Death Penalty
I’m opposed to the way we use the death penalty in this country. I’m not so much opposed to the fact that we use it (though it is pretty ludicrous) as I am to the way that we use it. I really don’t think we’re getting the maximum out of capital punishment.
Right now we use it almost exclusively for murder. But studies have shown, time and again, that it is not a deterrent to homicide. As Amnesty International puts it, “the threat of execution at some future date is unlikely to enter the minds of those acting under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, those who are in the grip of fear or rage, those who are panicking while committing another crime (such as a robbery), or those who suffer from mental illness or mental retardation and do not fully understand the gravity of their crime.”
I’ll buy that statement because statistics seem to back it up. But I can’t believe that the death penalty wouldn’t be a significant deterrent to some of society’s other ills. Take, for instance, people who unnecessarily walk down the middle of the lane in a parking lot. These people waste our time with their own obliviousness. You can’t tell me that this atrocity wouldn’t disappear if a few people were given the chair because someone snapped a picture of them hogging the aisle with a camera phone. The same is true of the old ladies who cause traffic jams in the grocery store when they stop for five minutes to ponder whether 8 ounces of beans for 82 cents is a better deal than 12 ounces for $1.09.
I can think of dozens of much better ways to use capital punishment than we currently do. Waiters who don’t keep your drink full. People who park in the fire lane. Parents who don’t take their baby outside of the restaurant when it won’t stop screaming. People who saw Mission Impossible 3 in theaters. The list goes on and on.
Be sure to look around in your daily life for better uses of the death penalty and let me know what you come up with. Together we can affect change.
June 6, 2006 at 12:28 am
I know this is a joking manner and i understand the context in which you put the statement yet the comment was rather patently stupid. I am by no meens saying that you are stupid, because you actually seem rather inttleigent and i agree with you on many of your subjects however the death penalty is not one of them. I think the death penalty should be put on yield until law enforcement and the courts can straighten out their fucking labs and courts. There was a case recently in Texas where a man was charged with a rape and was sentenced to life in prison, after 17 years in a state penitentiary. This man got out of jail and was given one thousand dollars. This does not have to deal with capital punishment but the point is, if this man had been put to death he would have probably been dead by now(since the average time spent on death row is 15 years). If you have seen “The Life of David Gale” you will see where i am comeing from. The notion that you want to euthanize a Grandma for staying in the isle for too long is funny but it is pretty far off base.
June 6, 2006 at 12:29 am
By the way the guy who spent 17 years in jail, it seems i forgot to mention this, he was actually innocent and labs later confirmed that, but thats a whole chunck of his life that is gone now because a stupid DNA lab cant straighten out their shit.