To my mind, the issue is simple; you don’t kill people, and that’s it.

But many folks who think they have a handle on the issue just won’t listen, and one finds oneself almost punished to the death penalty oneself, in the sense that one can feel the sense of terminal inevitability that the Death Row prisoner must feel.

What “terminal inevitability,” I hear you ask?  The terminal inevitability that nothing is ever going to change, people can never change, and you will always end up avenging a death for a death because that’s the way human beings will always respond to something like that.

Nobody listens, everybody talks over each other, shouting, arguing, hearing but not listening.  And this comes from those on both sides of the argument.

This is part of the reason why blogs and online rants are good; firstly, you can choose to either read it or not, and secondly, if you do read it, you can then choose to agree with it or the reverse.  Finally, once your decision is made, if indeed that is what happens, you can then post/troll the person until they finally give in and go, “Whatever, dude!”

I do not believe killing another human being is right or justifiable under any circumstances, in other words, I would not or could not do it.  But I have heard tell from down the village that there are circumstances which could lead a person to kill another: self-defence, for example.  If someone feels that their life is in danger, they would kill to defend their own.  That is in our nature as animals.  That we cannot help.

Or can we?

As human beings, with sufficient intelligence to be able to suppress certain behaviours wherever possible, I believe it is possible to contain that urge to kill another and perhaps find some other way to detain your opponent and preserve your own life in the process.

Those who have killed to preserve their own life, or their own property, have often found themselves on the wrong side of the law, especially here in the United Kingdom.  I believe that the USA has somewhat less stringent views on killing in self-defence, and it can be accepted as a just cause when dealing with certain homicide cases.  Basically, in instances where this has happened, the law is saying to the prisoner, OK, somebody tried to kill you, but you killed him instead to preserve your own life.  Well, since you preserved it, you can spend the rest of it in jail.  Or (prior to 1965 in the UK) we’ll hang you.

Why is it justifiable to punish a death with a death?  To me the entire argument is ridiculous, and I don’t feel any other justification than it is wrong.  It would be like punishing a robbery with a robbery, or a rape with a rape.

There are so many moral, religious and/or practical reasons that are trotted out whenever the debate occurs.  Apparently, there are many occasions in the Old Testament where we are told that to punish someone with the death penalty is not only justifiable but indeed the only one available.  But I thought that the faith, with all its denominations, was called Christianity, which means that they follow Jesus Christ, whose message trumps that of the Old Testament.  Christ talked of peace, of love, of turning the other cheek.  Christ did not talk of killing out of revenge or punishment; he said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”  That means nobody has the right to do it.  I’m not a Christian myself; I’m simply making the point that, as a Christian, you cannot justify the use of the death penalty from the Bible.  Christianity is – or should be – about peace, and I don’t see why that concept should be difficult unless one deliberately makes it so in an effort to save face in the context of the argument.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I invariably do not use much in the way of references when ranting.  It’s not the point of ranting.  Ranting is about getting something off your chest, right or wrong, and although I do not deliberately set out to say something that is incorrect, I’m not going to slow down my train of thought by Googling something.  It is my feeling on the matter that, er, matters here.  And my feeling is that one human being is not entitled to kill another human being.  When an unprovoked murder takes place, you’ve got to look at the reasons why it happened, and then administer a course of action accordingly.  This course of action may in part be a punishment, it may be something to protect the rest of society or both.

Of course, I am not suggesting that society does not require protection – especially if someone is likely to be a serial killer.  Sadly, while their mental health does need looking at, they must be put away, and probably for life.  It is a sad fact of the situation.  But kill them?  No.  I’m also not saying that I, too, have not had the instinctive cry within me that a perpetrator of a particularly heinous crime should die for their efforts.  Of course I have.  But that does not make it right, and I am glad that that instinct has been suppressed in myself and in others (where it has happened in countries without the death penalty).

The death penalty only exists, as far as I can see, to please that instinctive part of the mob mentality that has people shouting, spitting and throwing eggs at police vans carrying a killer or a child rapist to prison in a case that the crowds have no personal connection with.  When someone is sentenced to death, the execution of that sentence could be more than twenty years away, and it is said that part of the punishment exists in the prisoner’s contemplation of their inevitable end before it happens.  It makes the victims’ families, prosecuting attorneys and the public at large feel good.  It gives them a certain amount of unspoken power.

So, throw away your Bibles, your religious and/or political texts, and just listen. Listen to reason, and to your conscience.  If you are able to in a country that practices the death penalty, campaign for its end.  Listen to me, listen to those who advocate peace, listen to your heart.  That will tell you that the death penalty is a pointless exercise in group avengment and must be ended as a practice and a legal punishment in every country worldwide – whether or not it is in your religious text.

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