Death Penalty.

Tomorrow I start another internal in English on Formal writing. It's on a very contriversal and difficult topic: The Death Penalty.

Because of it's contriversal nature I just had to stay up incredibly late ((even though the internal is first period tomorrow...)) and blog about some thoughts to do with the death penalty.

My first thought is about how death affects people. The way to get yourself a death sentancing from the court is to kill someone and live in a country like America, China or Nigeria. The idea of the Death Penalty is to bring a greater force of justice to those who have done the worst crimes. These crimes committed obviously affect the loved ones of the murdered person. This person is no longer around and has disappeared suddenly, without a sense of closure or a simple goodbye. This is a great injustice, and I agree that it should be judged. Hashly.

However, if you start thinking about it, the Death Penalty also affects the family of the murderer. First they are dragged through a grueling trial and sometimes a media frenzy, and then subjected to a sudden realisation that this person that they know and share memories ((good and bad)) with is also going to be killed. I think this is also a great injustice. They may have more of a chance of saying their goodbyes, but otherwise the outcome is the same. Someone else dies. Not just the victim/s, but also the addition of the murderer-turned-victim.

Some may say that this is justice. But if someone were to murder someone close to me and he was sentenced to die then this means that not only is my loved one dead, but some other human being. Who does his close person get to kill? It just seems to go on and on if you only look at it from a revengful point of view. As a follower of the King, I cannot agree with revenge, no matter how deserving of death someone is. Romans 12 speaks plainly about revenge-and how it doesn't belong to us humans, but the only truely just King. I believe that one day we will judge with Him. But it must be WITH Him. Right now most of our courts aren't under the leadership of our just and merciful G-d. Without Him we cannot possibly pass judgement on another human being and take their life.

This then makes me think of the alternative. Obviously you can't just let a murderer walk free if he isn't innocent. That would just be stupid. That's why we have prisons I suppose. To keep the bad people from the good.

To me it comes down to a respect for life. As a woman completely against abortion I cannot agree with the death penalty. Granted, these people have done something that deserves a great deal of judgement, where babies in the womb haven't had a chance to do anything at all except grow, and that's certainly not deserving of death. However, the respect for life should be the same. Our list of Human Rights states that we all have "a right to life" and "no one shall be subject to torture." Both abortion and the death penalty conflict these two basic but fundimental rights. Obviously the death pentalty kills people but it also tortures the individual both physically and phsycologically. Physically because of the brutal nature of executions and in the mind because of the long waiting game played in the cell. In some countries they won't tell the person that they are going to die until the day or within hours of the execution. Every day you wake up and wonder if it'll be the last day you'll be on this earth. It makes me feel sick to my stomache just thinking about it. That's not fair.

No matter how terrible the crime committed was you can't take away a human's rights. Who are you to decide when life should end? Granted, the murderer had to right to take another person's life and he/she crossed a clear line between right and wrong, but how can you do the same thing, make the same decision and call it lawful? It doesn't make sense!

It's getting really late and I'm not well, so I'll end it here with this really good youtube clip I found. It's funny that I can generally get more information off youtube than google these days!