Capital Punishment

It is true that it sounds more benign when called thus: capital punishment. But it is 'killing'. Let's call it not capital punishment, not the death penalty, but killing. Stanley Tookie Williams died today after being injected with a lethal concoction. Let us not say that, either. Let us say, Stanley Tookie Williams was killed today. Tookie had allegedly taken the lives of four of his countrymen. That sounds too soft, too; he had allegedly killed four people with a shotgun at point blank. So he deserved to die. Or did he?

Who killed these people? If we kill Tookie for killing, who kills us for killing Tookie? Who kills the person or people who killed 30,000 civilians in Iraq, plus about 2,150 American soldiers, plus non-civilian Iraqis? Tookie had no right to do what he did. What right have we to "do to him what he did to others?"

The pain of family and friends must necessarily come into play. Tookie's victims had family. The pain must be tremendous, even after such a long time (The crime occurred 26 years ago). Twenty-five years ago someone pressed the trigger of a machine gun and blew my sleeping, three-year-old nephew to bits, brain and guts and all. A few years before, the same person or someone else had snuffed out my brother's life. We don't know how or where. We were never given the body. I'm in no way trying to compare pains, but rather to make my statement more understandable. It is the statement that "if those who kill your loved ones are killed for it, the former do not return." If you quote that, credit it to me, Rethabile Masilo. What's more, I feel that the perpetrators of those crimes against my family are now in deep shit, both as human beings, full-stop; and as human beings before God. If my family and friends had gotten them killed, and then gloated and pranced, wouldn't we be the ones in deep shit today? Besides

I know from talking to many others who have shared that chamber with me before that when months or even years have gone by, there will be no real closure or peace after what we saw Tuesday morning. Williams will not be alive for the supporters who wanted to save him, and the people he was convicted of killing will still leave huge empty spaces in the hearts of their loved ones. [Source]

Killing is wrong, no matter who does it and for whatever reason. Let's start from there, before we even think of working our way out toward whether Tookie should have been pardoned, or whether the killer of 30,000+ people should go scot free, or whether the system is or is not flawed, killing innocent people, or whether the system is or is not racially biased, killing more minorities than other Americans, or whether religion gives us the right to play God and kill, or whether killing criminals lowers the crime rate... Let us start from the beginning and gently remind ourselves that killing is wrong. Now, what? But let us start there.

Relevant reading: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Comments

[James Clark]

Brilliant post.

The view that "killing is wrong unless we do it" is fundamentally flawed.

[genesis]

Hi There,

I was browsing the web today and I came across your website and I was wondering why don't you join the South Africa Blog Aggregator at www.iopblogs.com

[owukori]

Bronwyn you need to empty your mail box as its bouncing back!!

[Rethabile]

Yeah, Bronwyn, I tried to send you something, too.

[Rethabile Masilo]

One thing that has kept nagging at me is: Did Tookie do it?

Perhaps we'll never know. My post above doesn't take into account whether he did it or not, it's a plea against killing, full-stop.

Still, I wondered, "Did he do it?"

This writer gets into some of that, for those like me who might be interested in finding out.

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/tookie-rip-revolution-i_b_12274.html

[Jaroslav]

Check out a revolutionary view of this here:

http://revcom.us/a/027/joe-veale-on-tookie-williams.html