“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.
I have been struggling with my own feelings about the death penalty lately. I feel very much in the middle of the argument as I can see pros and cons on each side. Using taxpayers money to keep inmates in prison their entire life is something I am against, the amount of money spent to do this is ridiculous. But, on the other hand I think that we have an imperfect system which allows for wrongful convictions. So if we have the death penalty in place, innocent people could potentially be killed. I'm not sure I can stand behind the death penalty as long as this is the case.
ReplyDeleteWhile I am a proponent of the keeping the death penalty, the thought of spending the rest of life in prison is much worse for some people. The best example of this recently is the Sandusky case. Obviously, he deserves the worst punishment. What exactly is the worst punishment in his case though? I feel that he would be getting off easy if given the death penalty. Jail would be absolute awful for him. Abuse from fellow inmates would be endless and prison would not become a home for him, but rather a hell. While no one will argue with giving Sandusky the worst punishment possible, the jury is still out on what this punishment will be.
ReplyDeleteOverall I feel where you are coming from in your dilemma but I feel that there is no right answer. Those who commit the worst crimes must pay harshly for their actions but this will be different for every criminal.
This post infuriated me (congratulations- you forced me to care about what I was reading). I am so sick of the death penalty or no death penalty argument. I agree with you, personally, I have no right to kill someone. So why can't we think past this one solution and create new ones? It is a well known fact that often those on death row are those who have already committed any number of atrocities against the people around them. As a result, they a cycled through the prison system. The movie, Shawshank Redemption gives a gory and unforgettable portrayal of this. So instead of allowing these prisoners to be "institutionalized," or made to feel more comfortable in prison than in the world, why don't better rehabilitation programs exist? The answer cannot be that it costs too much money- a ridiculous amount of money is already being spent on the prison system to house some prisoners for life. In fact, programs such as the one I am suggesting already exist. Homeboy Industries specializes in encouraging those who are at risk or have already been incarcerated to be a healthy member of society in practical ways. Instead of talking about whether or not we (the state) have a right to put people to death, we should be discussing how we can foster and expand programs such as Homeboy Industries.
ReplyDeleteI liked this post because it really made sense to me. I too am Catholic and want to be a lawyer. Even though I want to be a criminal defense attorney, my mom frequently brings up the fact I will have to defend people who are guilty of horrible crimes. Thats why I can understand your argument. As a lawyer its your job to either prove a law was broken or a law was not broken and the punishment should match as what the given law is. However, I think that the law needs to change. The law should be life in prison which is a far worse crime than just being put to death. I am sure a lot of people wish they could die when they are in prison for many many years. Its worse to have to live with what you have done and think about it every day then to just die.
ReplyDeleteI feel similarly to those who have commented previously: pretty conflicted on this issue. I agree completely that we have a huge systematic problem with wrongful convictions. There is no way to completely ensure that those who are executed actually committed the crime because of the way our judiciary works. In many cases, the ultimate guilty or not guilty decision falls on the shoulders of a jury, who are not by any means qualified to make decisions that will end someone's life. My feelings about the death penalty are this: we should do what's cheaper. This seems really strange and a bit uncomfortable to say, I feel like I should have a deeper rationale one way or the other. But, I don't and thus we are stuck in a conundrum in which either option is an extremely expensive expense that the tax payers must absorb in the end. This has been and will continue to be a huge source of debate because of the huge consequences that come along with any laws, etc.
ReplyDeleteLike a lot of you guys, I am quite conflicted with the establishment of a death penalty. I know that a lot of people are very absolutist about these sorts of actions. They believe that killing is wrong, no matter under what kind of circumstances.
ReplyDeleteI, on the other hand, do not strongly adhere to those standards. Perhaps I'm more of a utilitarian. I believe that actions should be made on behalf of the greater good. If it is overall beneficial to invoke a death penalty, then maybe we should adopt (or continue adopting) these sorts of laws. But there have been studies that show that the death penalty costs significantly more than a life imprisonment sentence does, and also it doesn't actually deter crime. These studies have been refuted by other studies, so the data may be a little warped.
But then I think - even if death penalty doesn't actually deter crime, does it serve a greater purpose? Should we allow the death penalty on the justification that it is retribution, and that victims' families would want this kind of punishment?
Interesting debate here - I thought I'd put in my two cents, probably because I'm a little more heartless of a voter. I support the death penalty. I don't see it as an eye for an eye, because for a murder to be punished in the same way, he would have to be murdered in the same way he committed his own crimes. Not with years of free food and housing + a painless lethal injection. The argument that many prisoners would rather spend years behind bars than be put to death is somewhat void, since the wait for the death penalty is over twenty years in many states. So they get that regardless. And even if not, I don't see why we should be providing concessions to inmates when we rarely provide concessions to harmless illegal immigrants or refugees.
ReplyDeleteAnd the cost. Housing an inmate costs taxpayers more money every year than sending a single student through school (I think it was somewhere around $40,000 dollars?). That's ridiculous. If you can save the state half a million dollars per inmate by using the death penalty, I sure believe thats a better allocation of funds.
That being said, I am far from opposed to alternatives such as a true rehabilitation program that gets inmates working in society. But if the debate is between housing them indefinitely and the death penalty, I vote the latter.