April 21, 2003

Capital Considerations

This was initially going to be a huge rant about the time I spent at the laundromat yesterday, but I was preoccupied by pchem, ee, and english yesterday and didn't have an opportunity to write about what I saw yesterday. Now that I think about it, I'm not as pissed as I was yesterday -- there were no encounters with bums. Only encounters with obnoxious college students, but I think I have a better avenue through which to vent about that, so I'm going to save that rant for another day. Instead, I wanted to discuss something which caught my eye today on the front page of the NY Times.

The article I read was about the Supreme Court issuing a stay for a death penalty inmate hours before his execution. Now, anyone who knows me, knows I'm not very vocal in expressing my political viewpoints, and with good reason: I don't want people to typecast me into categories and then stereotype me based on my political viewpoints. Moreover, before I adhere to any one point of view, I'd like to be able to know all sides of the issue and also be able to defend myself in my viewpoint. I hate people who blindly support a cause without knowing anything about it, because to me, they are just as ignorant as the opponents who they claim are stupid. I don't really find the time to research the issues, and so I don't take stances on them. Plain and simple. Anyway, the capital punishment issue has been one I've been confronted with since I was little. One particular instance was when we had a mock trial in 7th grade on the issue of capital punishment, re-enacting a famous death penalty case (Gregg v. Georgia I think, but my memory might be failing me) and I was assigned the side of the prosecution. What I read in researching the issue made me support capital punishment instinctively -- I was horrified by the grotesque and gruesome murders, rapes, and deaths. Reading about those crimes made me sincerely believe that the people who committed them ought to die. They had no right to live in my eyes.

Another memorable discussion of the issue happened in a retreat for On Track, a mentoring program I was part of in high school, when someone (I can't remember who now -- sorry guys) ardently argued against it. The stuff that he said made sense to me too. I have always been unable to find my stance on this particular issue and reading this article today makes me only more confused. Maybe it's all crap and the guy convicted for the murder DID in fact do all that they say he did. But what if he didn't? What if they just kill an innocent guy because the prosecution found him to be a convenient solution to the crime? The recent actions of Illinois Governor George Ryan come to mind, in which he declared a moratorium on executions until the system could be completely reviewed. He brings up some of the same questions I have on the system. Moreover, whatever my stance may be on the issue, I think the real test of it comes if you actually have to go through with it. I know if it were me on a jury with the decision of capital punishment looming over my head, I'm not so sure I could approve. It's very easy to sit where I am and say "yes" or "no" on the issue of capital punishment, but if I actually had to be responsible for the death of another person, could I do that? What would that make me? I sentenced him/her to death -- would that make me a murder too? I don't think I could live with that knowledge, and I hope I never am placed in a situation where I am forced to make that kind of decision. The polls always say that a ton of people support capital punishment (I forget now the exact number but I think it's around 60-70%) and then I think, when these people respond, do they think about it as outsiders, or do they think about it as people sitting on a jury might before they are asked to deliver a verdict? Maybe at some point I should stop taking engineering and biology classes and take a political science class or something -- all this stuff is really quite interesting.