Making a case for the death penalty...

...in two words or less.
To those opposed to capital punishment, I have two words for you: Brianna Denison.
Enough said.
How many more innocent people will have to die before society realizes that capital punishment is about justice and not human bloodlust? There has long been opposition to the death penalty by groups arguing that capital punishment is nothing more than a manifestation of man's propensity for violence and bloodshed. They say it reflects the cruelty that exists in the human heart, and it recklessly puts innocent people at risk of dying for crimes they didn’t commit.
But in Reno, Nevada, tonight many are feeling that there should be no debate at all. Yesterday, the body of Brianna Denison was found in a field next to a commercial business complex in Southwest Reno. The 19 year-old college student had been missing since Jan. 20, 2008 when she was abducted while sleeping over at a friend’s house near the University of Nevada, Reno, campus. The perpetrator had entered the home through an unlocked door and snatched Denison in the dead of night as everyone else slept.
A long, arduous and intense search for the missing girl followed over the next three weeks. It all ended yesterday with the recovery of Denison’s body.
The coroner reported that Denison died by strangulation. She had also been raped.
Two of the most heinous crimes one human being could possibly violate another with had been committed against this young woman, whose life was taken violently from her. She did not deserve to die. And she certainly did not deserve to be raped and strangled to death. Nobody does.
Nobody has the right to take someone else’s life or violate them against their will. And no person has the right to decide when, where and how another’s life shall be taken, with only two exceptions: war and justice.
In war, we either kill or get killed.
With justice, we kill as punishment for the taking of life; to right a grevious wrong committed by one person against another. A perpetrator has already violated somebody else’s basic human right to life by forcing it from them. Justice is supposed to ensure that a perpetrator can never again commit the same or other crime against another person. That is why the death penalty exists and is still practiced.
It isn’t about men in white-collared shirts getting their jollies every time a death sentence is carried out. No, what capital punishment is about is justice.
The person who raped and murdered Brianna Denison does not deserve to keep his life, because he chose to take the life of another person. As far as justice is concerned, the perpetrator forfeited his most basic of all human rights when he denied that very right to someone else. Justice is, in essence, an equitable trade: A hand for a hand, an eye for an eye, and a life for a life.
When bartering, one gives to get and gets back what one gives. One exchanges something in trade that’s of equal value to the item one wishes to have. This is justice.
It’s not what Brianna Denison got when she was raped and murdered, because her killer is at-large and presumed to still have his life.
Justice demands that Denison’s killer relinquish his life in exchange for the life he took.
Opponents of capital punishment don’t see things this way. Instead, they view the death penalty as an act of retribution or retaliation rather than justice. They consider capital punishment to be state-sanctioned killing. And they’re right.
But it is also justice nonetheless.
In its purest form, justice is not compassion; it’s consequence. Justice is not hesitant; it’s swift. Justice is not relative; it’s certain. And justice is not forgiving; it’s final.
Our expectation of justice ought to be as sure as death and taxes, but it’s not.
Thanks to the efforts of death penalty opponents, we have violent criminals out on parole rather than serving the rest of their time behind bars. Prisons have become overcrowded with them. As a result, society is placed in harm’s way, because these offenders are now free again to re-offend. In fact, recidivism is highest among serial offenders, like the pile of dung that raped and murdered Brianna Denison.
Opponents argue that capital punishment does little to actually reduce crime. But all those who have been convicted and duly executed are still dead and remain unable to recidivate.
None of this convinces those opposed to capital punishment, though. They seem hell-bent on defending the condemned man’s so-called right to life, in spite of the fact that the latter denied this right to somebody else. Truth be told, the same convict would probably not recognize the rights of those defending his. If a death penalty opponent met a convict in a dark alley, can you guess which one would come out alive?
If all this weren’t enough, now capital punishment is being put under the knife for euthanizing the condemned. In 2007, a lawsuit was filed by death row inmates seeking to make lethal injection unconstitutional because it inflicted “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights. The case is waiting to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The argument is essentially that the chemicals injected into the bloodstream may cause pain and suffering on their way to hasten death.
Frankly, lethal injection makes the death penalty much more complicated and costly than it really should be. Instead of spending millions of dollars to come up with the most humane combination of drugs and chemicals, let’s just do what was done back in the day: Find some rope, a tall tree and save the taxpayers a lot of money.
Strange, isn’t it, how we euthanize beloved animals all the time in the name of mercy, because it is more humane to put them to sleep than to let them suffer. But we can’t put inmates to sleep because doing so might cause them to suffer before they die?
I don’t get it.
We don’t seem too concerned about whether or not good, old Rover is suffering and feeling pain as the veterinarian sticks a lethal dose of chemicals into his veins. Why are we worried about some scumbag having the same thing done to him? Rover didn’t take somebody else’s life like the pile of dung sitting on death row did. Yet, we put Rover to sleep and fight to keep the dung pile alive.
I don’t understand.
If Brianna Denison could testify against her perpetrator, I don’t think she’d understand, either. But we will never hear what Brianna has to say about what happened to her. That is why we have justice: To punish the unjust and be a voice to the victims, who have been silenced and are unable to defend themselves.
Brianna Denison is one more reason why justice must be carried out and preserved; that the voices of those so unjustly served will not go unheard.