WHY DO WE KILL PEOPLE TO TEACH...

SHARON COLTON, M.D., practices family medicine in Harlan, Ky. and the surrounding area. She recalls her focus on the death penalty began in the 1970's when someone asked "Why do we kill people to teach people that killing is wrong." For her this question still needs answering.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• death penalty
• execution
• Harlan
• Kentucky
• row
• kcadp

[jonathansee]

Don't try to fool me here. I only know this are a minority. When Chemical Ali was executed, heaps of Kurdish people celebrated on the streets. Fumiko Isogai, who had her only child killed in this crime, launched a campaign to call for the death penalty. Within ten days, her petition was signed by 100,000 citizens. She presented her petition for the death penalty. About 318,000 citizens had signed her petition by December 2008.

[PatrickDelahanty]

You might want to look at the websites of Murder Victims Families for Human Rights and Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation. Plenty of survivors oppose the use of the death penalty. You will find their reasons there.

[jonathansee]

Think of violent people who murder prison guards and other inmates in prison. Do you have real empathy and sympathy for family members of the victims? What would you do if Osama Bin Laden walked into the room right now? Most people would say they would kill him for the crimes he committed against our country. This is the same thing that the familys and friends of most murder victims feel about the person that took their loved one away from them.

[Dvish000]

More blood for blood has a just and propotional elegance ONLY when universally applied to all murders. Once the state tries to pick and choose which murderers get executed ( in Kentucky 4have have been picked in 53 years out of thousands of other murders) the premise of retributive equivalence has been destroyed, And while I don't accept the dooctirne to begin with, the truth is it has never been applied by the state in modern times.--the death penalty has always been selectively applied.

[jonathansee]

We shoul abolish prisons because they deprive people of their right to liberty. Prisons = kidnapping, fines and taxes = extortion. Let's work hard to abolish all of them.

[PatrickDelahanty]

We don't burn arsonists; we don't rape rapists; we don't go steal the property of thieves; we shouldn't be killing killers.

[ZEverson]

A sentence of life without parole is just that. No parole board gets involved. And changing laws rarely pertain to murder and even more rarely do they retroactively impact sentenced criminals. And you're yet to explain how the death penalty shows how society values lives when it executes innocent people, like Cameron Todd Willingham.

[jonathansee]

Executing a murderer is the only way to adequately express our horror at the taking of an innocent life. Nothing else suffices. To equate the lives of killers with those of victims is the worst kind of moral equivalency. If capital punishment is state murder, then imprisonment is state kidnapping and restitution is state theft.

[jonathansee]

That two wrongs do not make a right, therefore, executions are equivalent to murder. First of all, the term murder is specifically defined in any dictionary as the UNLAWFUL killing of a person with malice and aforethought. So logically, the word murder cannot be used to describe executions since the death penalty is the law. To do so is an obvious abuse of semantics.

[jonathansee]

They say that life in prison without parole serves just as well. Certainly, if you ignore all the murders criminals commit within prison when they kill prison guards and other inmates, and also when they kill decent citizens upon escape.Another flaw is that life imprisonment tends to deteriorate with the passing of time.Putting a murderer away for life just isn't good enough. Laws change, so do parole boards, and people forget the past.