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The death penalty is
not a just response for the taking of a life. |
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Retribution is another word for revenge. Although our first instinct may
be to inflict immediate pain on someone who wrongs us, the standards of
a mature society demand a more measured response.
The emotional impulse for revenge is not
a sufficient justification for invoking a system of capital punishment,
with all its accompanying problems and risks. Our laws and criminal justice
system should lead us to higher principles that demonstrate a complete
respect for life, even the life of a murderer. Encouraging our basest
motives of revenge, which ends in another killing, extends the chain of
violence. Allowing executions sanctions killing as a form of 'pay-back.'
Many victims' families denounce the use of
the death penalty. Using an execution to try to right the wrong of their
loss is an affront to them and only causes more pain. For example, Bud
Welch's daughter, Julie, was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
Although his first reaction was to wish that those who committed this
terrible crime be killed, he ultimately realized that such killing "is
simply vengeance; and it was vengeance that killed Julie.... Vengeance
is a strong and natural emotion. But it has no place in our justice system."
The notion of an eye for an eye, or a life
for a life, is a simplistic one which our society has never endorsed.
We do not allow torturing the torturer, or raping the rapist. Taking the
life of a murderer is a similarly disproportionate punishment, especially
in light of the fact that the U.S. executes only a small percentage of
those convicted of murder, and these defendants are typically not the
worst offenders but merely the ones with the fewest resources to defend
themselves.
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