Sample Notes

Marietta Jaeger, whose 7 year-old daughter Susie was kidnapped and murdered in the US in 1973 said,
"I say there is no amount of retaliatory deaths that would compensate to me the [...] value of my daughter’s life, nor would they restore her to my arms.

To say that the death of any other person would be just retribution is to insult the immeasurable worth of our loved ones who are victims.

We cannot put a price on their lives.

In my case, my own daughter was such a gift of joy and sweetness and beauty, that to kill someone in her name would have been to violate and profane the goodness of her life."

Source: http://listdom.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/quotes-against-capital-punishment
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We no longer burn witches or keep slaves, or have monarchs rule our lives. But we still manage to have the death penalty which is similarly obsolete (Dutta 41).

After adopting the death penalty from British law, we began to apply it. Soon degrees of murder were formed. However, there are still many flaws (Grant 119).

Our opponents say that the death penalty is a deterrent of crime and that it helps prevent some future criminals from committing heinous deeds.

Allow me to use an example. The 9/11 terrorist attack. Do you think hijackers of a plane would consider death penalty as a serious punishment for killing hundreds of people? Do you think that they even acknowledged the death penalty while boarding the planes? In most cases, criminals do not think about the crime because it's usually committed in the "heat of passion" (King 2).

Many violent people end up killing themselves after killing others anyways. This is particular to violent adolescents (Grant 122). Remember the shootings at Columbine High School? The death penalty definitely did not deter the murder of those 15 people.

Every year in the United States there are on average 22,000 homicides, but only 15,000 suspects are arrested. And only 10,000 are convicted. So how is capital punishment applied equally and affectingly? It isn't. And it actually increases the intensity of violence (Grant 122).

And where is capital punishment exercised the most? In the South, most notably Texas. The South alone was responsible for approximately 88 percent of all the executions made in the time period of 1977 through 2002. Is it a coincidence that the most violence occurs in the southern region (Grant 121)?

"Violence begets more violence" (Grant 123). How is backwardly killing people supposed to teach us not to kill? It is completely void if logic to think that way. By supporting the death penalty we become no better than animals closing in for the kill in order to protect or demonstrate vengeance. Every act of violence makes the culprit more violent---no matter what the circumstance (Grant 123).

These last 100 years have been the most violent in human history and it is reflected in our music, movies, television shows, video games, literature, intolerance, political attitudes, and abuse towards prisoners, domestic partners, and children. A paster at a memorial service of an executed Timothy McVeigh said, "Is there another way we can respond to this violence without doing violence ourselves?" (Grant 124).

McVeigh himself was victim of retributive justice. He was an Oklahoma bomber whose execution was filled with television and media coverage. One spectator said that McVeigh deserved to be stoned to death for committed such a deed. Some wanted McVeigh to receive a life sentence. Over 80 percent of the viewers said that he should die a more painful death. Civil liberties and lawyer Clarence Darrow noted, "[The state] continues to kill its victims not so much to defend to society against them...but to appease the mob's emotions of hatred and revenge" (Grant 121).

Media coverage and endless judicial processes turn the criminal into a celebrity while the victim's family seethes with resentment. Not only is the criminal glorified, but the taxpayer-financed court costs are horrendous (Dutta 43).

Families sometime do not seek the penalty. In some cases, families actually much prefer seeking life imprisonment for the criminal. Maria Calderon, ex-girlfriend of Reynaldo Rodriguez found three of her family members killed. Rodriguez, who was responsible, took his own life afterwards. Calderon told Los Angeles Times magazine, "I would have much rather he stayed alive. That was he could face the justice system and live with the fact that he murdered three people, and suffer what we're suffering. Now he took his own life---and he's not suffering anymore" (Dutta 43).

"We cannot be a civilized society while we indulge in hatred and consign forgiveness to the sidelines" (Dutta 45). "Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life" (King 1). "If we don't find a way to break the cycle of violence we will never be able to end the culture of violence that infects the United States" (Grant 125).
"The only way to break the chain of violence reaction is too practice nonviolence as individuals and collectively through our laws and institutions" (King 2).

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