California is intent on resuming capital punishment, despite all of the compelling evidence that it is a terrible practice.
Seventy percent of those questioned in a recent Field Poll support the death penalty. Why? The only logical answer is: They aren’t paying attention.
There are compelling arguments on both sides of this life and death issue.
Supporters exhibit an emotional reaction of retribution for heinous crimes. They also point out that anyone executed will never commit a crime again. Opponents point to these significant points:
1. Our nation’s founding fathers declared that everyone was endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, including life.
2. Capital punishment is extraordinarily expensive: trials cost significantly more than other trials, imprisonment costs about double the cost of regular incarceration.
3. It is difficult if not impossible to know for certain the person is guilty of the capital punishment crime.
4. Execution eliminates the possibility of “redemption” of the inmate.
5. The argument that capital punishment is a deterrent has been discredited. If it were, why do we have more than 700 men and women awaiting execution in California?
I believe more now than I did years ago that the death penalty is positively wrong, whether by cyanide gas or lethal injection.Death only begets more death.
California has a duty to rehabilitate its prisoners, especially the worst. The hope of a prisoner to become a full person, an asset to society, should never be eradicated by an execution chamber.
The validity of rehabilitation cannot build better persons after they have been put to death.
The solution: substitute life without parole for death.
