Eye for an Eye, William Stokey
I have never lost someone close to me due to violence. I do not know what it is like to feel the pain of having someone kidnapped or murdered (or both) whether as an accident, or intentionally. So perhaps, I should stay out of the debate as I cannot put myself truly in the shoes of a family facing that kind of grief. Much like the abortion debate where I feel that it is wrong to put ourselves into the decision making process of a woman who must consider all options, perhaps I should stay out of the whole argument.
Yet I read an interesting article the other day. Again from SFGate - they have some very thought provoking commentary. Check it out. It is the article describing the last moments of a notorious killer, one of the original Crips gang members. However, somewhere along the line, he became an activist for peace. The man had admittedly done terrible evil. Yet, he evolved, he learned, he did good works. In the scales do they balance? I think for me that is an issue that I don’t feel competent to judge, and as a whole I don’t feel that as a human being we have the right to decide when it is “right” to execute someone. Surely all who have any kind of spiritual belief in an afterlife have some sort of belief of punishment or chastisement after death, be it hell or karmic justice. Who are we then to play god? The killing of one human being to satisfy the vengence of his crimes against us is still killing.
That is why they make the ones who do the execution unable to know exactly which one caused the actual death. Cuz who could live with guilt like that? In truth, I think it is the same for all people who’ve commited such heinous crimes. They already live in their own hell.
What good comes of killing them? It doesn’t bring back the life of the person originally hurt. And it satisfys one of the baser needs of humans. I for one, would like to believe that I would never act on those feelings. I don’t say I would not feel them. I am certain that I would hate someone who hurt someone I love. I think however, that I have the rational understanding that taking their life does nothing to change mine. It just makes me guilty of doing the same thing, causing grief and horror upon yet another family who loved that person regardless of their wrong doings. It also eliminates any chance that person might have had to change, to grow, to good work in the world.
“That seemed in line with someone who co-founded the notorious Crips street gang decades ago in defiance of law-abiding society, and then converted so strongly to the cause of peace that he renounced the gang life and campaigned for peace from behind the prison walls. From youth to death, Williams was always trying to set his own terms, to stick to what he perceived as his own sense of dignity. “
And of those who are unrepentent. Well I see two categories there. Our justice system makes tremendous mistakes in spite of the care taken. But we are HUMAN. We cannot take ourselves, our prejudices, our life experiences, out of the equation. It is impossible to be completely neutral. Yes we may try the best we can, but it just isn’t going to happen. So is it worth killing innocents for crimes they never committed to kill others for their crimes? What of the real criminals still out there? The second problem is that in understanding healthy human psychology, murderers, terrible criminals, are not inhuman. They commit inhumane actions due to their own perceptions, experiences etc. They have something wrong, something broken inside them. So instead of trying to help them get well, (which admittedly may be impossible) we put them to death. At the very least, if they are unrecoverably insane, they should be locked away safe from themselves and others, just as we take care (or don’t most of the time) the mentally ill.
From my unique perspective, I feel that killing to kill is wrong. We teach our children it is wrong to hit another for hitting us. We work as a society to base ourselves in rationality and try to work things out as compassionate human beings. Most who don’t end up isolated. Yet we feel completely justified in pulling the plug on lives that may or may not have some impact on the fate of humanity. Perhaps this is the impact. That we will finally wake up and realize that killing to assuage a crime does nothing. It’s proven to have no deterrence, it’s proven to not really help emotion healing of victims, and all it does is make a few people feel good about having administered the final solution… Hmmm heard THAT phrase somewhere else.
Maybe instead of putting all the money into the justice system to try, convict and kill these people, we could start working on problems where the disadvantaged kids who have no other options than gang/street life, growing up in that atmosphere from birth, having to pick between dying and joining a gang, perhaps we could start making things better. Trying harder. Easing their lives. Showing them there is a better way. Stop closing our eyes to the cause and the beginning and just punishing at the end. Just doesn’t seem right.
I’m probably not totally coherent today. Caught my son’s cold crud… ugg. Anyway. Just my 2 pennies.
