The
death penalty is plain wrong. When a man is behind bars anyway, serving time
for a crime he may or may not have committed, why in the world should he
be executed? Is the prison too "free" for him? Or is it the fact that it is he and not the victim that walks alive that makes it unbearable for some to see?
Troy Davis maintained till the very end that he was innocent. Pleas
to save his life were ignored even though Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Pope Benedict
XVI, Harry Belafonte, Jimmy Carter, Amnesty International and the European Parliament all campaigned on his behalf.
Dr. Allen Ault,
retired Director of the Georgia
Department of Corrections and former Warden of the Georgia
Diagnostic
and Classification Prison where he oversaw executions for the state
told Rachel Maddow (The Rachel Maddow Show: Sept 21, 2011 )
"When you're in the death chamber ordering an execution, and even if in your mind, if you're a man of conscience, actually believe somebody is guilty, it's still a very premeditated murder. I mean, it's scripted and rehearsed. It's about as premeditated as any killing that you can do. And then when there is doubt, either way it exacts a heavy toll on those who are charged by the state to execute somebody."
The MacPhails, the relatives of the man Davis allegedly killed,
talk of closure. Dr. Ault said in that same interview with Rachel Maddow that the
sense of relief felt by relatives of victims at "justice" being done is, at best, fleeting.
Of course it is.
In the end, we are a bloodthirsty species. Hammurabi is still alive
in us. Just look at him--I can readily believe this is the man who demanded an eye for an eye.
It seems, that even the makers of sodium pentothal ( the drug used at
executions) do not want their name tainted with this practice.
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