I, personally, have never been incredibly involved within the topics of politics. However, with the 2016 presidential election over and discussion of what is and what is not morally right constantly up for debate, I found it fitting to release a piece that touches on a controversial concept in our society.
The thoughts that go through a man's head when he is minutes away from his last breath are unimaginable. Naturally, I hope the concept of being a prisoner bound to a cold table, hooked up to an IV full of lethal drugs will be foreign to me for my entire life. Capital punishment is a contemporary issue in our society that I think is so controversial and deserves further discussion.
Even if a person commits a crime so severe that a jury determines he has permanently forfeited his freedom, I do not believe the death penalty is an effective punishment. Death is irreversible. It is an escape from reality into oblivion, not a consequence with repercussions. Death Row, on the other hand, is just that. Except for the rare instances of true psychopathy or sociopathy, Death Row criminals have little choice but to consider the consequences of their crimes, and the effects they have had on their victims. If the point of convicting a criminal is to force him to suffer a punishment proportional to his crime, then the consequence for crimes like murder must be worse than death itself. Keeping him indefinitely alive and alone in his empty cell is more appropriate than allowing him to escape his guilty conscience through death.
Authorities on this issue frequently debate whether capital punishment is constitutionally protected at all. Those who object to the practice often cite it as an example of “cruel and unusual punishment” that violates the Eighth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. The Oklahoma execution of convicted murderer Clayton Lockett is a prime example of this argument. Lockett remained alive for 43 minutes following the untested drug injection, finally dying of a heart attack after multiple instances of violent convulsions. I speculate that if the drug had been further examined, then the state executioner would have known better than to use this on Lockett. Though some may argue that Lockett deserved the worst possible punishment, the jury convicted and sentenced him to death, not torture. The American conscience permits more extreme acts of punishment than most, but legally it still has its limits, and capital punishment pushes them to their extreme.
No life is without value, whether it belongs to a criminal or an innocent. And if we are to uphold this value, we must consider what we become if we punish murder with murder.
