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 Time to Abolish the Death Penalty
by Tom Campbell
March 5, 2009
The arguments for and against capital punishment have gone on long enough. Having once been a supporter of the death penalty, I now believe it is time to abolish this practice. The arguments in favor of abolishment begin with the current conflict and end with the Ten Commandments.
North Carolina hasn’t executed a prisoner since August 2006, due to a controversy raised by the NC Medical Board. State law requires that a licensed physician be present for executions, but the Board threatened to punish any doctor who administered, supervised, or even gave verbal instructions for lethal injections, citing the “do no harm” provision of the Hippocratic Oath as substantiation for their position. Doctors en masse refused to participate, effectively instituting what the legislature had been unable to do, namely create a de facto moratorium on executions. Since that time the legislature has either been unable or unwilling to pass laws that would clarify the issue, a stalemate that is unlikely to be resolved.
There are other reasons for abolishment. The long-held belief that capital punishment is a deterrent for folks to create capital crimes hasn’t been conclusively proved. Proponents of the death penalty say there is no evidence we ever executed an innocent person and, while true, there is plenty of evidence that the trial process has been flawed by prosecutors, defense attorneys, witnesses, and wrongful trial proceedings. Since 2000, five people on death row have been acquitted of the execution penalty that put them in prison and only two of the 59 prisoners who had their cases retried were again sentenced to death. The appeals process is lengthy and costly. One fact clearly established is that it costs the state less to house a prisoner for life than to go all the way through to execution.
When our lawmakers passed a law banning the execution of mentally retarded persons in 2001 they also aided the abolishment argument. This law gave District Attorneys the option of seeking life in prison without parole for defendants in murder cases, ensuring that those convicted of the most heinous crimes could not be set free again.
For whatever reason, the general public appears to be changing their stance on capital punishment. A month-old Elon University poll found 58 percent favoring the death penalty, down from 64 percent in 2005. More telling, however, was the fact that fewer than one-half (48 percent) said it was the most appropriate punishment for first-degree murder.
Many opponents of the death penalty cite the Ten Commandments’ “Thou Shalt Not Kill” as a basis for their opposition, but this might not be well founded. Dr. James “Mickey” Efird, retired professor of the Duke Divinity School, says that’s not what the original language says. The correct translation is that we are not to commit “unlawful” murder. War and capital punishment were not considered unlawful to the Hebrews in the Old Testament. In fact, their “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” prescription for punishment called for executing those who killed. Opposition on this basis isn’t valid.
Maybe opponents of capital punishment knew they would eventually wear us down. Maybe not. But it is time to put our energies into resolving our financial crisis, our mental health mess, our school dropout rates and write the obituary for the death penalty. |
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