The Death Penalty

“Now therefore, you are herby commanded…[by] the Judgment of this Court,  to receive said Defendant into your custody, and on the [date] you shall cause the execution of said sentence of death to take place…” The first time I read these words a chill went down my spine. It is one thing to hear about someone being sentenced to death and another thing to actually be holding the death warrant in your hands and reading it for yourself.

At this moment, a man is sitting in a tiny cell in San Quentin prison waiting to see the outcome of this election. He is waiting to see whether he will live the rest of his life behind bars or whether he will finally be put to death.

The reality of this became clear to me when I took an internship working for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office. I realized that my chosen profession would mean I would frequently confront this issue in the years to come.

Growing up as a practicing Catholic, I formed the belief that murder is wrong. No man or woman has the power to take another’s life. It is God’s will, and God’s will alone. Yet, confronted with the facts of these cases while working in the District Attorney’s office, I realized the role of the death penalty in keeping society safe.

My position required me to work on death penalty cases—working to put to death those who have harmed others in our society in unthinkable ways. But as a Catholic, I struggled with my role. I wondered how I could be a part of an institution engaged in activity that I knew to be morally wrong. I was thrilled to be working for the District Attorney and my role in keeping this city safe. Yet, I found myself at a crossroads.

At those first couple of trials, when I heard the judge sentence someone to death, the pronouncement made me lose my appetite. I was sitting in the same room with someone who had just been sentenced to die at the hands of the state—not God—and I had helped in the process. We, as an office, were happy with the outcome; however, I felt uneasy. I knew that by our social norms the proper justice had been carried out; however, my morals told me we were just committing another atrocity. We were punishing an individual by doing the same exact thing he had done to others. Murder for murder was the answer. An eye for an eye.

I felt as if my heart and my mind would never agree on this issue, and as a result I found myself engaged in an internal debate, the likes I had never known before.  I questioned how I could ever become a prosecutor—a profession that I had come to love and aspire to—if I couldn’t make peace with the role of the death penalty in our legal system.

To come to terms with this issue, I had to spend sometime researching within my faith and meditating upon what I learned and what I knew to find an answer. Resolution would only come in time, with much contemplation. It wasn’t until I had a conversation with one of the attorneys in the office that I really had a paradigm shift. He described how those individuals who end up in prison for life adapt to their surroundings. It is evolution and it is inevitable in that situation. We view being in prison as the worst possible outcome, yet for many death row inmates, they have cycled in and out of prison before the crime that sentenced them to death. They adapt and prison becomes home. If we lose the death penalty as a disincentive for the worst of the worst criminals, who have no regard for the sanctity of human life, then what will society have as a deterrent?

It was that argument that helped me understand and resolve my internal tug of war. As a Catholic I am against the death penalty, however as a professional, I see its role in society. I see these violent offenders who are beyond the bounds of rehabilitation. It is the duty of prosecutors to protect the population and their loved ones from people who will take a life as if it were nothing. People who have hurt innocent individuals in the most brutal and unforgiving ways are those who need to be sentenced to death. It is an unfortunate reality in our society but one that we need to live with.  

Addictive TV?

What is the appeal of a TV marathon? We’ve all done it. We’ve all been sucked into four, five, ten hours of back-to-back episodes of our favorite TV shows. Cable channels and DVD collections facilitate this phenomenon. They have created a new addiction. It’s incredible how you tell yourself you’re only going to watch one episode, and six episodes later you realize you’ve done nothing with your day. Daylight has escaped you.

Since the invention of the television, there have been complaints about its addictive quality, and the negative cognitive and health effects. TV time inevitably distracts children from their studies and adults from picking up a good book. Independent and imaginative thinking are replaced by the efforts of others. In addition, time spent in front of the TV is time not spent being active, and is often associated with bad eating habits—whether a result of brainwashing from commercials promoting the latest sugary cereal or the unconscious overeating that arises from not being focused on the food in front of us or our body’s satiation point.

But the last decade has brought a new facet to this addictive quality. Marathons have affected our ability to practice moderation. We are a society that wants to know what happens next. We are a society that wants more of whatever we enjoy. And more importantly, we want familiarity and comfort.

TV marathons are like comfort food. When we feel lazy and upset marathons are exactly what our bodies crave. They offer an escape, distraction, even if it is not the best choice in terms of productivity and health.

For each person, this addiction manifests in a unique way. Each individual has a genre or specific TV show that they like. While one person can get sucked into an all-day marathon of Jersey Shore, another person cannot turn away from back-to-back episodes of Law and Order: SVU. And while this phenomenon has existed since live television brought us Sunday football, there is a bit of a different quality to the all-day marathon of NCIS and Cupcake Wars. We are not watching history-in-the-making. Marathons are more passive. They require less thought and less attention. They allow us to turn off our brains.

And maybe that is the real reason we crave marathons. This time that we live in bombards us with information and our lives demand so much of us. We constantly have to be “on,” running around, dealing with life. Marathons allow us to shut down and, in a way, to take a moment for ourselves. Yes, we could escape our lives with a good book. But, let’s be honest, that often feels like it takes too much effort. The beauty of a TV marathon is that there is no effort involved. We don’t even have to change the channel, much less turn a page. Much like during times of sleep, our bodies shut down and allow us to remain curled up on the sofa or in bed for hours at a time. Only the need for bathroom break or food can draw us away. But those distractions are only temporary. The stronger pull is from the next episode awaiting us. Unlike most good things, this one only ends when we want it to—or until we’ve seen every episode of the five season DVD collection or the channel we are watching decides that it is time to change up the day’s programming.

So, while TV marathons can have a negative connotation, the fact is they let us take a break from our lives. And we need that. We need hours, not minutes to zone out, to check out. We need that time to see how the other half lives, so that we can return to our lives in time. 

Going Green

            Since the discovery of the negative impacts of fossil fuels, finding a viable alternative has been one of the most researched and hottest debated fields of study. We know that these fossil fuels are bad for our environment and us. And while new technologies and strategies have been developed to mitigate these detrimental impacts, there is still a question about how to best tackle this problem. Many scientists, myself included, believe that the answer is not straightforward; rather, it is a combination of most, if not all, of the strategies and technologies that have been developed over the years. It is this balancing act that will be needed to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

            Many believe, incorrectly, that it is going to be one or two big alternative energy sources that completely replace fossil fuels. At this time, this is not realistic—mostly due to a lack of technology. We cannot expect to be completely solar or completely wind any time soon; the space needed to build the infrastructure required to produce the amount of energy needed to meet the United States energy consumption rates is not available. Instead, the way to reduce and eventually eliminate our dependence of fossil fuels will have to come through from a more diverse set of resources and more involved process.

            The first step in this process should start with surveys of regions throughout the country to assess which energy sources are developed there and how much. For example, solar plants should be developed in areas of high sunlight, such as the desert, and wind plants should be developed in areas of high winds, such as valleys. We must maximize the amount of energy that an alternative energy source can harvest by placing them in the correct areas.

            By using a combination of these alternative energy sources, we are evenly distributing the burden that they place on the environment and humans. This is to say that instead of making a solar farm the size of Rhode Island—to power some of the United States, we should evenly distribute these technologies by using land spatial planning techniques.

            In areas of high wave activity we must install tidal energy technology to harvest the potential energy from waves. We must also install turbines that can harvest the energy from the tide moving in and out from the coast. However, this technology should not be installed in areas where it will disrupt tourism or biodiversity hotspots.  

            In areas of high wind we must install wind turbines to capture as much of this energy as we can. We must also be careful not to install them too close to residential neighborhoods as many people do not appreciate the noise nor the look.

            In areas of high sunlight we must install solar farms. However, we must be careful not to create these farms in biodiversity hotspots, so as not to disrupt the local environment.

In areas of empty land we must plant biofuels—such as algae—to create other forms of energy with which to run machinery. However, we should ensure that land used for growing food is not used to grow biofuels.

In order to avoid the downsides associated with the aforementioned technologies, they must not be overemployed. It is important to use a balance of each alternative energy source. By using them in combination, we begin to see a viable solution emerge. While these technologies, individually, may not be as efficient as we would hope, using them in combination offsets the costs and creates a more efficient infrastructure for alternative energy to be produced and used.  

            Going forward, we must acknowledge that putting a focus of developing these alternative energy sources will create a larger “green” market and a larger demand for these products. I am hesitant to say that the government must subsidize the market, as once a market is subsidized it is nearly impossible to take that subsidy away. However, should growth in this market not increase naturally, then perhaps this is a necessary evil.

            I believe that we are at a fork in the road. We can either choose to willingly change now and be ahead of the curve, or be forced to change later and face greater ramifications. It is here where the old adage is appropriate, “do the hard things first.” It is just like coming home from grade school and wanting to watch TV before doing homework, yet, your parents will not let you; telling you to “do the hard things first.” During the process you are upset and just want to watch TV. However, once the task is completed, you feel at peace and you enjoy watching TV without worry. This is the same situation we are in. Scientists are acting as our parents; and it is up to us, the children, to decide whether or not we want to listen to them. While we know they are right, we continue to want to defy them and prove that our way is better.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” said Albert Einstein.[i] It’s our move.

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[i] Albert Einstein