Post by scottieswife on Jun 18, 2005 9:30:33 GMT -5
Sounds a simple question but it isnt.
Execution kills the inmate. That is a fact!!
The years leading up to knowing you will die in a certain manner are probably the worst thing to many inmates, so much so that the actual execution is probably an escape from it all to many. Thats why people volunteer.
However even if the inmate didnt want to die and kicked and struggled and all. Once it is done he is gone, dead. At peace.
Then who is left? the mother, father, wife, kids etc
I was talkig to someone who knows a mother of an executed inmate from Ohio and even after three years the effects on this lady are visible.
this is a conversation I had with a friend.
"I wish the public knew the toll on the family .. if you haven't seen his mother since they killed her son you would not even recognize her - its awful ."
Then I think of Bonnie Lewis who had not only to watch her son struggle, be held down and die in front of her eyes.
That is just two mothers. And yes I know the victims had mothers and family too.
But the question is who is really punished by the Death penalty and exection.
It has to be those people left behind who have suffered and continue to suffer greatly. Which does not seem fair on innocent people who have commited no crime.
And yes I know the pros usually say well the inmate did this to his family. Maybe that is partly true but it was the state who methodically killed someone in the most premeditated way there is. Which is detailed below.
An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the privation of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It adds to death a rule, a public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization which is itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death. Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."
Albert Camus---"Reflections on the Guillotine, Resistance, Rebellion & Death" (1966).
Execution kills the inmate. That is a fact!!
The years leading up to knowing you will die in a certain manner are probably the worst thing to many inmates, so much so that the actual execution is probably an escape from it all to many. Thats why people volunteer.
However even if the inmate didnt want to die and kicked and struggled and all. Once it is done he is gone, dead. At peace.
Then who is left? the mother, father, wife, kids etc
I was talkig to someone who knows a mother of an executed inmate from Ohio and even after three years the effects on this lady are visible.
this is a conversation I had with a friend.
"I wish the public knew the toll on the family .. if you haven't seen his mother since they killed her son you would not even recognize her - its awful ."
Then I think of Bonnie Lewis who had not only to watch her son struggle, be held down and die in front of her eyes.
That is just two mothers. And yes I know the victims had mothers and family too.
But the question is who is really punished by the Death penalty and exection.
It has to be those people left behind who have suffered and continue to suffer greatly. Which does not seem fair on innocent people who have commited no crime.
And yes I know the pros usually say well the inmate did this to his family. Maybe that is partly true but it was the state who methodically killed someone in the most premeditated way there is. Which is detailed below.
An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the privation of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It adds to death a rule, a public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization which is itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death. Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."
Albert Camus---"Reflections on the Guillotine, Resistance, Rebellion & Death" (1966).
