The Case Against the Death Penalty

The death penalty is the last vestige of barbaric, unjust, racist and cruel America. We have trouble bringing some of the worst criminals back from other countries because we will kill them and the countries refuse to extradite. We have murdered people who would have been exonerated if today’s forensics technology could have been applied.

But, for some twisted and incomprehensible reasons, and in far too many cases, obsessive prosecutors and law enforcement officials fight to prevent the best forensic and legal technology from being used to start new trials or to give life sentences to defendants who face execution.

By executing the innocent or not proved guilty, we have become a bloodthirsty nation. In executing the innocent, we all become murderers no matter how we try to deny our responsibility.

We have a racist element in our sentencing procedures, where the life of an individual is in the hands of problematic, incompetent, and corrupt judges, and confused and biased juries. We have investigators, prosecutors and judges who are more interested in their careers and reputations than they are in pursuing the truth in the matter and bringing on sound justice. We have law enforcement personnel who are more concerned with covering up their own mistakes or malfeasance than they are with bringing criminals to justice.

Some of these prosecutors insist on fighting to kill convicted prisoners even after they have been exonerated by DNA and other unassailable evidence. Others fight to the finish to prevent defense attorneys from getting DNA and other forensic tests that were not available at the time of conviction.

Some public defenders, the only line of defense available to the poor, fall asleep in court, pressure the defendant to confess, fail to carry out their duties, and otherwise fail as officers of the court. This allows kangaroo courts to railroad their “clients” into death row, all because a Judge, bailiff and a room full of people cannot wake up a defense attorney or ensure that the attorney is replaced.

Some states are dysfunctional, corrupt and lawless. Texas is an example of a state where the law seems to be what some privileged and corrupted individual decides that it is on any given day. Other states have leaders who will do the most heinous executions in order to further their political careers, as Gray Davis did in ordering the execution of a Certified Paranoid Schizophrenic who should have had a life sentence in a facility for the criminally insane.

One recent execution involved a man who was tortured because the lethal injection operator could not find a vein. Someone was so eager to kill this man and bury his case that they made sadistic fools of themselves as an entire world watched.

The death penalty is the last vestige of barbaric, unjust, racist and cruel America. It needs to be banned in all 50 states, or every prosecutor who falsely drives an innocent person to death should be, him or herself, subject to conviction for murder. At the very minimum, if more of these doubtful convictions end with executions, we should all be found guilty of the murder of an innocent or unjustly treated soul.