The Dreadful Death Penalty. The Repulsive Death Penalty. The Necessary Death Penalty?
When I was about 9 years old I was asked; "What do you want to be when you grow up?" At that time I had already begun to dabble in human rights issues (very lightly though, i was only 9) and I answered; "I wanna be Secretary-General of the U.N., or a ninja." Leaving my fall-back plan of being an practitioner of the ancient japanese art of assassination aside for the time being, I wanted to (and still want to) be in charge of a organization that deals with and attempts to solve issues dealing with the problems of the world. At the time I had no real understanding of human rights issues but I knew what was right from wrong.
Now, is it ever right to take one's life due to a crime committed? In the United States you are eligible for the death penalty for Murder, Treason against the U.S., and rape of a child under the age of 10 in Louisiana. During my early to mid teens, I was a somewhat hesitant backer of the death penalty. In the late 90's (i think 1997-98) the state of Texas executed Terry Washington, a mentally handicap male with communication skills of a 7 year old. What makes it 'ok' to ever execute a person with a diminished capacity? I asked myself that question over a thousand times when I first read about Mr. Washington's death while I was in high school. It was then that I decided that the United States needed to abolish the death penalty. I started going to rallies, and other protests directly after Mr. Washington's death but my newly found passion for the death penalty to be abolished was short lived.
Texas-1998. James Byrd (the victim) accepted a ride home from Three..."men" by the names of John King, Lawrence Brewer, and Shawn Berry. Two of the three (King & Brewer) were members of a white-supremacist gang while in prison. Instead of taking Mr. Byrd home, the three "men" took him behind a store, began to beat him, chained him by the ankles to their pickup truck, stripped him naked, possibly slit his throat (but still alive) and dragged him about three miles. The autopsy suggested that Byrd was alive for much of the dragging and died after his right arm and head were severed when his body hit a culvert. His body had caught a sewage drain on the side of the road resulting in Byrd's decapitation.
King, Berry, and Brewer dumped Byrd's mutilated remains in the town's black cemetery, and then went to a barbecue. The Texas State Police found Byrd's remains scattered in 75 different places across the road the next day. King, Brewer, and Berry were caught by the FBI quite quickly. In a jailhouse letter to Brewer which was intercepted by jail officials, King expressed pride in the crime and said he realized he might have to die for committing it. "Regardless of the outcome of this, we have made history. Death before dishonor. Sieg Heil!" King wrote. John King & Lawrence Brewer were charged with murder and sentenced to die. Shawn Berry was given life in prison.
After hearing about this, I became more pro-death then I have ever been. Being black myself, it could have just as easily been me in Mr. Byrd's position. I felt a strong 'hatred' for these "men" mainly due to King and Brewer having felt no remorse for what they have done. Why should they live when they gruesomely took the life of a man just for the color of his skin? When they were sentenced I felt as if they were getting off a bit too easy(I wanted cruel and unusual punishment thrown out - me being evil), but in the end I was content with the way they were sentenced. If you are not a minority then it would be difficult to understand why I felt this way. Being killed in this day and age because you are not white is never a pleasant thing to think about and is still a real possibility that it could happen to any minority.
I stood by this position until one day I decided (along with a friend) to visit men and women on 'death row' for a college program and gain a perspective of what the accused have to go through after sentencing and knowing they are about to die. That was truly a life-changing experience. Most if not all were just 'normal' as you and me. What brought them to jail was a robbery gone wrong, a fit of passion which got out of control and other situations that plenty of us have been through, but in our case we just stop short of doing something stupid. The people I visited were humble, soft-spoken, and a bit...broken. I left there with a new grasp on what these people have to go through after their mistake. While I still have my reservations about King and Brewer, I began to soften my stance on the death-penalty. My beliefs were later tested after the events of September 11th, 2001.
I know what you are thinking; "Oh, here's another American that wants to kill the Muslim world." The events of 9/11 will always be burned in my mind, but I was talking about the events after 9/11 with American society in general. A close friend of mine who is Indian of the Sikhism religion received a call 3 days after 9/11 saying that her father was killed. He wasn't killed by "terrorist" per se but by a group of men in New Jersey who mistook him for a Muslim and beat him into a short coma which then proceeded to death. He was wearing a turban, which the perpetrators saw and began to verbally harass him calling him a "towel-head" and a "Sand-N*gger". They began to beat him for what he "did" to the U.S. and left him for dead on the side of the road.
This situation hurt me quite badly. I knew her father, I met him on a few occasions and he always carried himself with a sense respect for everyone around him. He is and always will be a great man. The men that killed him were sentenced between roughly 17-30 years. I remember my friend telling me sometime after that although she wanted these men to suffer and die, it would not bring her father back. She visited these men in jail, which is one of the bravest things I have ever seen. She reasoned with them, listened to what they had to say, even at some points joked with them. Although she could never forgive them (which she told the men) she will prey that they make a positive difference in someones life while in jail and when they are released.
My friend and I ended up agreeing that it was a fit of rage, ugly and terrible but they should not be executed for it. Although I believed they should have received at least 40-50 years for their deed. When you kill someone, you take away their past, present, and future. 17 years is nowhere near enough in my book.
As of today, I feel that the death-penalty in the U.S. should be changed...drastically. I still cannot honestly say that I'm against the death penalty now, but I'm still rather disgusted for what you can be executed for also. In the end though, who are we to judge who can live and who must die. There are crimes where you are executed for a momentary lapse of judgement and there are times you are executed for horrific crimes which makes it hard to make a case for the perpetrator not to be executed. How do you judge on who deserves to die?
No comments:
Post a Comment