Where’s the pith Mike Chenault?
In my opinion, vegetarian burgers have more meat than Speaker Chenault’s argument surrounding his desire to pass what is currently called House Bill 9 - “reinstating” the death penalty in the State of Alaska.
Excerpt From Mike’s E-News - Why I Introduced HB 9
23rd February 2009 written by Mike as an opinion piece he submitted for distribution to Alaska’s statewide media.
(Please check out the link)
Here’s the Second Paragraph
“The impetus for HB 9 really comes from what I view as society’s inability to reform or rehabilitate certain criminals. People who commit the most monstrous of crimes will not have the opportunity to reoffend if a death sentence is imposed. 36 states currently have a death penalty on their books, whether they use it or not, and while I don’t believe it’s a deterrent to crime, I believe it should be an option for the justice system to brandish against the most heinous unremorseful criminals in our society.”
So, by his own words, Mr. Chenault doesn’t think the death penalty is a deterrent. On this, we agree, however, I don’t think people in prison need to be put to death for fear of what they might do in the future. Is state sanctioned murder really the ONLY option? Nothing like a false dichotomy.
Are 100% of those “certain criminals” unable to be reformed or rehabilitated? How will we know who can be reformed and who can’t. Can you tell by looking at a person’s face or skin color? Maybe if we do a credit check on those “certain criminals” we will be able to know who to put to death and who should be allowed to happily live out their days in a prison cell. The truth is – we don’t know and we never will know. This, my friends, is why the death penalty should have no place here in our world.
In fact, the American Bar Association (bunch of liberals) has a program called the “Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project” (no kidding) as they are “Working to Obtain a Nationwide Moratorium on Executions”. Their website is pretty clear – “The ABA, while taking no position on capital punishment per se, therefore has urged the federal and state governments to halt executions in order to take a hard look at the growing body of evidence showing that race, geography, wealth, and even personal politics can influence every stage of a capital case - from arrest through sentencing and execution. (5 March 2009, http://www.abanet.org/moratorium/why.html)
And don’t even get me started on the magic of DNA evidence. All those “certain criminals” would be dead right now if people like Mr. Chenault had their way. Tell the mother of the man who was put to death in error that you are sorry. Is there a statistical calculation for the number of innocent people we, as a society, are willing to sacrifice in order to play out juvenile desires for revenge based in feelings of helplessness and fear? Or darker yet, the hang ‘em high crowd could just be looking to take out a couple of them there people as they aren’t like us.
I could rip on Mike’s opinion piece until we are out of “certain criminals” to hang. The task is easy and I suggest that you take the time to read his piece (www.mikechenault.com). He covers the issues of cost, admitting it is less expensive to keep the person alive and assures us that he believes that the death penalty should only be used in cases where there is no question of guilt or innocence. Golly gee, how about that? We should only kill the guilty ones – only the problem is that time has shown WE are fallible.
Fallibility is common to ALL people – period. There will always be criminals from one end of the spectrum to the other. We spend so much time wringing our hands about stereotypes of criminals that we ignore the heinous crimes committed by “white collar” criminals. This type of criminal exacts a far greater toll on society in comparison to the “certain criminal” types. Dollar for dollar and the sheer impact on the number of lives, white collar criminals are a far greater threat to society. From dumping noxious cancer causing chemicals in our environment to selling over the counter drugs with known deadly side-effects – the impacts of such crimes are no less violent than what we see on the news each night – only the investigations / prosecutions are far less funded and are not very interesting when crossing over the AP - or when trying to get re-elected.
Friday, March 6, 2009
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And with all the appeals etc it is also VERY expensive to put someone to death. Far more expensive than life in prison. On a different note I remember when I was in grad school and heard on the radio that a prisoner in the Ohio penitentiary cost 19,000 dollars a year. I thought that was funny because I spent less than that a year going to grad school (with tuition, room and board, books and beer etc included).
ReplyDeleteGood blog - I like a 'meaty' read. Patrick