Winfried,
I want you to know that many people in the U.S. share your pain whenever
someone is put to death by "official policy." Like you, I cannot see how
another death does anything to heal the wounds caused by the person who is
killed. And I am sickened when I see the family and friends of murder
victims rejoice when the murderer receives a death penalty. I understand
the need they have for "closure" and even the base human emotion of
revenge -- but, when they go home and sleep on it, I wonder how they feel
the next morning. Do you think they really feel any better about having
lost a loved one to know that someone else is about to do the same?
The thing about death is it leaves no chance for anything else -- no
healing, no remorse, no recompense, no reconstruction of a wasted life, no
learning. And I think it lessens all of us to (collectively) participate
in killing a fellow human being, no matter what that person may have done.
I use the same criterion to judge legal penalties that I use for any other
social action -- How does it leave the world? Is the world a better place
for having put a person to death than it would have been had something
else been done? I have heard no evidence to say that it is -- the death
penalty has been shown NOT to have any effect on the incidence of violent
crime, so there's no deterrence argument to be made; as I wrote above, the
death penalty utterly ends the possibility of rehabilitation and causing a
person's death leaves us all a little diminished in our humanity and
ability to love.
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>