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their victims sentenced to death for ‘adultery’! Well in America – a
more sneaky ‘white middle-class’ legal tinkering evades equality
within their legal system. People opposed to the death penalty are
excluded from juries in trials relating to death row. Yes, the 1969
doctrinewas altered to include thosewith a ‘philosophical opposition’
believed to still want to choose the death penalty. But a jury is
supposed to represent a community decision. They should not be
manipulated to exclude those within the community.
What about those falsely accused on death row? In America,
studies in the National Academy of Sciences show an extreme 4% of
people on death row were in fact innocent. Oops this means that
one in every 25 prisoners just died in vain. The death penalty is
permanent – you can’t bring a person back from the dead but you
can release them from prison when a mistake is made.
Final stage: execution. Early forms of capital punishment were
designed to be slow, painful, and torturous such as stoning,
crucifixion and even being slowly crushed by elephants. Americans
more recently invented the electric chair, gas chamber, firing squad
and, of course, the lethal injection.
The injection is seen as the most ‘humane’ way of execution – if
execution can ever be deemed humane. However, the three-drug
cocktail used on US prisoners for the past 20 years is no longer
being supplied by Europe. So America has turned to barbaric
experimental drugs. If they have been abolished for use on animals
why on earth are we using them on other human beings? But on the
9th of January this year, Ohio scheduled to inject Dennis McGuire
with two untested drugs; the sedative midazolam; and an overdose
of the painkiller hydromorphone which would kill McGuire within
five minutes – or so was their goal. Experts on these drugs warned
that McGuire would not peacefully drift away but would be awake,
struggling and failing to pull enough air into his lungs until death.
The reply? ‘[He is] not entitled to a pain-free execution.’ …Wait I
thought America had the most ‘humane’ way of execution? Not only
has the State of Ohio failed to morally develop from the crude
notion of ‘a life for a life’ but now indulges in the medieval practises
of torture. And yes, I would deem McGuire gasping for air for 28
minutes as torture.
But it’s fine right? At least we’re not actually using those medieval
punishments. Would you believe more countries use stoning as a
It’s Time To
Kill Capital
Punishment
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