As I mentioned last week, the death penalty is a fundamentally useless practice that serves only to placate the masses while perverting our society and its principles. There is absolutely no compelling reason to keep the savage procedure in our legal system. Few things in life are this clear.A recent survey conducted in Florida showed that 90 percent of the nation’s top criminology experts believe that imposing the death penalty to deter slayings is “a waste of time and money.” Michael Radelet, chairman of the University of Florida’s sociology department had this to say about the findings: “The rates of consensus were much higher on this question than I ever thought possible. We never see 90 percent of criminologists agree on anything.”Given the overwhelming evidence that we do away with the death penalty, it bewilders me that there are still people who want to see it flourish.There are some anti-death penalty individuals who get so fed up with this apparent lack of intellectual clarity that they quickly dismiss capital punishment supporters as a group of blood-loving, vengeance-driven, half-wits who have the critical thinking skills of a tree.In truth, most death penalty supporters are otherwise intelligent people who are innocently ignorant of the details surrounding the debate. I believe that, after hearing the facts, most everyone would be against the death sentence. There is nothing rational about the death penalty – something that nearly every other industrialized country in the world has learned. We are one of the few remaining “civilized” nations on earth that still executes its citizens. The question is not whether but WHEN the death penalty will be eliminated. I am embarrassed to be living at a time when our government actively pursues a medieval practice despite the overwhelming amount of empirical evidence crying out for its termination. Future generations will look back with disdain at those who supported the iniquitous practice. Their views will most likely be similar to the views we hold today of people in the past who embraced slavery.How can I maintain this with such confidence? Let’s take another look at the absurdity of the death penalty.Our nation has about 25,000 homicides a year with about the same number of assailants. To satisfy the “necessity” of retribution, we select less than 1 percent of these people (based on race and economic status) and kill them.If we were to listen to most death sentence supporters and use the death penalty in every applicable case, we would kill 250,000 people every decade. In two years the number of Americans put to death would be the same as the total number who died in the Vietnam War. If ratios remain constant, the sheer volume of innocent people killed would be staggering – a fact that grows with importance when you consider that one of YOUR loved ones could be the unfortunate soul thrashing about in The Chair.The reason why some people are in favor of the death penalty is that they are shielded from its bloody reality. If people are going to advocate such a perverse practice, they had damn well better be educated and exposed to its appalling consequences.I’d like to see a legislative bill introduced that would mandate the broadcasting of every execution on prime time T.V. In vivid color and stereo sound, citizens throughout the nation should be subjected to every electrocution, shooting, hanging, gassing and poisoning that results from the casual rhetoric spewed forth from death penalty advocates.I’m sick of people giving pompous decrees of support for the death penalty while seeking shelter from its horrid results.Multiple levers, blank bullets and other schemes designed to shield executioners from feelings of responsibility should be outlawed. In fact, I think that a randomly selected individual from a pool of capital punishment advocates should be chosen to personally administer the punishment.I guarantee that this nation will become death penalty-free the day that people are forced to deal with the repercussions of their pretentious assertions.I’m hoping that day comes soon.
Robert Nekervis is a senior majoring in communication and business administration. He can be reached at [email protected]
