State-Sanctioned Killing

With such a title, I could be talking about many things. Be it from conspiracy theories about the state eliminating people they don't want to live (but I'm not into conspiracy theories, so that's not it) to wars where enemies who don't deserve to live become less than humans and just targets to eliminated. But no, I'm talking about the death penalty they have in some parts of the world, including the United States, my south neighbors. Executions made the proper humane way via lethal injection or some other method to stop the heart.

I'm doing this in response to the execution of Troy Davis a couple hours ago. But this is not me saying the man was innocent, let me get back on this later, this is more about the death penalty itself.

Now let me put this in other words. State-sanctioned murder via poison that blocks important vital functions of your body in order to cause rapid death. Is it painful or is it not? I don't know and I'm ready to accept that maybe you're unconscious and feel nothing, which is less severe than what the murdered made its victims in most cases, I would agree. That's not a problem and it's probably better than a slow painful death, much better than what a cruel murderer deserves maybe. Where I do have a problem though is in the hypocrisy behind all of this.

- Murder is wrong, it's something you should never do because human life is valued to our eyes!
- What happens if I murder someone?
- Then we murder you!

To me, maybe that's because I'm weak and sentimal and all the bullshit, but it seems like it lessens the value of human life if we then invent a situation where the state recognizes that a particular human life has no more value. It also lessens the impact of murder if we then invent a situation where murder is right. It just seems barbaric, a vestige of early tribal behavior, and it fixes nothing. If somebody kills my parents and is put to death, the only thing I'm gonna think about that night is: "Wow, I actually don't feel better. My parents are still dead and I don't feel better about it." Just saying, state killing someone won't help. Maybe if I had the right to do the job myself that would be better and I'm sure in some cases, when people would confront the killer, they wouldn't be able to do the job and would let him live. I'm not saying to get killers out of prison though, just don't kill them.

But I know not everyone agrees on this, this is a very liberal position after all. And I do understand why some people think they need it. It might feel good for a while just to get vengeance, I just think it's more illusion than reality. I still feel there's some hypocrisy there, but I'm ready to let this point go.

The biggest issue I have against the death penalty is when the state is wrong. When the killer is actually an innocent man. Now comes the Troy Davis case. But I already said it, this rant is not me claiming the guy was innocent. He claimed he was innocent, it also seems there was some doubt over his case and we can't hide the fact that he was an afro-american man and sometimes they're treated unfairly. But the truth is, he might have been the killer. I really don't know much about his case and about him. I really don't know if he was the killer, I really don't. Do you? You have your beliefs about the case, but do you KNOW? Did the state know for sure? Well apparently not, since there were some doubts. But he was still murdered (I'm employing this word because it is the right word, even if he was guilty).

I could only support the death penalty if we were all-knowing. If there was no doubt at all that the killer did it. This is almost impossible in real life right now. That is unless we have reliable witnesses, strong evidence, possibly video evidence too and DNA evidence, with confession from the killer. Wouldn't you want the state to be careful like that if it was your own life in their hands?

But I know there's another argument, saying that prisoners are usually stuck for many years waiting for their death and this becomes very painful mentally for them. Well, in Troy Davis' case, his last words were apparently still claiming his innocence after all this time and it doesn't seem like he was happy to be forced to go. Once again, I'm not claiming his innocence, just saying that this argument that some people want to die after a while is not always true. And it's not so hard to fix. Let them have right over their own life. If we have no doubts someone is the killer, maybe they deserve to die and let's kill them. If there's any doubt, let's not kill them and investigate further. If someone is tired of living, then let's comply to their wish and kill them or let them kill themselves. Well, not so fast, first give them an obligatory consultation with a psychologist and let's ensure that their decision is the right thing for them. If it is, let's kill them.

It seems that I value life too much actually. My way of thinking is that probably a lot of people on death row are actual murderer. Maybe even only a single person is truly innocent. I said I was against the death penalty for its hypocrisy (and also it seems statistics tell us it doesn't stop murderers from doing what they do and the United States has more killers than Canada actually), but my real issue is killing innocent people. Killing murderers, ultimately, I don't have much sympathy for them. But for me, even if there's one single error, human life is so important that killing 99 murderers and 1 innocent man is not a good enough ratio for the death penalty to continue to exist. It seems like people who don't think like me are thinking the other way around. Yeah, we make mistakes, but that's rare enough that if we can kill tons of murderers it's good enough. I don't know, I just don't think like that personally.

And apparently, lots of people wait on death row all their life without getting executed. It costs a shit ton in tax money to everybody (not where I live though as we don't have the death penalty in Canada). Once again, like I said before, yes some people get executed, but it really does look like the death penalty and its benefits is more like an illusion than a reality.