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The Death Penalty (Re. Tim McVeigh etc.)

Harel Barzilai <harelb@tba.math.cornell.edu>, 19 June 1997

"I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of a society.

"I reject the notion that the death penalty has any essential deterrent effect on potential offenders. I am convinced that the contrary is true -- that savagery begets only savagery." -- Andrei Sakharov

[Source: "The Death Penalty -- Cruel & Inhuman Punishment" a pamphlet by Amnesty International -- 322 8th Ave., New York, NY 10001]

"I have reached the conviction that the abolition of the death penalty is desirable. Reasons: (1) Irreparability in the event of an error in justice; (2) detrimental moral influence on [the people/society carrying out an execution]. --Albert Einstein

"What I was asked, which stunned and confused me, was whether the experience of having been raped had somehow had an effect on my opinion of capital punishment. At the time, I didn't understand why people made this connection and I absolutely didn't understand their certainty that being raped had to have affected my thoughts on state sanctioned murder.

"Capital punishment offends me. When asked how I felt, my standard line was ''how dare the state execute someone in my name''

"I think now that the people asking me those questions on the eve of the first execution were asking if somehow the experience of being a victim of a violent crime had helped me get comfortable with the idea of capital punishment as just revenge. The answer is most adamantly no. --Rape survivor Cynthia Hoffman

In frustration:

"What part of 'killing is wrong' don't you understand?" -HB

"What part of 'two wrongs don't make a right' don't you understand?"

-HB

''The judicial system continues to support revenge based law that ignores what those of us who have been raped know: it's the structure of society that's the problem and imprisoning an individual rapist only gets the rapist raped, it doesn't change the fact that the next woman I meet might also have been raped and have a better idea what I need than the justice system that's set up to meet my needs ever dreamed of.

[...]

''What will help me is if we all put the kind of energy into changing the world that we put into criminal justice. Changing the world and a system which makes assaulting me seem like a good option in Perry's mind is the kind of work that justice should be attempting, not incarceration and eye for an eye illusionary punishment that solves nothing.''

--Rape survivor Cynthia Hoffman

"What then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be an equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal, who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him, and who from that moment onward had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life." --Albert Camus, writer, France.

[Source: "The Death Penalty -- Cruel & Inhuman Punishment" a pamphlet by Amnesty International -- 322 8th Ave., New York, NY 10001]

Capital Punishment: Euphemism for Death Penalty

Death Penalty: Euphemism for the carrying out of the authoritarian and barbaric power to carry out State Executions

--HB

CC of misc.activism.progressive (MAP) post to other newsgroups, which "I don't regularly read, a resource (I do not wish to enter into a debate on the matter although email after July 23 is fine)