Scott Petersen and the Death Penalty
As massagelady wrote to me in an email, "Spring break is over. Get blogging already." So blogging I am.
San Mateo, Calif., Superior Court Judge Alfred Delucchi followed the recommendations of the jury and sentenced Scott Peterson to die by lethal injection. Of course, Peterson's actions were heinous: he killed his pregnant wife.
But when are we, as a "civilized" country, going to stop executing people? According to Amnesty International, 84 percent of the executions in the world in 2003 were carried out by four countries: China, Iran, the United States, and Viet Nam. That's good company we are keeping, huh?
The governments of the United States executed 65 people in our names in 2003, the most current year in which data is available. (Saudi Arabia only executed 50. ) Iran, on the other hand, executed at least 108, many in public. I wonder if we would be more or less likely to abolish the death penalty in all of our states if we made the executions public. Would we have a sense of outrage at the taking of life?
I understand the knee-jerk reaction of wanting someone dead who has killed your loved one. My cousin was murdered many years ago, and for a long time, I wanted her murderer dead. I wished the death penalty on him many times over. The 9 years he did in jail did not seem like enough of a punishment; he was free, and my cousin never lived past 12.
But I have come to believe that we must move beyond that initial anger, difficult as it is. It is our moral imperative to stop our governments from killing more people in our name. Of course, there is the procedural issue of even-handedly applying the punishment of execution: the primary indicator of who receives the death penalty is the individual's race: African-American men are something like 9 times more likely to be executed by the state than their white counterparts.
But there is this: each person is more than the worst thing she does. By allowing our government to execute individuals in our names, we become a society that believes that, for certain individuals, they are no more than they crime they commit. When we execute people, we lose hope in our collective humanity, and our ability for change. This doesn't seem to me to be the hallmark of a developed nation.
The other issue regarding Peterson's sentence specifically, is the emphasis the judge put on the "killing" of his "unborn child," who he noted "never had a chance to draw a breath." As a pro-choice woman, the rhethoric of the "unborn child" seems dangerous to me here. It leads us down the road of more legal protections for the "unborn child" (aka, the fetus), and less protection for the pregnant woman carrying that baby to make decisions about her health and life.
San Mateo, Calif., Superior Court Judge Alfred Delucchi followed the recommendations of the jury and sentenced Scott Peterson to die by lethal injection. Of course, Peterson's actions were heinous: he killed his pregnant wife.
But when are we, as a "civilized" country, going to stop executing people? According to Amnesty International, 84 percent of the executions in the world in 2003 were carried out by four countries: China, Iran, the United States, and Viet Nam. That's good company we are keeping, huh?
The governments of the United States executed 65 people in our names in 2003, the most current year in which data is available. (Saudi Arabia only executed 50. ) Iran, on the other hand, executed at least 108, many in public. I wonder if we would be more or less likely to abolish the death penalty in all of our states if we made the executions public. Would we have a sense of outrage at the taking of life?
I understand the knee-jerk reaction of wanting someone dead who has killed your loved one. My cousin was murdered many years ago, and for a long time, I wanted her murderer dead. I wished the death penalty on him many times over. The 9 years he did in jail did not seem like enough of a punishment; he was free, and my cousin never lived past 12.
But I have come to believe that we must move beyond that initial anger, difficult as it is. It is our moral imperative to stop our governments from killing more people in our name. Of course, there is the procedural issue of even-handedly applying the punishment of execution: the primary indicator of who receives the death penalty is the individual's race: African-American men are something like 9 times more likely to be executed by the state than their white counterparts.
But there is this: each person is more than the worst thing she does. By allowing our government to execute individuals in our names, we become a society that believes that, for certain individuals, they are no more than they crime they commit. When we execute people, we lose hope in our collective humanity, and our ability for change. This doesn't seem to me to be the hallmark of a developed nation.
The other issue regarding Peterson's sentence specifically, is the emphasis the judge put on the "killing" of his "unborn child," who he noted "never had a chance to draw a breath." As a pro-choice woman, the rhethoric of the "unborn child" seems dangerous to me here. It leads us down the road of more legal protections for the "unborn child" (aka, the fetus), and less protection for the pregnant woman carrying that baby to make decisions about her health and life.
posted by Me at 2:05 PM
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