Culture Of Death

Last night, the State of Georgia may have executed an innocent man. If so, it wouldn't be the first time the United States has executed an innocent person. Here's what I find most appalling about the death penalty in the United States, and it speaks to high level of hypocrisy one currently finds among the "law and order" types on America's political right.

These people will tell you they are opposed to government because government is inefficient, can't do a job properly and there are high levels of fraud in government. At the same time, these people have an abiding faith in the "system" when it comes to executions. On this issue, many on the political right believe the state can do no wrong, is always right and the state never makes a mistake.

Today, the United States, in using the death penalty, stands next to such bastions of individual liberty as Saudi Arabia and China. It's a sad day when any human being dies and, yes, there are evil people in the world. I'm liberal, even very liberal, however I totally reject the liberal idea that, well, deep down everyone is a good person. That's completely wrong and, as I stated, there are some very evil people in this world. However, the death penalty has outlived whatever usefulness it had if, in fact, it ever had any.

Pope John Paul II -- who will one day be a Saint -- spoke to this issue in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life). He said that, in our modern age, instances when the state is unable to protect the public through nonlethal means "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent." In other words, if nonlethal means are available and sufficient then the state should avoid using the death penalty in keeping, as the Catechism states (2267), "the dignity of the human person." More specifically, the argument of death penalty proponents that we must kill a person in order to protect society are increasingly invalid because there are other methods to protect the public such as life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

The Catechism, (2269-2269), speaks to unintentional killing and notes that such killing is not as imputable as homicide but a person who unintentionally kills will not be exonerated from "grave offense" if they act in an irresponsible way that causes the death of another person although the intention to kill didn't exist. Here, Georgia officials and, for that matter, the entire United States Supreme Court can't use this defense. The clear intention was to kill Troy Anthony Davis and, if Davis was innocent and those who recanted their court testimony were truthful in recanting, both the State of Georgia and the United States Supreme Court acted in an irresponsible and, I would add, an immoral manner by not staying the execution until a court could determine if those who recanted their previous court testimony were being truthful.

In the end, if Davis was innocent, I seriously doubt death penalty proponents in the United States will lose any sleep over that fact. They have committed themselves to an extreme culture of death wherein they place an unshakable faith in the same government they despise and criticize when it, for example, strives to protect the most vulnerable of American society. When it comes to life and death, there's rank hypocrisy on both the right and left, but I shall leave that discussion for another day.

The United States will be the bastion of morality and goodness many Americans claim it is when we no longer use the death penalty. Until then, the United States should refrain from preaching morality to any other nation on this planet and, for once, admit we employ barbaric methods in meting out punishment. The death penalty is not, in any way, related to justice.

Is there a petition or statement, where I can add my name, telling Americans, and every other human being on this planet, that when the United States employs the death penalty it doesn't do so in my name because I, for one, understand the sanctity of human life?

Frankly, I'm not proud to be an American today. Then again, considering the sorry state of affairs that have existed in this country for most of my life, ranging from a national refusal to acknowledge the richest nation on the planet does virtually nothing about the thousands of Americans who sleep on our streets yet obscenely spends billions of dollars for weapons of mass destruction, a national refusal to provide health care for all Americans, a tendency to use the most extreme militarism to get our way in the world, the barbaric use of the death penalty, a tendency to ignore international law, and a tendency to commit heinous war crimes by using depleted uranium ammunition that violates, on at least four levels, humanitarian law, I'm not that proud to be an American any day.