I was delighted to hear that the jury decided not to sentence Moussaoui to death today. Not only am I happy that we chose not give this fella the martyrdom he wanted, but it proves the people of this country have the character and courage to do the right thing.
I am against the death penalty for lots of reasons but my biggest one is that I believe that the law should protect us from our lesser selves, our vindictive selves. I am no saint and may in a rage one day want someone, who has wronged me or my family, dead as a doornail. I don't want it to be an option because if one day I am able to forgive the person, it's too fuckin' late when they're pushing up the daisies.
I was raised Catholic and though I am not a believer anymore, the message of forgiveness that was instilled in me is still with me. Forgiveness and opportunity for redeeming ones self is something that I think we all should cherish.
I am thrilled by this decision and it really made me feel better about my country and the people in it. Maybe we can use this as a springboard to launch a movement to abolish the death penalty completely.
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Nice point about not allowing ZM to be the martyr he wanted to be. I didn't even touch on that one. I think the Blue tie "law and order" crowd can't stand to be reminded that their punishment would be giving the guy exactly what he wanted.
I know. I am also often disturbed that prosecutors always pursue the death penalty whenever possible regardless of the case except when making bargains. I mean, they put a retarded guy to death in Texas. What the fuck is the matter with people? The DA and the judges have to look like they're tough on crime so they can keep their jobs so they pursue the strictest penalties. We have to take death off the table so that they can look tough on crime without putting people to death.
Re: these prosecutors...that's exactly the shit I'd like to fight if I could figure out how. Believe it or not, the f'in death p is constitutional...but we need to somehow a more civil practice in the administrative pursuit of justice.
Beyond that IO'm friggin lost and no help.
uh, I left out the word find. I'm too stupid to even blog about this.
The Constitution is kind of dated in a lot of ways and I think that as law and society get more complicated people are less open to making amendments. It's like writing code for Windows. You can't just change this one line without it fucking up a bunch of other stuff.
I think that the right thing is often hard to do. This is a fight more important than me to me. I'm vain so any time I feel that, you know I'm pissed off.
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