I heard somebody yesterday - radio, TV, whatever - ask whether the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams was justice, or vengeance. Dumb question, mainly because the one doesn't necessarily preclude the other. To some the terms are apparently synonymous.
That said, the death penalty is vengeance. Nothing more.
Say what you want about the Catholic Church, but it is consistent on right to life issues. It opposes the death penalty as well as abortion and asisted suicide. And no Catholic speaks more eloquently on the barbaric "third world" practice than Sister Helen Prejean of Dead Man Walking fame. Recounting her first experience as witness to an execution, she says:
" I tell people to go back to
the gospel. Look at who Jesus hung out with: lepers, prostitutes,
thieves—the throwaways of his day. If we call ourselves Jesus'
disciples, we too have to keep ministering to the marginated, the
throwaways, the lepers of today. And there are no more marginated,
thrown-away, and leprous people in our society than death-row inmates.
"There's a lot of what I call 'biblical quarterbacking' going on in
death-penalty debates: people toss in quotes from the Bible to back up
what they've already decided anyway. People want to not only practice
vengeance but also have God agree with them. The same thing happened in
this country in the slavery debates and in the debates over women's
suffrage
."
The talk about the families of victims reaching "closure" with an execution makes no sense. When a crime is sovled and the perpetrators convicted and sentenced, that's closure. Killing a man for killing someone else, rather than locking him away for life, is a gut-level desire born of anger to avenge a wrong. Despite all the rationalzing, there is nothing rational, or just, about capital punishment.
Sister Helen wrote this article for the NewYork Review of Books about state executions in Texas under then-governor George W. Bush, in particular, the execution of Karla Fay Tucker. Here's an excerpt:
"If the jury that sentenced Karla Faye Tucker—another Texan whose death warrant Bush signed—had known of her drug-ridden childhood prostitution, would they have found mitigating circumstances to spare her life? And if, as her jury considered 'future dangerousness,' they could have been made aware of the potential for good in her character that would later make her such an exemplary prisoner, would they still have voted to kill her? The jury, deprived of foresight and without thorough investigation into Karla Faye's childhood, did not have access to these 'new facts,' but George W. Bush did. In the Lucas case, when "new facts" presented themselves, Governor Bush requested the Texas pardons board for commutation. When 'new facts' in Karla Faye Tucker's case came to Bush's attention, he turned away, claiming that he was bound to follow the courts' decisions."
And then, as you may remember, he mocked her. When Tucker Carlson asked Bush what Karla Fay Tucker told Larry King in a televised interview, this was his reply:
" 'Please,' Bush whimpered, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'please, don't kill me.' "
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