Who We Are

The rest of the civilized world has abolished the death penalty. A large majority of countries in the world have abolished the death penalty.

It's a requirement for joining the European Union. It has been eradicated in most of western and eastern Europe. It was repeated in South America after the end of apartheid as it was considered a racist tool. It's still used by the US, China, Japan and some of the Muslim nations.

The US is therefore at odds with most of the world's democracies and at an odd place to be harping on human rights, especially in light of recent torture issues. We are the only country to execute minors, which is against international law. The other countries (in Africa and Middle East) that used to do so have changed their laws.

What an embarrassment when the matter comes up at the UN or some other international body. We were kicked off the Human Rights commission there because of it. When I've travelled, I've been asked about it. Alot. I think that countries such as Canada no longer want us to extradite people out in order to execute them.

I've heard DJs frying bacon on the radio as a "joke" on days when notorious criminals were executed. This was not on liberal radio.

"Thou shalt not kill." If that were followed, I would consider aligning more with religious tradition.

I wouldn't want the state to impose the death penalty on someone who murdered my family member or loved one. I'd want to do it myself. With my bare hands.

And that's the point.

Our laws are our agreement to be civilized in the face of abject barbarism. In the face of unspeakable cruelty. When confronted with the most baseless inhumanity one person could impose upon another.

Opposing the death penalty isn't saying yes to murderers. It's saying no to our own reactionary impulses which, given free reign, would destroy our own souls.

Good points, Casey.

The death penalty does seem more about retribution than safety.

However, I can understand it, even if I can't endorse it.

An Eye for an Eye
or
Turn the other Cheek

Can it be both?

Thinking that executing a murderer can somehow result in justice for the murder he did reminds me of thinking that waging war against nations can somehow impact terrorism.

The death penalty is more expensive than a life sentence. It is "cruel and unusual," therefore not covered under the Bill of Rights. Killing people who kill people does not show killing is wrong and has not so for proved to be a deterrent. Someone can be put to death though innocent, through human error, as well as the mentally ill and retarded. It doesn't bring the victim back to life.

Ask our President about the death penalty.

The death penalty is also arbitrary and has been used in a racially unbalanced way. It's racist, classist and works against those who can't afford a good lawyer.

It makes man play God. This moral argument transcends the legal arguemnts. The death penalty (state murder) has never been proven to deter crime. Granted, the executed can not be paroled and return to kill, but this is a crude and barbaric argument. It goes back to blood vengeance and as such is futile.

When I was 20 years old, the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty to be arbitrary but individual states have gradually undermined this. It's legal in 38 states.

Congratulations to New Jersey for entering this century.

NMP

The death penalty is very popular here in California - so much so, that Democratic former governor Gray Davis campaigned as a death penalty proponent, and smeared Richard Riordan (Republican, former mayor of Los Angeles) as an anti-death penalty Catholic. It worked wonders.

Much of this has to do with California's large immigrant population - they come from countries that actively execute people (such as China), or they may come from places that may have abolished the death penalty (such as Mexico) but want it re-instated there.

Virtually all agree that death penalty in China and Iran are barbaric, but the US is the exception, and death penalty here is more than justified.

One hot issue here is all the murderers running away to Mexico, because of its lack of death penalty (and as a result, lack of extradition treaty with the US). Everyone wants Mexico to reinstate the death penalty.

The last time the Democrats ran an anti-death penalty candidate for governor in California was in 1994 - Kathleen Brown, whose father and brother were both former governors (brother Jerry Brown is the state AG even today).

Pete Wilson absolutely crushed her - it was the year of the Angry White Man, and the Angry White Man considered Brown to be soft on illegal immigration.

casey - this is a topic that will never go away. I remember debating this very subject at High School in 1966. I was the lead speaker and at that position, needed to anticipate arguments of my opponents. The bible text I don't remember as it was written but it went something like this:

Jesus said, Some say unto you an eye for an eye. But I say unto you that whosoever smite you on your right cheek, turn the other to him so that he may smite that also

We do it all the time - only quote the words or phrases that support our cause. The Australian Federal Government abolished the death penalty in 1973. The states and territories had long since abolished it. In fact it was abolished in Queensland in 1922. This surprises me since a large portion of the Queensland population back then was Aboriginal. Aborigines were not counted on Australian census until 1967. Until then, they weren't considered people of this country. So perhaps the law was different towards them. I doubt it though.

Another large, impoverished demographic at that time were the Chinese "coolies" who came to work on the sugar cane fields of Queensland. And this was the state that outlawed it first.

Australia is going through a little resurgence of the hate that our current wars have engendered - hate and violence. In the Bali bombings a few years back hundreds of Australians were killed. The Bali bombers have been sentenced to death by firing squad. John Howard would not speak against capital punishment to the Indonesian government with regard to those prisoners.

Kevin Rudd has. Some families of victims are venomous in their hatred of the bombers. These families will never have peace in their lives. People who will not forgive, never do. Other victims' families say, murder is wrong no matter the conditions under which the murder is carried out. And they don't wish on the families of the convicted, the kind of sorrow they've dealt with over the years. They have gone beyond their grief. Never forgotten. But wholly forgiven. And they will have the peace in their lives.

I find the brutality of the American system in some places - with medical drugs injected by non medical executioners and some therefore taking up to an hour to bring about the eventual excruciating death - absolutely barbaric and abhorrent to all that is decent in the world.

I wonder how many innocents have been executed over time. Considering the expediency with which police want the conviction rather than the culprit; considering the police fabrication of evidence - not infrequently; considering the tampering of verbal evidence; considering the brutality and threats under which some evidence is obtained; an execution is more likely to be administered to someone who did NOT commit the crime, rather than one who did.

Look at the quagmire that is Iraq. Look at the fiasco that is Afghanistan. How on earth can we defeat a regime with whom we do a massive illegal business - drugs? Vengeance led us into both places. In both places we have failed. When we turned to terrorist behaviour in order to satisfy our vengeance; we became the terrorists we are supposedly waging war on. Whilst killing is acceptable - regardless of the crime - we will never rise above our own base instincts. And that is truly frightening. We are seeing it in Iraq regularly with the killing, raping, looting sprees of the Blackwater Thug Brigades.

Ally - the communities that you describe who smell vengeance so badly they'll kill for it - are far less than primitive. They are truly, deeply barbaric beings. Certainly not citizens of any world, let alone a free world.

When the latest shopping mall killing spree happened in the United States I had friends visiting. They were angry. What do you expect when almost every house has more than one gun? Guns were invented to kill. It is a phenomenon that is way more prevalent in America than in the rest of the democratic world. More guns per household. More shootings. And in the rest of the world we can only wonder why you are so shocked that it's happened.

Americans believe in killing. This is an anouncement - the right to bear arms = the right to kill. Your legal system is set up for it. Well done New Jersey.

It seems that killing, to most Americans, is acceptable. That's what we on the other side of the world see. I have only recently learned that you execute young children. I burst into tears when I first learned of it. How on earth can we look to a country that approves the state sanctioned murder of its children, to lead us anywhere, except into catastrophe? To execute your children, you are no more civilised than the lashing of gang-rape victims in Saudi Arabia.

Sorry Americans. Collectively you still have come nowhere beyond your republican "born to rule and kill" roots I'm afraid. I know that the people I meet here at the DCP don't subscribe to any of this. But we need the heart and soul of America to change before the world can heal. People who wield guns can never be about peace.

I apologise for the offence a lot of this will cause to some here. Killing of anyone or anything fills me with passion. And no - I'm not a vegetarian or vegan. Like I said to my husband when my boys were little and he was taking them out to watch him kill a sheep. He said, They have to know where their meat comes from. I said, They already know where it comes from. It comes from the butcher! They were only 3 and 4 at the time and the sheep actually had a name and lived in the back yard. Yeah, right. Hug it this morning. Slit its throat this afternoon.

The American appetite for the death penalty is conistent with the country's blood-drench but almost completely unacknowledged history. At best, we pay lip service to the genocide of Native Americans, and the horrors of slavery. But when we look out across those "amber waves of grain," we do not remember or honor the millions of innocents who were killed.

As a native son of Virginia during the reign of "massive resistance to segregation," I used to wonder if I would live long enough to see the country really come to terms with racism. And I was just in elementary school then, and hadn't even begun to think about the slaughter of Native Americans. Is it possible for a country so steeped in blood to find its way, without first truly coming to grips with what its leaders have done along the way? The atavistic cries for retaining the death penalty are as clear a sign as any that too many of our fellow citizens still do not understand their own history.

The American appetite for the death penalty is consistent with the country's blood-drenched but almost completely unacknowledged history. At best, we pay lip service to the genocide of Native Americans, and the horrors of slavery. But when we look out across those "amber waves of grain," we do not remember or honor the millions of innocents who were killed.

As a native son of Virginia during the reign of "massive resistance to segregation," I used to wonder if I would live long enough to see the country really come to terms with racism. And I was just in elementary school then, and hadn't even begun to think about the slaughter of Native Americans. Is it possible for a country so steeped in blood to find its way, without first truly coming to grips with what its leaders have done along the way? The atavistic cries for retaining the death penalty are as clear a sign as any that too many of our fellow citizens still do not understand their own history.

Well yes .. when I have young visitors from other countries they want to go see where guns are sold and can be bought easily. They want to know why high schools have metal detectors and how kids their age get guns, do their parents know, do their parents have guns, and do their parents give them the guns. They are also wildly curious about the big trucks & SUVs, particularly the boys. They want to know if it's true one in four cars on the road has a gun in it and if so, which ones do I think have the gun. They want to know if I have any guns and if not, why not. I tell them.

As there is more fear especially r/t terror, I've seen more armed police when travelling, but I think we are fairly unique in this country for our gun craziness and resonance in too many quarters with the death penalty. We do not hear about the violent parts of our history and if so, not very critically. They are, if anything, glorified in the entertainment media (the cowboy, the soldier and other "macho" patriarchical imagery).

woz, Dick and NMP

Thanks for highlighting the CULTURE OF DEATH that permeates the American culture and religion.

No other English-speaking country had such a bloody history of confrontation with the natives - though arguably, Australia came close.

But then, Australia was a penal colony, while America was a Puritan haven. And even a penal colony has better respect for life than a "religious haven."

Which brings me to a point I made in the Open Thread - the American brand of Christianity is a blood-thirsty death cult.

woz

Ally - the communities that you describe who smell vengeance so badly they'll kill for it - are far less than primitive. They are truly, deeply barbaric beings. Certainly not citizens of any world, let alone a free world.

Such are the scums America attracts from the rest of the world. The immigrant communities are strongly pro-death penalty, including ones hailing from countries that have long outlawed it (or are coming close to outlawing).

I will tell you, people want to come to America because it appeals to their basest instincts. Saner people either stay home - or go to a more civilized country. That's why America got your Rupert Murdoch as well as Reverend Moon.

This is the Land of Opportunity indeed - if you or your nationality is reactionary bloodthirsty barbarian.

It's interesting that a country which so embraces the culture of death from a sadistic and bloody point of view, has almost no capacity for embracing the process of aging, and a pathlogical fear and avoidance of even the subject one's own death.

I remain fairly astonished at the sheer length of the adolescence of America, the country.

Woz,

I know exactly what you mean about the subject that never goes away. The problem with the concept of an eye for an eye is that you soon find yourself in a room of people who have no vision. Of any kind.

When I was in college, i was a research assistant at the department of applied social research. My project was studying the implementation of the death penalty and its effect on the area where the execution was carried out.

Not surprisingly, this research showed that the death penalty has an immediate brutalizing effect on the community, and that the implementation is completely racist. Blacks are far more likely to be given the death penalty, especially in cases where a white was murdered.

That was back in 1979. Nothing has changed in the elapsing time that has changed those conclusions.

The UN votes for a moratorium on death penalty:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22313073/

The US is with Iran and Syria in opposing this nonbinding resolution.

The US is with Iran and Syria in opposing this nonbinding resolution.

However, I must say that in the current climate of Bushhypehysteriaparanoia about Iran with *knowledge*, I never would have expected him to announce publicly his total compliance with his most feared enemy.

We like violence like pornography. The attraction is similar. We're a culture of violence. It goes to show how truly powerless we feel as a society. We need to feel as though there is control over that which we fear. Black people. Brown people. Muslims. Something new always comes up to increase our apprehension and loss of control.

We pine for the past. For simplicity. Eye for an eye. But life's complexity and society's complexity has reached further than what we're willing to allow in. And we need to listen to the answers that allow us to find reality and feel more at ease. But something keeps us from hearing it. The blinders are hard to penetrate.

Casey said

It's interesting that a country which so embraces the culture of death from a sadistic and bloody point of view, has almost no capacity for embracing the process of aging, and a pathlogical fear and avoidance of even the subject one's own death. I remain fairly astonished at the sheer length of the adolescence of America, the country.

Beautifully put, Casey. It's kind of like the business of appeasing the gods with the killing of a few criminals here and there, so that we can live longer. Whilst looking around for the people who deserve to die, folks don't have to consider their own mortality. And how many die without a will because they are afraid to face the one absolute certainty in all our lives?