Switching Sides On The Death Penalty
There is an inner voice in my head that can't stop screaming!
I've heard it since last week when the United States Supreme Court declared the rape of a child under the age of 12 should not - cannot - be punished by death. That, a majority of the court ruled, is not a "proportional punishment."
The case before the court came from Louisiana, representing the only two men in the entire country who faced death for what they did to small children. One repeatedly raped a five year old. The other attacked his own 8 year old daughter so viciously she required surgery. The court concluded their actions did not rise to the level of crimes that deserve death, namely crimes against the state (like treason) or murder.
Part of my logical brain wants to scream into the faces of the Supreme Court Justices to come to their collective senses, the other part of my brain reminds me I am against the death penalty.
I truly believe that the evil behind murder is comparable to the evil that fuels the rape of a child. The perpetrator can literally kill vital parts of the child - their ability to trust, to love, to find intimacy. Often no true peace can be found for a child who has been brutally, sexually savaged by an adult. On some level, and sometimes it is profound, their suffering constitutes a life sentence of psychological confusion.
My husband and I have long argued about capitol punishment over morning coffee and newspapers. I maintain the real punishment comes with keeping the monster locked up every single day of his life, condemned to a live where other inmates often prey on criminals who've targeted children. To execute him lets him off easy. And besides, I believe, when the state takes a life it is killing ... the very act we say we abhor.
My husband scoffs at my argument that keeping convicts in prison is worse punishment as a vast majority on death row would take life over execution any day. He also believes society has the right to mete out punishment that is commensurate with the crime, death for death. And death for child rape if a state so decides.
There are countless pro and con debate points on capital punishment, including the false conviction rate, the cost comparison of life in prison versus death and the religious principle "Thou shall not kill." Some make the point that the high court has stepped outside its narrow constitutional function to decide points of policy and the narrow 5 to 4 decision proves that.
There isn't enough space in this entire newspaper to do justice to all the arguments. And experts say those who have made up their minds whether they are for it or against it are unlikely to switch opinions.
Really? Because my anti-death penalty resolve dissolves when you talk about harm to a child. I guess that makes me a hypocrite.
To say that I surprise myself on my reaction to the Supreme Court ruling is an understatement. How can I even think they were incorrect in that ruling if I am truly against the death penalty? I agreed when the Court banned executions for the mentally retarded and under aged - but not this.
I can't help but think of the horror a small child faces during the act. The terror, confusion and physical pain an infant, toddler or elementary school child endures at the hand of an adult acting like an animal with no regard to their innocence or future state of mind. I want retribution; I have the urge to kill. I border on being ashamed of that feeling and feeling consoled that such an act would rid the world of a wicked fiend.
Those two men in Louisiana will now be sentenced to life without parole and the state will have to change its law on child rapists. So will the legislatures in Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and probably Georgia (the status of this state's law is in doubt) And the three other states in the process of writing laws to make it a capitol offense to rape a child, Missouri, Colorado and Alabama, are also wondering what their next course of action might be.
Troy King, the Attorney General of Alabama sounds as though his state may decide to fight the decision. "Anybody in the country who cares about children should be outraged what we have a Supreme Court that would issue a decision like this."
I am among the outraged. In effect the Supreme Court has said society must wait for the child to be murdered too before enacting our harshest punishment.
Diane Dimond's website is www.DianeDimond.net. You can reach her at Diane@DianeDimond.net
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The folly of creating a situation in which a rapist has nothing to lose by killing his victim seems obvious. Why are we even having this discussion? The likelihood is that such a law would kill more kids than it saves.
I love that the left is against killing those who have killed innocent children.
But do not bat a eye at the taking of a life still in the womb.
Fetuses aren't human beings. Neither is a late-term fetus, it's only a human being if its mother declares it so and gives birth.
Your emotional reaction is a perfect example of why we have courts decide these things.
The only valid argument against the death penalty is the fact that our "justice" system so often convicts the innocent.
Punishment as some sort of moral retribution is part of our irrational religious inheritance, nonsensical and unscientific.
Punishment isn't useful unless it's widely explained and publicized so that it can serve as a deterrent.
To some degree, punishment seems to help victims and their families with their rage and hurt over crimes that have damaged them. I wonder if there's any real evidence that they are in fact helped.
It's widely accepted that pedophilia isn't curable, so execution is certainly more economical for society than life in prison. The money might be better spent counseling the victims.
It's actually much more expensive to sentence a criminal to death that life in prison. Due many to the automatic appeals process that increases legal fees as well as the higher cost of keeping prisoners on death row than in general population.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=108
What nonsense. The argument against capital punishment is simple and supported by an ever-growing body of evidence: people are often wrongly convicted. End of argument. Everyone in the civilized world, except for us, seems to realize that blind vengeance does not equal justice. When the hell are we--and you--going to grow the hell up??
This strikes me as barbaric relativism. If you're against the death penalty, except in cases where the crime makes you blind with rage, you're not truly opposed to capital punishment. When soldiers who refuse to fight plead their case for conscientious objection, they are denied that status if their objection is to that particular war or battle and not ALL war. IOW, if your conscience doesn't preclude capital punishment completely, you are not an opponent of the death penalty, and cannot argue as one.
Your confusion is illustrated in your misunderstading of your own thinking. It's not your "logical brain" that "wants to scream into the faces of the Supreme Court Justices to come to their collective senses." That's the mob, vigilante, primitive brain. It's your logical, civilized brain that "reminds me I am against the death penalty." That part doesn't burn as hot as the other, and it's pained by the conflict you state quite clearly, but it's the right part. The other is an incoherent village yokel brandishing a pitchfork in one hand and a burning torch in the other. Accepting the killing brain means rationalizing acceptance of bloodlust and the pretense that adding murder to a horrific crime can yield justice.
The point about conscientious objectors is only true by historical accident: our understanding of the term was developed during the first and second world wars. Neither of these were 'bad' wars, so our CO law and morality didn't encompass those who felt the war was an unject war.
However, christian doctrine has had a highly developed moral doctrine around unjust war since at lest the rennaissance..
Good post. You described my feelings exactly. There is a question that you should, perhaps ask yourself. Exactly how does this vengeance help the child recover from her or his ordeal?
Im not ambivalent at all on this issue. The death penalty is well deserved for the monsters who rape children. I, too, can go blind with rage over this souless crime. I can think of so many ways to execute these monsters that would cause them to suffer as they caused their victims to suffer. There was a (?) man last year who raped an 18 month old BABY!!! If I could get my hands on him, he would beg to die.
The rapist may not kill the child's body but he will kill the child's spirit. His death will not make the child feel better but it would absolutely prevent him from doing it again, thus saving another innocent child from sharing that same fate.
If that awful crime doesnt deserve the death penalty, according to the rightwing supreme court, what, in their heartless minds, does quality for it?
Heinous crimes should get the utmost punishment, IMHO.
Let's fight violence with violence, right? The energy you put out comes back, though, and when we say we are against the death penalty, it's because murdering someone because they "deserve" it is still murder. These societal abberations must be dealt with at a different level. Does the person killed by the state learn anything by being killed? And what do we learn? An eye for an eye? Where is the evolution in that?
Life in prison is worse anyway.
It doesn't matter whether the death penalty serves as a deterrant or not.
There are just some people who need to be killed.
So WHO makes the determination as to who is killed?
Mob rule?
YOU?
ME?
Yeah there are people who are such evil humans it makes one pause, but nonetheless, put them away for life, solitary if necessary.
I don't think the death penalty will deter the compulsion of pedophiles.
Some of these guys have been chemically castrated and still they molest children.
And the majority of them were molested themselves when young.
If we start giving the death penalty for crimes other than murder, simply because they offend us, we open the door to a dangerous place.
death will certainly "deter the compulsion" of the dead pedophile.
if you are hit in the road becuase of a drunk who ran a red light, the courts don't concern themselves with EVERY DRIVER ON THE ROAD, they deal with the drunk who hit you and killed YOUR kid!
if the courts had dealt with the perverts who molesteted kids 20-30-40 years ago maybe that would
have cleared up 90% of the insidious problems today. modern media today is getting to have a very CREEEEpy influence on demonstrating vicious behavior toward children too. now t.v. has dead children as a regular fare.
in the BIBLE there are three places where it talks about JESUS said it is better that a millstone be hung around their neck and they be drowned in the depth of the sea rather than that they "OFFEND" one of these little ones.
I find myself in a dilemma regarding capital punishment.
There are clearly some criminals who should be executed for the crimes they commit, but everything i see increasingly convinces me the state is incompetent to implement capital punishment in a just manner. Several factors concern me.
How do we determine IN ADVANCE which acts are so heinous, there can be no mitigation? How do we ensure the prosecution and conviction of the actual guilty party? And how do we ensure that ALL are treated equally under the law; that there is not one standard that allows the rich and powerful to get away with murder and another standard that sends the poor and weak to the death chamber?
Reluctantly, I conclude we cannot, and therefore am forced to oppose ALL state imposed capital punishment.
My husband and I have long argued about capitol punishment over morning coffee and newspapers.
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*Capitol punishment?" Good one.
I guess that's what our senators and congressmen do to us every day.
If a loved one of mine was raped or murdered, I would want the person responsible to die. I would want to take revenge personally.
However, given that there is no credible evidence that the death penalty serves as a deterrent, it seems irresponsible to give the state power to exact revenge. I would hope that government would represent the best of ourselves, not the worst.
It does not necessarily have to be for revenge. Capital punishment may not deter others, but it will prevent the one executed from committing further crimes.
... IF the one executed DID in fact commit the crimes. There's the problem.
JBS very succinct and to the point. I have a 7 year old boy, and I admit I don't think logically when I put him in this scenario these poor children were forced to live.
Child rapists have a bullseye on them when they get into prison, what they will have happen to them there is what I'd call proportional. They may very well wish for the death penalty after that.
Child rapists have a bullseye on them when they get into prison,
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Yup. And one big reason is because most people who wind up in prison were themselves abused as children. Sticking a child rapist in a maximum security prison may well make him wish for the death penalty.
Release someone with the tag "child rapist" into the general population and you HAVE imposed the death penalty.
Child rapists and their Ilk are usually kept in what is called euphemistically Administrative Segregation, or ADSEG. They spend 23 hours a day in their cell with no outside human contact, they get one hour per day in which they are allowed out into a fenced-in area slightly larger than their cell.
If you scratch a bit you will find that many adults were sexually abused as children. It'sno surprise to me to hear others share, it's just not one of those things commonly mentioned and easier to share anonymously.
The fact at its commonality really speaks to the lack of attention to the concerns of children in our society.
I'm extremely mistrusting of the accuracy of the death penalty but feel like it's sole purpose is to protect society from further actions of the perpetrator - not punishment.
If you scratch a bit you will find that many adults were sexually abused as children.
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My wife is a therapist who with adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. It should not come as a surprise that many of the perpetrators of these crimes were themselves sexually abused as children.
Most sexual abusers of children are family members and/or trusted friends . Before I met my wife I would never have believed how widespread this horrible crime actually is. This is because it is so often swept under the rug by wives, fathers, children. No one really wants to believe it, much less talk about it.
When we bring in capital punishment, it opens up many a can of worms. For example, if a father or any family member rapes a child (and sex between an adult and young child is probably always rape) should this individual receive the death penalty? If you answer *yes*, death row could welll be overflowing if these people are caught. If you answer "no" then aren't you saying that incestuous rape is more excusable than rape by a stranger? Also, many children will be reluctant to testify against a family member if they understand it means that family member will be killed. And if they do testify and the famiy member is executed, that child and the adult it becomes may live with the guilt all its life.
The law of unintended consequences is a hard one to escape.
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