Edit: Deleted the quote of the first initial post in this thread; refer to that if needs be.
Oh, Americans… The only “Civilised” people to allow the Death Penalty - You’d think, would you not, that even they, in their high status amongst the nations of this world, they would do it properly?
No. America has one of the worst records of the Death Penalty, as bad as a developing nation.
Racism, rejection of significant evidence, killing someone who has an IQ of 40 or less, killing the disabled and so on… (Did you know, that for a criminal to serve a (full) life sentence would be cheaper than butchering them? Or how about something called “Rehabilitation” - Also the fact that the Death Penalty has not been a deterrant to crime, rather, it has increased - America being the prime example, of course) and yes, we cannot forget the execution of children, either, can we? Well, America certainly has not.
Edit: I forgot to mention how fallible every method of the Death Penalty is, from hanging, to lethal injection. I read up on some cases, where one man was gassed, it took him twenty, excrusiating minutes, to die…
What I have read on the American Death Penalty makes America seem sick and evil - Any person, especially an American no offence, but it is the only, present, Industrialised nation to condone it, and even in such a bad, and publically un-educated way.
By supporting the American Death Penalty, you support, as I listed above, the execution of those who could not have possibly committed such acts and/or those who were not aware, or are too young to face such a sentencing etc… Which, as far as I can remember, the only other case of this was in Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
Pope John Paul II tried to change America’s view on the Death Penalty: “I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary… Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform.”
The Pope even got the govenor of… Luisianna, I think? To “Forgive” a person given the Death Penalty, and reduce the sentencing.
Quoting America’s Bishops:
“We believe that in the conditions of contemporary American society, the legitimate purposes of punishment do not justify the imposition of the death penalty.”
Throughout my schooling, which as I’ve stated before, is fully Catholic, I have recieved nothing but anti-Death Penalty teachings, especially in my privately run Catholic Vincentien secondary school. Even more when I decided to delve into it myself, by taking a course offered by a University in Dublin, it brought up the Death Penalty: About eighty pages of shocking statistics on the American Death Penalty - I doubt that anyone could read that, look me in the eyes, and say: “Yes, I agree with the American Death Penalty.” - It is in many areas contradictory to Human Rights (Not to mention the basic right: The right to life, which we, as Catholics, so readily use against abortion).
americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac0195.asp
americancatholic.org/Messenger/Jan2002/feature3.asp
I fail to see any difference between the Death Penalty and Abortion and/or Euthinasia - I see it all as murder.
As you are “protecting/helping” society, and/or revenging the murder of one person, Euthinasia is “helping” one person, especially if they’re in pain etc… I honestly think America’s policy of literal life sentencing (I.e. Life in most other countries does not mean literal life, e.g. in Ireland it’s twenty to twenty five years. Longest I’ve heard, in another country, is thirty-five to forty) is more humain. As said above, it gives them the chance to repent, it is up to them to repent, not us, it is especially not up to us to take that right away from them, I would think that a horrid sin, denying someone else their chance to repent, and therefore, possible “Admission”, so to speak, into Heaven?
Murder and “The Death Penalty” are both conscious descisions to take life away, similar to abortion and euthinasia, cut it short, deny the possibility of repenting… Difference? The only thing it stops, is that persons life, and any subsequent crimes they could, or would have committed. It is barely a deterrent to others, if none at all (As crimes warrenting the death penalty: I.e. rape, murder etc… in America have risen over the past thirty years, while in other countries who do not allow the death penalty, it has either slowly risen, remained generally the same, fell slightly.)
I would submit the document I posses on the American Death Penalty, but it is, of course, as I said a document; physically, not on the computer, or internet. It would take me a long while to scan it in, not to mention re-write. Therefore, unfortunately, I will not submit it for the use of others, no matter how relivant - I just simply do not have the time.
penWindow(‘cr/2263.htm’)
The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. "The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not."65
