The curtain shrieked as it was yanked open to reveal a 67-year-old man tied to a chair. His arms were pulled uncomfortably behind his back. The red bull’s-eye target on his chest rose and fell as he desperately attempted to still his breathing.
The man, Brad Sigmon, smiled at his attorney, Bo King, seated in the front row before guards placed a black bag over his head. King said Sigmon appeared to be trying his best to put on a brave face for those who had come to bear witness.
That was the kind of person Sigmon had become after his decades on death row, the kind who fretted over other people’s comfort at his own execution. Sigmon had agonized over the fact that his loved ones would have to see him die like this, gunned down, mere feet away from them.
He had been faced with an impossible choice, if you can call it that. Die by lethal injection, electrocution, or firing squad? Firing squad, he concluded, seemed the most humane. Now, he found himself strapped down, waiting for those three rifles pointed at his beating heart to fire.
Killing a murderer doesn’t solve anything.
It discourages repeat offense.
It makes someone else a killer.
of all the arguments against capital punishment this is not one that I understand. like, yes, someone does have to perform the act for the system to persist. good point? I don't support capital punishment but I don't think the executioner themselves is necessarily a crucial point in the argument.
What is there not to understand about "an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind"?
Speaking from a Christian perspective, doing more evil will not make the already-done evil go away. Neither will rehabilitation and reintegration to society fully erase the old wounds, but it will offset them. Killing someone, even someone guilty as charged doesn't do jack-shit about the inherent problem of what causes people to kill. Neither does the death penalty serve as a deterrent. Nor does the Catholic churc condone it.
As Beccaria noted, it's not the severity of the punishment that deters, it's the inevitability and swiftness that does. Both of which the US system lacks - whether you get death, life or parole is decided largely arbitrarily, and 40 years is anything but swift. Even though the book was written over a quarter-century ago, its hypotheses have proven true and continue to be true even ro this day.
In those same 40 years most murderers could easily have been rehabilitated and resettled into society, having become more productive members than most. Sure, there might be the odd one-in-a-million truly unfixable psycho, but those can just be locked up indefinitely. If nothing else, it costs taxpayers less than ritualistic sacrifice ripped straight out of the Old Testament does.
Oh fuuuuck off. Christianity has killed more people than every other religion combined.
But you did condone the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, burning Joan Of Arc, burning William Tyndale for translating the bible from Latin to English, burning "suspected" witches, burning gay people, denying the Holocaust while it was still happening, denying the Gaza genocide while it's still happening, and the thousands of Indigenous Residential Schools your church operated in North America. I'm glad that executing a psychopathic murderer is where the Catholics draw the line though, that's definitely worse than all of those combined.
You're right, I didn't make myself clear. I am very much an atheist and against everything organized religion stands for. I have, however, been indoctrinated by religion for half my life so I have some insight into how a part of that giant population thinks.
Recently I've been looking into religion again, and while I won't ever be able to find Sky-Daddy, I do appreciate stuff like Vatican 2 which, while not perfect, as far as the Church goes, is a pretty good change of direction. Shame they don't extend it to things like abortion or gay people wanting to have sex (currently it's okay to be gay only if you don't). Now, I don't "appreciate" it bacause it's great, but because it's way less bad than before, and with a potential listening audience of 1+ billion people, sometimes referring to their "higher power" yields results. I have "oened the eyes" (a little bit, but any scepticism goes a looong way) of a few sect members (JW, Adventists, Latterdays) and, hopefully, "deamericanized" their view of communism. I couldn't have accomplished this through insults. It took more than a few hours of polite debating. It was exausting. But also, very rewarding. It was also unbelievable how may defense mechanisms kicked in.
But, I called upon the Church here because of two simple reasons: even the World's largest opressive society which has done volumes to squander lives and stifle progress has somehow through the absolute fucking miracle of Vatican 2 , while not admitted its past wrongdoings (they're infallible in their own eyes, after all), at least gotten a sane outlook onto this single branch of human rights. Abortion is still a no-go - they're greedy for any indoctrinated kids they can get. But hey, at least they let guys wear a rubber (they almost forbid that as well).
Since OC to me gives vibes of christofaschism, I think pointing onto the World's largest criminal communion which is like a clock that strikes right only once in a blue mlon is worth something when even they have a sane take on the matter.
And to OC reading this, I didn't mean the "christofascist" as an insult (although it might just be one). As Eco said, he was a smart kid. Luckily for him, he was a kid and nor a teenager, so he never had the opportunity to act on what he'd been indoctrinated with. While "OG" fascism was (is?) an inherently Italian thing, it bears resemblence to a lot of very bad regimes.
Education and pointing this out to people who believe the lies is of utmost importance because every single person going about their daily lives and trying to endure the terror quietly (which, in my eyes, is exactly what the deportations and executions in the US qualify as) because they silently condone and enable it.
Not to speak about outright supporters like OP (which can still be rehabilitated), or about those actively participating (these can also), or ringleaders (these might not be, but using their knowledge of efficiently runnung death camps for efficiently running a banana plantation is better than the current medieval ceremony with priests, black hoods and a crucifix "gurney"). Honestly, for all the Christians out there, I have no clue how they can't see the fucking crucifix and think "Isn't this wrong and against everything I stand for?"
Agsin, I don't identify as Christian, but even when I did, I condemned all of the things. I havebeen a steadfast pacifist my entire life. I'm not defending anything. I'm just pointing out that the world's most corrupt institution things "better" than the fascists. On the tiny little topic of people getting murdered as payback.
You don’t think the act of making someone take someone else’s life is a point worth talking about?