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STATE-SPONSORED RETRIBUTIVE HOMICIDE!

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John I checked out your web page.  Even with my 28.8, your page loaded so slow I just could not take the time for it to load. I was interested in your subject, looks like you’ve hit the nail on the head.  We in my household are not in fear of the aggressor, I believe in being ready and that we are.  We defy any unwanted aggressor to enter our home unenvited, they will leave feet first. By the way, YOU must the king of all cross posters, something I don’t believe in. jon – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – The following short essay is adapted from a very moving original OR REASON FOR A DEATH PENALTY.  Bernard originally published his piece on Saturday, July 19, 1997 on the Internet Newsgroup:                 <alt.activism.death-penalty        Bernard Wax’ personal WWW Home Page is at URL:       http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2492/        Retributive Homicide — Without Rhyme or Reason      I happen to expect our country to be an example to the rest of the world in the arena of human rights, and I therefore find it very demeaning to me, as a US citizen, to my family and community, and to my country to know that the United States of America is being investigated for numerous Human Rights violations by Amnesty International.      Specifically, the United States, which has the highest imprisonment rate in the world, is the last civilized nation on earth to impose the death penalty.  Currently, there are three thousand people on ‘death rows’ across The United States.  More of us need to be openly and publicly asking: ‘in the most enlightened and richest nation on earth, HOW CAN THIS BE?’      I will never support a death penalty, especially knowing the fact that it is imposed arbitrarily and unevenly:  mainly against those without adequate means to effectively defend themselves in court (witness the OJ Simpson case), and mainly against those of color.  The statistics speak for themselves.  With close to FORTY THOUSAND executions in the USA in the past one-hundred years, a white person who has killed a black person has only received the death penalty thirty times.  Thus it may clearly be seen that the death penalty is just another expression of class prejudice in our country.  Like our overwhelming penchant for imprisonment, the death penalty has ‘de facto’ genocidal results.      Our legal system today is an absolute joke, fueled mainly by personal greed and political ambition.  The cannon-fodder for this legal system — and the ‘murder victims’ of the death penalty — are the poor, uneducated people of our country, who are now also increasingly becoming slaves in ‘workfare’ programs that offer no way out of poverty, and are being forced into involuntary servitude in our prisons and work camps — which, by the way, is LEGAL according to the US Constitution.      True justice is social equity — good jobs, decent housing, and opportunities to pursue a decent life.  Over a million and one-half people are currently imprisoned here in The United States.  Think!  What does that say about us?!  We are one of very few countries in the world that would KILL its own citizens, and we also imprison FIVE TIMES more of our people (percentage- wise) than any other country in the world !?!?      Perhaps part of the answer to that seemingly difficult question is the frequency and seriousness of the injustices that millions of people in our country continue to suffer.  The fact of people suffering to begin with — in poverty, and at the hands of various kind of discrimination and abuse — is helping to creates this atmosphere of madness — a ‘crime panic’, if you will — that we are now experiencing in our country.      The sensationalism of our popular media is well known — they incessantly glorify and draw our attention to the gory details of the most heinous acts of violence.  However, it also seems that our supposedly-responsible politicians, most of whom have a short two-year re-election ‘time horizon’, feel they must propel our electorate into this ‘crime panic’ — an exaggerated fear of crime — in order to be elected to public office.  This mean-spirited political atmosphere we now all live in will not make our country a better place to live in, in the future. Repression, oppression, and injustice have always had their price.      Over and over again, time after time, it has been solidly established that the death penalty does not deter future crimes from being committed.  Actually, the statistics in this area show a RISE in violent crime in the jurisdictions where the death penalty has been imposed.  Is it possible that by imposing the death penalty, we are teaching people that the most calculated and destructive violence by human beings against one another is morally correct in some instances?      If retribution is the only real reason for imposing the death penalty, then the State, killing in the name of the people, is no better than the offender they wish to execute.  Morally, and in terms of their outcomes, there is very little difference between state-sanctioned killing — retributive homicide, as it were — and the pre-meditated murders that most convicted killers have committed.  Both end in the same result.  However, in the case of the death penalty, WE, the PEOPLE, could be saying ‘NO!’ and keeping it from happening.  The State cannot put itself in the position of acting in the place of God — the Bible says, "vengeance is mine, saith The Lord".      Though we are all *created* equal, none of us adults living today have developed into perfect examples of the human species. This realization tells us that while victims certainly have a right to justice as accountabilty for one’s acts, justice must be tempered with compassion and mercy, and justice — and our people — should not be sacrificed to heed the heated cries for venge- ance and retribution.  For us to say and do otherwise is to speak and act against the teachings of G-d.       "For Justice that Restores Equity"     |        /|    AR    Campaign for Equity-Restorative Justice CERJ < |    ART John Wilmerding |  CERJ Home Page: http://www.cerj.org  |  HEARTH Brattleboro, VT | Work together to reinvent justice using methods 05301-3018  USA | that are fair; which conserve, restore and even (802)  254-2826 | create harmony, equity and good will in society "We are the prisoners of the prisoners we have taken." – J. Clegg

Response:

The following short essay is adapted from a very moving original OR REASON FOR A DEATH PENALTY.  Bernard originally published his piece on Saturday, July 19, 1997 on the Internet Newsgroup:                 <alt.activism.death-penalty        Bernard Wax’ personal WWW Home Page is at URL:       http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2492/        Retributive Homicide — Without Rhyme or Reason      I happen to expect our country to be an example to the rest of the world in the arena of human rights, and I therefore find it very demeaning to me, as a US citizen, to my family and community, and to my country to know that the United States of America is being investigated for numerous Human Rights violations by Amnesty International.      Specifically, the United States, which has the highest imprisonment rate in the world, is the last civilized nation on earth to impose the death penalty.  Currently, there are three thousand people on ‘death rows’ across The United States.  More of us need to be openly and publicly asking: ‘in the most enlightened and richest nation on earth, HOW CAN THIS BE?’      I will never support a death penalty, especially knowing the fact that it is imposed arbitrarily and unevenly:  mainly against those without adequate means to effectively defend themselves in court (witness the OJ Simpson case), and mainly against those of color.  The statistics speak for themselves.  With close to FORTY THOUSAND executions in the USA in the past one-hundred years, a white person who has killed a black person has only received the death penalty thirty times.  Thus it may clearly be seen that the death penalty is just another expression of class prejudice in our country.  Like our overwhelming penchant for imprisonment, the death penalty has ‘de facto’ genocidal results.      Our legal system today is an absolute joke, fueled mainly by personal greed and political ambition.  The cannon-fodder for this legal system — and the ‘murder victims’ of the death penalty — are the poor, uneducated people of our country, who are now also increasingly becoming slaves in ‘workfare’ programs that offer no way out of poverty, and are being forced into involuntary servitude in our prisons and work camps — which, by the way, is LEGAL according to the US Constitution.      True justice is social equity — good jobs, decent housing, and opportunities to pursue a decent life.  Over a million and one-half people are currently imprisoned here in The United States.  Think!  What does that say about us?!  We are one of very few countries in the world that would KILL its own citizens, and we also imprison FIVE TIMES more of our people (percentage- wise) than any other country in the world !?!?      Perhaps part of the answer to that seemingly difficult question is the frequency and seriousness of the injustices that millions of people in our country continue to suffer.  The fact of people suffering to begin with — in poverty, and at the hands of various kind of discrimination and abuse — is helping to creates this atmosphere of madness — a ‘crime panic’, if you will — that we are now experiencing in our country.      The sensationalism of our popular media is well known — they incessantly glorify and draw our attention to the gory details of the most heinous acts of violence.  However, it also seems that our supposedly-responsible politicians, most of whom have a short two-year re-election ‘time horizon’, feel they must propel our electorate into this ‘crime panic’ — an exaggerated fear of crime — in order to be elected to public office.  This mean-spirited political atmosphere we now all live in will not make our country a better place to live in, in the future. Repression, oppression, and injustice have always had their price.      Over and over again, time after time, it has been solidly established that the death penalty does not deter future crimes from being committed.  Actually, the statistics in this area show a RISE in violent crime in the jurisdictions where the death penalty has been imposed.  Is it possible that by imposing the death penalty, we are teaching people that the most calculated and destructive violence by human beings against one another is morally correct in some instances?      If retribution is the only real reason for imposing the death penalty, then the State, killing in the name of the people, is no better than the offender they wish to execute.  Morally, and in terms of their outcomes, there is very little difference between state-sanctioned killing — retributive homicide, as it were — and the pre-meditated murders that most convicted killers have committed.  Both end in the same result.  However, in the case of the death penalty, WE, the PEOPLE, could be saying ‘NO!’ and keeping it from happening.  The State cannot put itself in the position of acting in the place of God — the Bible says, "vengeance is mine, saith The Lord".      Though we are all *created* equal, none of us adults living today have developed into perfect examples of the human species. This realization tells us that while victims certainly have a right to justice as accountabilty for one’s acts, justice must be tempered with compassion and mercy, and justice — and our people — should not be sacrificed to heed the heated cries for venge- ance and retribution.  For us to say and do otherwise is to speak and act against the teachings of G-d.       "For Justice that Restores Equity"     |        /|    AR    Campaign for Equity-Restorative Justice CERJ < |    ART John Wilmerding |  CERJ Home Page: http://www.cerj.org  |  HEARTH Brattleboro, VT | Work together to reinvent justice using methods 05301-3018  USA | that are fair; which conserve, restore and even (802)  254-2826 | create harmony, equity and good will in society "We are the prisoners of the prisoners we have taken." – J. Clegg

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