Abolish ‘barbaric’ death penalty

Editor’s note: The following letter is in response to Friday’s editorial soliciting opinions on capital punishment.

Nay to the “death penalty,” yea to abolishing it. Our legal system is imperfect so we make mistakes finding innocent people guilty, then later find out we were wrong. So we make ourselves murderers when that happens if we continue executing people.

We will never become perfect, so our sins of murdering innocent people will continue as long as we execute people. This debases us as a culture as well as individuals who support that.

Executing people, in addition to being an avoidable and heinous sin, costs us each more than keeping them in prison for life. Because we pay all the legal costs in trying to get people executed according to the law, we spend more taxpayers’ money to kill them than to keep them alive.

Are we crazy? Are we so committed to “an eye for an eye” that we will spend enormous amounts of money to kill people when we don’t need to?

Morally, the “death sentence” is not justice at all. It is barbaric revenge. The executed learn nothing. The rest of us are made killers.

It is not a deterrent because psychopaths, which all murderers are, do not believe they will ever suffer the consequences of their actions. It is part of their psychopathy.

We need to stop being stupid barbarians and end the “death sentence.”

This story was originally published January 5, 2017 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Abolish ‘barbaric’ death penalty."