I knew that she was the one for me when our first phone conversation became a 12 hour marathon that ended with the sun rise and ran the gamut from marriage to capital punishment. The former we both seemed agreeable to, the latter I have recently agreed that she was right and I was wrong (the secret to 25 years marriage).
9-11 might have been an act of terrorism against America, but the response was the equivalent of capital punishment, and even a pacifist like me could relate to the emotion. I never believed Sadaam Hussein was the right person to hold accountable for the crime, nor were the already war tattered mountains of Afghanistan a worthy place to chase after Bin Laden, the presumed mastermind of it all. What I did believe is that seeing bombs on television would help vulnerable Americans feel like they'd responded to the highest level of evil- enacting a version of retaliatory capital punishment, and it felt good to me too.
Years after we married, a dear friend came to me for support of her golf tournament designed to honor the memory of her murdered son and his girlfriend who were killed because he was scheduled to testify against a killing that he witnessed at a party. When Sir Mario Owens was finally convicted for the murder of Javad Marshall-Fields and his girlfriend Vivien Wolfe,I didn't change my view of capital punishment, but I found myself suddenly eager to shoot her son's killer dead just to ease the pain of her loss.
In the wake of the recent Dzhokhar Tsarnaev conviction in the Boston marathon killings, we return to the mirrored reflection we always confront every time we decide that killing a man is the best way to deal with killing a man. Places like Boston become more challenged in their moral convictions since they are a state firmly opposed to capital punishment. Yet, even Boston found a way to try Tsarnaev in a jurisdiction (federal) that would allow a jury to kill him if they saw fit. Once again, even this pacifist would happily put the bullet into the brain of Tsarnaev to ease the pain of those most harmed by his brutality.Personally, I have never seen death as a worse option to being beaten or molested for years in a prison, but Tsarnaev would likely miss out on that form of prison life even if he avoids death. If sentenced to life, he likely gets sent to ADX near Florence, Colorado, a VERY expensive maximum security prison that is built to avoid escape, or the kind of prisoner interaction that might encourage escape attempts. Extra heinous criminals that find their way to ADX are secured and separated in a manner that isn't quite as interactive or vicious as traditional prison. With six levels of security, ADX inmates have to earn their way into general population interaction. Critics of this location have called the prison the Alcatraz of the Rockies or a cleaner version of hell.
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Our uneasiness with disposing of dead weight made us give Tsarnaev the best lawyering we could imagine for the pursuit of saving his life. For the man who was partially responsible for the worst act of terrorism on American soil since 9-11, we give the best representation our system can imagine. In addition to super lawyer Judy Clarke, Tsarnaev received 3 additional public defenders including one who speaks Russian, Tsarnaev's native language. If sentenced to life in prison, Tsarnaev will join another of defense attorney Clarke's popular clients, Ted Kaczynski (the unabomber), who was saved from death himself thanks to Clarke, and is currently residing in Florence, Colorado as well.
Killing Tsarnaev will not come without years of delay and appeal, both on our dime and at our expense. Once the appeals run out, finding the drugs to kill Tsarnaev will be a challenge too. Currently, the states that love to kill people are down to their last few doses of capital punishment cocktails since drug companies that make these meds don't want to be associated with the botched killings that are becoming more prevalent from our lack of skill at capital punishment. By the time Tsarnaev gets his just deserts, medicated capital punishment's might go by the wayside unless some medicine company gets into the death business soon.
Although any medication can be fatal when used in dangerous doses or combinations, medications of all sorts are originally designed for the opposite purpose of capital punishment. Even when they help capital punishment achieve its purpose, no medication or combination of meds will ever react the same given to different people. Just as alcohol effects each of us differently, so do murderous cocktails, and these repeated botched killings are an embarrassment to any forward thinking society.
My bullet to the head idea is rather risky too, in that killing the brain doesn't insure that the body will immediately follow, yet we find this method to be the most humane way of killing cattle. The guillotine is another oldie but goodie, though I doubt our stomachs will endure rolling heads or spurting blood since we can't handle the convulsive agony with the medicinal route we currently administer.
Way back when I first started courting my wife and challenging her on the question of capital punishment, I asked the question of "who wants the blood on their hands anymore". Way back when, my would be wife said she would kill them herself, so that angle of argument proved hollow against my boo- but it worked with most. The killing panels were popular a quarter century ago in which several people took part in the process so that no one knew exactly who administered the lethal injection, thus minimizing the potential for personal guilt. When the first person sentenced to a medicated death began to slobber and convulse for a few minutes longer than expected, we instantly lost this freedom from guilt as well.Way back when, my wife didn't argue about marrying me, so I put my energy into trying to convince her that we should stop spending so much money on capital punishment. I've dreamed forever of an island of ill repute where those sentenced to death could option to live and survive in an environment where we only provide access to fresh water. Every other aspect of survival would be the responsibility of the islands criminal inhabitants. A new age Alcatraz of sorts, but much further from civilization and built, organized and maintained by the convicts themselves. If a man can not be reformed to live within the order of society, this idea would force him to conform to societal order in a graphic first hand experience. The most unruly would likely be killed and disposed of a lot faster than they are within our current system of law and justice, leaving the murderous side of capital punishment to be done by those most comfortable with doing it already.
I know what you're thinking. WE are way too humane for that sort of idea. Which is the same thing that I used to say about capital punishment.
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