Allow me to play Led Zeppelin and ramble on. I’ve never been able to understand how conservatives generally support a “culture of life” yet also support the death penalty. It’s as if to say life is only important when it’s still inside a mother. I say this because for the longest time, I too wrestled with my thoughts on the death penalty and the value of ‘all’ life.

It’s a complex issue as there are horrific crimes that would seem to demand the death penalty. But, for me, it came down to this: I couldn’t adequately explain legally, faithfully, or in any other way how we could say to a person, “Killing is wrong. And to show you how wrong it is, we’re going to kill you, and silently hope that you are the one who did it.”

So if someone felt the same way I do, would granting clemency last week have been disrespectful of the justic system? No more than a veto disrespects congress. No more than congress creating a law in direct response to a judgment disrespects the judiciary. Sure, sometimes it reeks of partisanship and sometimes it’s wrong, but the ability of one branch to check another is crucial. And while it is a bit disrespectful since it says, “You guys got it wrong,” it’s a nice option to have.

I listened to an academic argue about the Tookie case being racist. her arguement was that since 41% of the people on death row in the US are Black and only 11% of the population in the US are black therefore this is clearly due to racial bias in the justice system. (percentages are approximate, but clse to what she quoted)

I disagree with her “logic”. The racial, gender, demographic makeup of people on death row (or sentenced to life imprsionment) does not have to have a the same demographic makeup of the population at large for us to be sure that the system is just. In fact, if that were true I would suspect that the system wasn’t just!

Yes, there should be more resources given to public defenders so they can do their job well and further reduce innocent people from going to jail.

The spiritual part of the argument is perhaps this: The death penalty is an appeal to the highest court, expediting a condemned man’s judment before his creator. Since we believe in a speedy trial for the accused, why wait 20 years to carry out the sentence?

Harsh? To the armchair governor, yes… but to the families of the victims, it often provides closure for a grave injustice – although it can never bring their loved ones back.

Why struggle with the death penalty, citing the “right to life” argument? When convicted of a felony, your rights are forfeited and you become a ward of the state to which you owe a debt.

The way both liberals and conservatives interpret the “value” of life has been painfully inserted into our legislation for over 30 years now:

1.) (1973) Roe v. Wade
2.) (1977) A ten-year moratorium on executions ends and the death penalty has been used since.

We are either mass delusional or a society which, in some cases, feels adequate enough to play God.

We have the power to kill. We use that power all the time. So what’s one more death?

When someone takes someone elses life in a situation other than self defense or defense of another, what happens to the victim’s “right of life”? What about the people who lived in carthage? or pompei? What about their right to live? There is no such thing as a “right”. Its a human ideal, an abstract. Rights do not “exist” except as a rationalization for our actions, or as a reason to influence someone else’s actions. You say you have the right to live, but I say thats bullshit. You have to fight to live, maybe not as hard as humans had to five thousand years ago, but you still have to go to work, and do what you must in order to live. No one is giving you everything you need on a silver platter and asking if you would like anything else. If you truly had the “right” to live, everything would be provided for you because it was your “right”.

Sorry to break it to you, but this whole thing of the right of life is nothing more than idealists spouting off a bunch of wishful thinking to justify their beliefs.

While I understand what Travis is saying, I think that a “right” is not so much a privilege that is supported but a condition of existence that should not, in general, be taken. I have seen the idea of “rights” be thought of as the former by guys who believed they had a “right” to live well, that they would take it if necessary, and that doing so wasn’t wrong because they were entitled to it. Unfortunately, they failed to see the irony that in getting their rights, they were taking someone else’s.