Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Ethical Dilemma? Not really.

Sure, the death penalty is a morally complex issue. Sometimes. Some of us feel that the complexities are not really worth the trouble, when you can really ruin a person's life (and maybe even get some good out of them) by locking them up forever, anyway. God's judgement, one way or another, falls on all of us, and we have an obligation to ourselves not to be too hasty in making these sorts of decisions.

On the other hand, sometimes the death penalty is a gross miscarriage of justice. Cory Maye is someone who shouldn't even have been charged with capital murder, much less sentenced to death. Honestly, there's no complexity here, unless we want to keep the death penalty but prevent errors from ever happening again.

(Yes, I say "again" because the likelihood that we -- I say "we" meaning Americans, past and present -- have executed one or more people who did not deserve the death penalty either out of sheer innocence or other failures of proportionality and fairness is very high.)

In addition to having one of the coolest blog names around, BattlePanda has the list of bloggers who share this view. (for the record, I'm Blue Team) It's nice to see some cross-party agreement on this, of course.

1 comment:

Walker said...

There is now a petition up for people express their dismay at Maye's sentencing, and their insistence on his unconditional pardon by the governor of Mississippi. Ahistoricality, would you be willing to promote a link to the top of your blog or sidebar? Thanks to any and all for signing.