Let’s Talk About The Dealth Penalty and Abortion

by Kathleen McKinley | April 6, 2011 11:19 am

Many are usually surprised to learn that I am against the death penalty. My feeling has always been that it’s difficult to convince society that they should protect the life of the guilty, if they refuse to protect the life of the innocent.

The reason I am against the death penalty is purely religious. While my reasons against abortion are religious, they are also about basic human rights. With the death penalty, a secular society can decide that someone who has committed a heinous crime can be punished by losing his right to life. But an unborn baby has done nothing to deserve that. That is the difference.

Nonetheless, the death penalty, in my opinion, is barbaric. I don’t believe that the government should ever be the one who decides if someone dies. And they certainly shouldn’t be the ones actually killing someone. Maybe you feel that families that have lost loved ones to a criminal deserves closure. Maybe you feel they deserve to see the person who took the life of their loved one, have his life taken from him. Maybe you think that they deserve to see the murderer of their loved one die by the state. But the truth is that the death penalty ends up not giving families closure, but years and years of unending appeals. With every appeal the family must live through the horror once more. There is no closure.

Here is a fascinating piece [1]by By Donald A. McCartin, a former judge of the Superior Court of Orange County in California. During his judgeship he presided over 10 murder convictions, all of which he sentenced the men to die. The first case was over 30 years ago, and none of the men have been executed. The state of California has spent millions and millions of dollars on appeals of each man.

The first one, Rodney James Alcala, whom MCartin sentenced to die more than 30 years ago, had kidnapped and and killed 12-year-old Robin Samsoe. Since then he has been sentenced to death again for killing four other young women, whom he killed around the same time he killed Robin Samsoe.

There is no doubt that Alcala is evil. He does not deserve to be a part of society. But do you think that the family of Samsoe has had one night of peace in the past 30 years?

Now, one might argue that the problem is the appeals, not the death penalty. But that will never change in a just society. So, we have to face what is reality. Wouldn’t it have been better for the Samsoe family if the judge had sentenced Alcala to life in prison with no parole, so the family did not have to live through the death penalty process? Wouldn’t the millions of dollars spent on appeals be better spent elsewhere?

The judge now says that if he had known then what he knows now, he would have sentenced Alcala to life in prison without parole, so he could have spared the family the long unending process. He now says that it’s time to stop “the killing game,” and give the families the knowledge that the monster that killed their loved one will be behind bars for life, and will never harm anyone again. When you think about it, death can be a release for many of these monsters. Why should we give them release?

In addition to all this, the Northern California chapter of the ACLU estimates that California spends $137 million each year on death penalty cases. Yet, life in prison would cost just $11 million. Considering that all 10 men, after 30 years are still with us, California might as well have just spent the $11 million instead of the $137 million.

In Texas, execution has long tradition. Between 1819 and 1923 we executed by hanging. The electric chair came in 1923. All executions since have been carried out in Huntsville. Texas adopted lethal injection in 1977. Texas leads the nation in the number of executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Although wait time on death row is quicker in Texas than in California, typically a death row inmate spends over a decade awaiting execution. Three offenders executed in Alabama in 2007 spent an average of 23 years on death row. So, the death penalty is a slow, wrenching process, no matter where it is applied.

Also, there is clearly to me, a racial injustice component to the death penalty. There is certainly a poor vs rich component as well. If one can afford an excellent lawyer, your chances of the death penalty diminishes greatly. Should the punishment of death be decided by how much money one has? Of course not.

In a case of extreme irony, the U.S. Supreme Court declared capital punishment “cruel and unusual punishment” in 1972, just a year before they legalized the ending of innocent unborn life in abortion in 1973.

From 1976, when executions were resumed, to 2002, there have been 784 executions in the US. In comparison, between 1973 to 1996, the number of abortions has been over 35 million. Quite a contrast, right?

This is why I fight so much harder for the life of the unborn. The numbers are astonishing. We should never want this for our society, no matter how we feel about “choice.”

What both these issues have in common to me is simple. We shouldn’t be the ones who decide who lives and who dies. We should lock up the murders, and we should help those in crisis pregnancies.

Now, many will argue for extreme circumstances in both the death penalty and abortion. I’m always willing to allow for extreme circumstances. I think most reasonable people are. There must come a time that we better ourselves as a society on life issues. We must find the better way. What we leave our children matters. Let’s leave them a place that says that life matters. Let’s leave them a place that is just.