The Experience Driven Life

Capital punishment (CP) is not worthy of a civilized state, any more than murder is in a civil society. It is a barbaric and medieval practice. It does little more than satisfy the base instinct of revenge in the victims' advocates/relatives and an hyped-up, rubber-necking, second-hand public. An "eye for an eye" logic is not justice, but simply the production of an unending cycle of violence. CP sends the message to society that death is a proper bookend for some criminal trial proceedings, i.e. that violence puts and end to violence. On the contrary, CP complements and augments violence within an already violent society. And, moreover, a society that embraces capital punishment is usually one that condones violence and warfare as a means to solving political disputes, internal and international. I also question whether CP is a sound deterrent, not in the least because a of tangled judicial system which delays executions for so long and thus the process to convict