope we had evolved further but disappointingly not.
This makes me terribly sad. There is such a culture of death here. I am opposed to the death penalty (as is the rest of the Western world), because of our broken judicial system, because it isn’t a deterrent, and because it makes us a worse society. I’m not saying I wouldn’t privately wish someone dead who, say, murdered someone close to me, but it is still is wrong.
Immediately after reading this, Substack coincidentally invited me to a pro-life podcast subscription captioned “Without the right to life all other rights are meaningless”. I wonder if those who are strongly pro-life are equally in favour of the death penalty or not – a subject for Brian’s intellect perhaps ? Albeit a perilous subject, there is nowhere he fears to tread it seems. I wouldn’t blame him for taking Zorro for a walk instead though😉. Appalling violence is horrendous, harrowing, it tears at your heart, and we can only have the utmost compassion for the victims and their families. At the same time I am against the death penalty and always have been – it’s not because of any doctrine - I simply feel it in my being. I am grateful I live in one of the 112 countries in which the death penalty is not used (compared with 48 in 1991).
While I do not agree with the death penalty, I think those that sentenced the soul should have to watch. Now that I think about it, I think we should ALL have to watch. How dare we look the other way. It is horrific and cruel. I believe we have failed as a society long before heinous crimes are committed.
Thank you Brian. We should not rest in peace with accepting unjustifiable things we justify as justice. Man's capacity to accept the unacceptable to justify the unjustifiable may be his greatest vulnerability as the story telling rationalizing species
Brian might have ended his exposure of this inhumanity by adding if you live in a state with the death penalty on the books, let your state representives know you are against the death penalty.
I've never been able to figure out what the death penalty actually accomplishes, beyond some savings on room and board. It certainly doesn't seem to be a disincentive. I have to admit that my reaction to a couple of executions has been "good!" Those were primarily Timothy McVeigh and a guy called Charles Rodham Campbell who killed the woman he had raped a decade earlier along with her young daughter and a neighbor--all in the most brutal way. I haven't LIKED myself for thinking "good" but it reminds me that all of us are prey to the urge for revenge.
But there was no doubt at all about the guilt of those two. I agree that with our faulty criminal justice system, where prosecutorial misconduct is all too often at the root of a conviction, there should NEVER be an execution where the slightest evidence of innocence is still open. As to whether there should be a death penalty for the clearly guilty of clearly horrendous crimes, I remain agnostic, always remembering that occasional thought "good" and shaking my head at myself.
A court that ignores CONSIDERABLE evidence of innocence, as with Marcellus Williams, is beyond the pale.
😪
Absolutely unbearable.
It's all so unforgivably sad and atrocious.