MY ARGUMENT

AGAINST THE DEATH PENALTY

If you think you're in favor of the death penalty or you're not sure...

1. Consider that Christ would utterly disapprove of it ....making it by definition un-Christian.

2. Out of 25,000 homicides a year in America we execute the ½% most addicted, insane, abused, poor

and retarded. Or in other words those with the most powerful excuses but the least power. If our intent

were to punish according to culpability then would we not execute the most sober, sane, wealthy and

intelligent of the murderers (the ones with no excuse). All the reasons why it doesn't work this way

are precisely why the death penalty has no place in a democracy. It can never be democratic as long

as money and status affect its imposition.

3. With over 4000 people on death rows across the country and around 200 new death sentences a year...

it will take an execution every single day for over 16 years to do the job.... a reality unprecedented in

the modern free world, one we will struggle to justify to our allies, one which most Americans, I predict,

will not be able to stomach.

4. There is a book available right now called "Without Sanctuary" by James Allen (Twin Palms Publishers)

with around 150 old photos of lynchings from U.S. history. Noteworthy as a window into a particularly

heinous and barbaric practice, the text of the book also examines that base desire to vent our rage upon

and exorcise our demons from the social classes we think beneath us. Of final note was the regional

occurrence of lynchings. It matched closely with the current regional application of the death penalty,

that is, Texas and the South. As I flipped through the book, I read accounts of unimaginable horror

and brutality backed up by photos searing in their power. A Texas crowd of 20,000 watching an individual

being castrated, de-limbed and burned over a pit. That's right, while most of the south conducted it's

lynchings at night out in the forest... Texas was doing it at noon in the town square! It's American history

that's impossible to explain to a child. As I closed this book I had an image of the burley leaders of a

screaming mob, nooses and guns in hand, running off down a street in fury while reasonable men hesitated

and held back, knowing better in their hearts. I was thinking about Texas. I was thinking about the promise

of America.

If you're still unconvinced go out and rent these films...

"To kill a mockingbird"

"The oxbow incident"

"Twelve angry men"

"Paths of glory"

"Breaker morant"

"Dead man walking"

"Thin blue line"

"Dancer in the dark"

God help us...vengeance rots the soul.

This photo from the Florida state Supreme court web site was used in court as evidence

regarding the relative cruelty of electrocution. Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis in the summer of

1999 suffered during one more in a series of bizarre and revolting Florida executions.

As word spread world wide on the web about this and similar photos an estimated 1,000,000

people tried to down load the images....knocking the web site off the air for several days.