Death Penalty

Now that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has denied Staley Tookie Williams' request for clemency (how's that for a phrase?!), the lethal injection is set to go ahead at 12:01 tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.

I'm not very familiar with the particulars of this case, but I know that like many death penalty cases, there have been a lot of very legitimate concerns raised in the decades, years, months, days, and hours leading up to the event. Regardless of the merit of the arguments on both sides, we are left to face a self-imposed tragedy.

The death penalty forces us into situations like these that we should not as a society have to deal with. We do not need to kill murderers to maintain moral order in our society- I would argue that doing so muddles our morality.

From a purely practical perspective, there have been enough legitimate arguments that the death penalty is not even carried out "fairly" to justify immediately halting the practice and taking a serious look at our justice system and its attitude toward minorities and people without money or status.

But even if we could determine that an innocent person could never possibly be executed, and that racial and social factors would never enter into the equation for deciding when to apply the death penalty, I just don't think society should go there.

As a society, the greatest power we should give our government should be the ability to remove people from our society. Those whose actions pose a serious threat to our ability to live together should be pulled out and stripped of all of society's privileges. But they should not be destroyed completely.

I have no doubt that there are emotional arguments that can be made in favor of the death penalty. I hope never to be in a situation where I can relate to them. But the practical and philosophical case for abolishing the death penalty is crystal clear.

The difference between a government that can detain you forever and a government that can kill you is profound. By letting go of government-sanctioned killing, we embrace a higher and more just form of liberty for all.