Voice in the Crowd, 798 words

This is my personal view—not shared by many of my friends, not by most organizations, not even by many churches.

But I am very much opposed to the death penalty. I cannot understand how a civilized nation going into the 21st Century still goes back to making murder by the state legal and acceptable. It’s a throwback to the days of stoning an offender to death, of the time when public hanging or using the blade of a guillotine had a carnival atmosphere.

Years ago I took a University of Maryland course where the incident was told of a prominent New York business who man was charged with murdering and cannibalizing five people. He admitted it, not comprehending why someone thought that was wrong. With his consent and the family’s blessing, he was quietly executed and the obituary said that John Doe had died and been buried.

He was obviously insane. But everyone wanted to dispose of the embarrassment and the problem. They did.

If we executed all the mentally disturbed people, as Hitler did, we might have a "purer" race by his standards. Society could save money on housing the insane. But it wouldn't be very humane.

Execution has always been the method of removing someone a leader or the majority doesn’t want, whether it be a Jack the Ripper or Jesus of Nazareth. It makes it all the more puzzling how a Christian can use religion to oppose the teachings of the Man who said "turn the other cheek." It’s more like the ancient Mosaic laws of "eye for an eye. . ." America is the only so-called civilized country still using state paid killing.

And it doesn’t work to overall reduce crime. Texas has become the wholesale execution state. They kill more people there than in any other state. According to Gov. George W. Bush, everyone convicted of a crime there is guilty of that crime. There is never any miscarriage of justice. Everyone convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death is guilty. No innocent man is ever executed. How could an intelligent person seriously make such a statement.

Some years ago I met Shirley Dicks and advised her on a manuscript she worked on. It was her own story, about her son Jeffrey who was on Death Row at Nashville in Tennessee. He said he was driving a car for another man when he stopped and waited for the friend to go inside a store. When he came out, the man said he had robbed and killed the old man who ran the store. Jeffrey said he didn't know what the friend was going to do. But he was charged as an accessory and sentenced to death. He sat there over 20 years and finally died of a heart attack while still praying for an appeal that would release him.

Only Jeff and his companion know the true story. Jeff took that to his grave. If he was innocent, he suffered a tragic life, waiting for the day when he would be marched to the electric chair. If he was guilty, he deserved punishment--but that severe.

There is no equity to the disposition of the death sentence. A man at one places murders several people and served a few years. Another, in a moment of insane rage, commits murder and gets executed.

Proponents argue the death penalty reduces the crime rate. Are there less murders in Texas than in a state that doesn't execute people? A person committing murder doesn't stop and think about being caught. That happens to other people. And death doesn't frighten the abused child growing up with violence in the ghetto. Death is a way of life to him.

There are many reasons to oppose the death penalty.

The most compelling is it’s always the poor man led to the gallows. He has no sympathy, no press agent and, mainly, no high paid legal counsel.

You would never see an O.J. Simpson, even if he were found guilty, or the Ramseys go to the gas chamber. That fate is reserved for the destitute and the hopeless.

They only execute poor people.

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