In a South Carolina prison sixty-six years ago, guards walked a 14-year-old boy, bible tucked under his arm, to the electric chair. At 5′ 1″ and 95 pounds, the straps didn’t fit, and an electrode was too big for his leg.
The switch was pulled and the adult sized death mask fell from George Stinney’s face. Tears streamed from his eyes. Witnesses recoiled in horror as they watched the youngest person executed in the United States in the past century die.
While we aren’t still executing 14 year-olds, we’re still executing prisoners, putting our nation in the company of a number of countries not noted for their respect for human rights, including China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Libya.
It seems to me that it’s time for our nation to revisit how we punish our prisoners, because it seems to me that there are plenty of alternatives to capital punishment (life imprisonment without parole/release comes to mind) that would provide punishment and justice.
I’m curious to know if you lost a loved one, a young child, your mother, your Father, or a Sister or a Brother who didn’t get the benefit of a Lawyer, a Judge and Jury before they were sentenced to death by some POS. would you feel the same way about the death penalty.
Dave, I don’t believe in an eye for an eye.
If I were ever to lose a loved one to an act of violence, I’d absolutely want justice, but I don’t think that state-sanctioned executions constitute justice – they’re simply revenge.
And I’m curious….do you support putting a 14 year old to death?
Zach…do we still execute underage people?
I can’t say I agree with the DP…but I also haven’t had a loved one dragged behind a truck by a rope until they were decapitated.
do we still execute underage people?
Think about that for a second. Doesn’t it tell you something that there isn’t some immutable standard for just and righteous retribution, and that society gave its blessing to killing children not that long ago?
What do you think will be said about our standards 50 years from now?
Z….I’m curious to know…in your line of work…how many people do you meet that are truly rehabilitatable?
Anon, that’s hard to say.
No nation is moral that sanctions capital punishment when there are far better alternatives that do not run the risk of killing an innocent citizen.
It’s much more costly to put them to death than it is to keep them alive. There are way too many cases where corrupt officials just blame someone. (That and I was reading particular, states that have the death penalty, when they hear it’s more likely that a minority is sent to death, they want it even more for purification. Many of them don’t care if they’re innocent, they just want the person dead. It’s downright disturbing and nothing about justice but simply getting rid of what they see doesn’t fit in their world view. Really creepy stuff. )
That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were countless people killed for crimes they didn’t commit, because they needed a scapegoat or perhaps they knew something. Since this happened prior to the Miranda Rights too (not until the 1960s I believe) there were probably many people who were killed because they were tortured into admitting for an unsatisfiable bloodlust.
I really don’t think we should be saying “Well China, North Korea, Libya, and so on are worse than us!” – considering the conditions of those countries. Not exactly a thing I would love to be associated with in terms of their history of human rights.
I’ll be honest: long time ago, I was al for the death penalty for certain crimes, but then I realized how fucked up the courts are, the corruption, big money, and everything else.
If the courts were perfect, ideal, and we got the bad guy everytime and not some scapegoat or even someone who may have been framed due to finding out too much? I’d be for it. But that isn’t the reality of the situation, this is a whole case of what if he did, what if he didn’t? What if the world was made of pudding?