Capitol Punishment, cruel or just?

      Of the 1099 executions carried out in the whole of the USA from 1977 to the end of 2007, Texas accounts for 406 or 37%. Texas carries out far more executions than any other American state; between 1982 and 2007 it executed 404 men and 2 women. America is one of the few countries that still have a death penalty, but it still has one of the higher murder rates in the world, when most of Europe has outlawed capitol punishment and has some of the lowest. However, Singapore has a very brutal punishment system and they have crime rates that most countries dream about having. It’s a very mixed message. It also has to do with cultural differences as well as the punishment method. Capitol punishment has many problems though, one of the biggest being the thought that it is inhumane. Is it? Reports claim that more then half of all prison and jail inmates have mental health problems. Another line of thought is that anyone capable of doing heinous crimes worthy of the death penalty can only be committed by someone who is acting under the influence of something else, be it drugs, pressure from another source, or mental sickness. I believe that capitol punishment is inhuman and needlessly cruel, and that while retribution is very much needed, killing a human being is not the answer to stopping crime. 

     Throughout the centuries, murder has always been a crime to repay with the death of the one who committed the act. Yet the notion seems skewed to me. We teach others not to kill by killing people who kill other people. It doesn’t make sense in my mind. Not only is it horribly cruel to the recipient, but think of the hell that the family and loved ones go through. Losing someone is never easy, but the guilt and painfulness of losing someone to capitol punishment would be horrific. Now, the person should have to face the consequences, but I firmly believe in rehabilitation. If the money spent on the inmates on death row and their appeals and such was spent on keeping children off the streets and out of trouble, and on rehabilitating criminals, not only would lives be saved, but society would function better.

      Some think that people who do these acts are purely evil and need to be wiped from the earth and removed from society permanently. But where do we draw the line between the victim and the oppressor? The child molested grows up to be a molester, the young man seeing violence his whole life turns to the only thing he’s ever seen, and the girl raised to flaunt her body and use it sells herself to earn a living. Minds warped from birth and suddenly the broken child is a heinous criminal in the eyes of the world. Is there no compassion? Does no one care? Given up on, rejected, hurting hearts are crying out to be saved and all anyone cares about is getting them out of the way. God’s heart hurts at the pain of His children. What right do we have to kill each other? God does not choose sins as better or worse. Liars will go down with rapists, petty thieves with mass murderers.

      Death is an interesting concept. Life is so fragile, so easily snatched away by a careless move. When I was 10 my father died and the foundation of my life fell away, leaving me in freefall, dazed and disoriented. Then I hit the ground a few years later when I fully realized he was gone and the pain was like being ripped into by whip of barbed wire, over and over again. A ruthless master is pain, and anger stemmed and overflowed out of my life as the scars of my past refused to completely heal and the pain was a river, constantly flowing and mingling with my hatred as I was thrown about like a ragdoll. When I think of anyone else going through a time as dark as that my heart breaks.  No one should ever have to face that; no child should be forced to grow up to soon. And killing someone on purpose? Deliberately ending a precious life? That is an evil thought to me.

       To die without forgiveness is a thought that haunts me. To have no hope of redemption, no belief in a better thing beyond this whirlpool of trouble and pain we call life, would be a horrific state of mind. The cruelty of putting another human through that kind of mental horror and agony is obscene. And if one goes with the thought that only a mentally injured person is capable of doing a crime worthy of death as I do then not only is capitol punishment cruel and inhumane, but also a horrible act of immense proportions.

Rehabilitation is the answer, if only people will start caring enough to do that for those accused and convicted.