Welcome to the Roost! Time once more for my ramblings and ravings. It has been a busy and frustrating week here. Had a major search just a few days ago. (Don’t worry, this post won’t be about that– I have already regaled you with a full-length post about searches!) But it was a good one! Law enforcement from everywhere! Local fuzz, county fuzz, state troopers, FBI, ATF, drug-sniffing dogs… the water was turned off for about nine hours so we couldn’t drink or flush our toilets…. as I said, a good one!
No, this post won’t be about that… I have been sent (never forget to thank Anna, please) a couple of suggestions for blog posts, so I will try one of those. This is a “consolidated” question from several different askers, so the question itself is all-encompassing.
I recall you once saying that you believe in the death penalty on principle but disagree with how the system works in practice. If you were asked to re-design the whole system, what would you change? What would be the criteria for receiving a death sentence– what crimes would a person have to be convicted of, and with what standard of proof? What person or group of people would have the authority to hand down a sentence of death? How would the system work, both before and after sentencing? How would the appeals process work? How would executions be carried out? Would laws regarding the death penalty (including those about whether or not to have it in the first place) be all federal or state by state? What would you keep about the current system?
Wow! Gotta love my readers!
This series of questions would quite literally take a book to even come close to addressing. Although they may sound simple and straightforward, the public at large would need to be educated as to how corrupt and arbitrary and capricious the judicial system truly is, to understand why it should never be allowed to hold authority over the life, and especially death, of any human being.
Of course there is a need for order and administration of law, and the judicial system cannot simply be done away with wholesale. But until and unless it is made to function with no caprice, it simply cannot be allowed to murder its own citizens.
For a nation of people to allow its government to do such a thing in its name is the very embodiment of fear-based, propaganda-induced insanity! Why don’t you just build a coliseum and start throwing people to lions for entertainment, or start gladiator “games” in which the condemned slaughter each other to the cheers of the masses? Truly it would be more honorable than to strap a human being down to a table and pump caustic chemicals into their bodies in secret ritualistic ceremonies reminiscent of satanic sacrifices. (If you are going to empower your own government to murder in your name, you should at least demand to see it…perhaps “pay-per-view” or something? I personally think every voting citizen of the US should be required by law to watch a minimum number of executions– live, of course– say, at least five?
Remember this, readers: nothing done in secret is likely ethical or moral.
But I have gotten off the topic of answering the question here for you, haven’t I? The question here was directed at me… how would I re-design the whole system? How would I do it? If I think the state or federal government does not have the right to do such a thing, how could I possibly take the task upon myself to design such a fair and enlightened procedure that could factor in all the variables needed to account for the individuality of each case? In short, I have no more right to do so than they.
Do I have a better understanding of the overall situation than some gas-bag politician sitting in his or her political headquarters trying to figure out how to get re-elected? I believe so, through personal involvement if for no other reason. But that is just my humble opinion, and you know what they say about the numerical abundance of those. (Just like a certain orifice, everyone has one.) But still, I could not fairly design a whole system.
This is what I know. Statistically, the death penalty has been deemed to be not a deterrent. (In the realm of deterring others beyond the one murdered from indulging in like behavior. As for the person actually killed? Well, life without parole would have them incarcerated until death, so therefore no threat to the public.) So that puts a pretty fine line on what is justice and what is revenge. (Although you more commonly hear it called “closure” nowadays because society does not like to attribute to themselves such ugly motives as “revenge”.)
And since that is what it is… Well, someone else can’t take revenge for another. (It’s got the wrong “taste” to it) I know I wouldn’t want someone else to kill in my stead. It’s my job, my “sin” if you will, and shouldn’t be “pawned off” on another. So if I have not go the stomach for my own revenge, then it doesn’t get to happen.
Now, I know some of you are thinking, “My God, he is an animal and they should kill him!” (You’re entitled to your opinion.) But the way I see it, if you make something that is dirty and nasty, like murder, clean by removing the horror of it, it then becomes too easy to do. (Like waging war by shooting missiles thousand of miles… the enemy becomes statistical numbers, you don’t see the life leave their eyes. You don’t experience the horror of real war. Pushing a button is too easy.)
So if someone whom I have personally wronged wants to kill me? I have no problem with that… duct-tape my candy ass to a chair and draw a line five feet in front of it. Give the person I have wronged a 12-gauge shotgun with one shell in it and tell them: “There he is. Look him in the eyes and get your revenge…” Then after they wash some of me off of them in the shower… well, then they will have their “closure”, won’t they?
So, how would I change it? The judicial system is corrupt and it is not going to change… so make the execution process a lot more personal. There would be far less people on death row that way. And the ones that were? Well, the process would be a lot less barbaric than it is. This is just my opinion, as I sit in a cage waiting to pay the butcher’s bill.
Remember to say a big “thank you” to Anna for her part in making this blog a reality– without her, none of this would be possible.
Until next time, friends.
Muninn's Roost 