Justice is color blind...except to green
Something that has started to bother me of late, is the way that wealthy people always get off and poor people always fry. I am talking about the state of our justice system. The one where if you can afford a team of attorneys you can literally get away with murder. (or sleeping with young kids ) However, if you are poor and have to rely on a public defender you will probably get the death penalty on circumstantial evidence. There was a man on death row recently exonerated with DNA evidence, who was convicted because he had bad teeth. The real killer had the same bad teeth. He had been on death row for around ten years. We in Oklahoma know a lot about incompetent DNA testing. Every case in the last 15 years is suspect where forensic lab work was done by a certain chemist.
With the rash of cases being reviewed and rulings being challenged with DNA tests, I would be hard pressed, if I were governor in any state with capitol punishment, to allow any more men or women to be executed.
As far as a solution to the inequeties of our judicial system, I don't have one yet. But I sure would hate to have an innocent man's blood on my hands. I am not ready to say that I am totally against the death penalty, anyone who had to clean up the mess left by Timothy McVeigh, Nichols and Al Qaeda would tell you that someone should die for acts that heinous.
I wonder if most church going people would agree with me? If we are going to err should it not be on the side of protecting innocent life? Even if the chances are remote, there could still be the chance that we are killing innocent people. It seems it was religous leaders who asked a tyrant to break some guys legs so they wouldn't be a distraction during their religous feast. Seeing three guys hanging on crosses, kind of dampens the festive mood.
With the rash of cases being reviewed and rulings being challenged with DNA tests, I would be hard pressed, if I were governor in any state with capitol punishment, to allow any more men or women to be executed.
As far as a solution to the inequeties of our judicial system, I don't have one yet. But I sure would hate to have an innocent man's blood on my hands. I am not ready to say that I am totally against the death penalty, anyone who had to clean up the mess left by Timothy McVeigh, Nichols and Al Qaeda would tell you that someone should die for acts that heinous.
I wonder if most church going people would agree with me? If we are going to err should it not be on the side of protecting innocent life? Even if the chances are remote, there could still be the chance that we are killing innocent people. It seems it was religous leaders who asked a tyrant to break some guys legs so they wouldn't be a distraction during their religous feast. Seeing three guys hanging on crosses, kind of dampens the festive mood.
5 Comments:
Good post Lyle.
I tend to agree with the trouble you have over the dealth penalty. I think it is clear that government can have the right to wield the sword, but should they? Extreme examples tend to stir up death penalty thoughts...I would add rape to your category of extremes. At the same time the chance that fallible systems could execute the innocent, while necessarily allowing the guilty to go free is even more odious.
An important question to answer in the death debate...."What is purpose of imposing capital punishment or imprisonment?" If it is connected to virtue kind of ethic then I think one can actually argue for it, at least in a limited sense. If we punish from the Utilitarian perspective (which I think we do, as we do not have a united morality in our society) then there is little good that can come from death. The aggregate good/pleasure that comes from putting to death a grievous offense should be similar, if argued correctly, to a life of imprisonment. We tend to not seek the good for the sake of the good, or for the sake of our purposed end, rather we seek the good for the pragmatic gain associated with the action. We are better off with criminals isolated from society, so maybe we should leave it at that.
Good post Lyle.
I tend to agree with the trouble you have over the dealth penalty. I think it is clear that government can have the right to wield the sword, but should they? Extreme examples tend to stir up death penalty thoughts...I would add rape to your category of extremes. At the same time the chance that fallible systems could execute the innocent, while necessarily allowing the guilty to go free is even more odious.
An important question to answer in the death debate...."What is purpose of imposing capital punishment or imprisonment?" If it is connected to virtue kind of ethic then I think one can actually argue for it, at least in a limited sense. If we punish from the Utilitarian perspective (which I think we do, as we do not have a united morality in our society) then there is little good that can come from death. The aggregate good/pleasure that comes from putting to death a grievous offense should be similar, if argued correctly, to a life of imprisonment. We tend to not seek the good for the sake of the good, or for the sake of our purposed end, rather we seek the good for the pragmatic gain associated with the action. We are better off with criminals isolated from society, so maybe we should leave it at that.
Blessings,
John
sorry for the double post...
John
As I have been rethinking my position on a lot of things as of late, I too have been wondering how we can justify capital punishment in such a grievously errant judicial system. If you had told me 5 years ago that I might be becoming a pacifist someday, I probably would have sentenced you the death penalty.
Yeah, it's particularly troubling when when people on death row are found to be innocent. I'm sure you all know about the Northwestern University journalism class that found 13 people on death row innocent in Illinois a few years back. (There's a documentary called Deadline about former IL Governor George H. Ryan's decision whether or not to grant clemency to all the death row prisoners after the journalism class released its findings.)
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