New Civilization News: The Death Penalty    
 The Death Penalty
picture 13 Dec 2005 @ 02:59, by Jose Overalles

I don't like it. I'm against it. People who are for it will often ask, well, what if you or your family were the victim of a killer? Wouldn't you be for it then? Probably. But, so far, so good for us, we haven't been hurt in that way thank God, If something like that happened to my people, I would be thinking from a very emotional state. The government should, SHOULD be operating from a rational state though. Shouldn't be in the revenge business. Should be above that. Because if that is a final solution for a government then it follows that it may be right for an individual. Or that's how the thinking could go, followed to it's logical conclusion.

I've got no sympathy for Tookie Williams. He's a murderer. He wasn't just convicted on the say of a jailhouse snitch. There were many witnesses . He did some terrible things. He gunned down and killed four people, People who weren't even resisting. I've got no sympathy for the fellow. He gets a last meal, and all kinds of appeals he's gone through. He didn't even give the people he shot with his shotgun those rights. What a terrible thing to make a cause to end the death penalty with a guy like this. I don't care how many kids books he's written. His crime turns my stomach. But still, to me, it's wrong to execute him. And I do believe in redemption.

I do have some empathy for him. I can't imagine the incremental horror he goes through, as each chance for a reprieve drifts away from him, and the final hours become minutes. That is one hell of a horror, and I have a hard time dealing with even thinking about that. I can't imagine the thoughts of the guys who built this chamber, the men who will strap him down, the guy that will flip that switch, the judges who have decided live or die, or how it all ends up on the governor's shoulders at the end. Then there is his mother, and any other people close to him. And us who have to endure it just by hearing of it, and if we have any empathy, putting ourselves in any of those people's places.

I think they should televise these things. Up close in the eyes, see the terror folks, with smellovision. The terror he would have seen in his victim's eyes when he killed them. The ones he didn't shotgun from behind. You want to kill folks? Don't do it behind a steel shutter, with an exaust fan to suck away the smell of death after the deed is done. Show it all. Look at what we are doing.




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