A Practice to Die For

Tis a lovely afternoon. Blue sky? Check. Blue water? Check. White boats? Check. Comfy weather? Check. It's 78 degrees under partly cloudy skies, according to the Streeterville Weather Service. Unfortunately, it is not such a lovely afternoon for 3297 persons in the U.S. who are all on death row somewhere in the U.S.

A short while ago, I mentioned that the U.S. is the only major industrial nation in the world that does not provide health care for all citizens. This is a tragedy. Yesterday I was reading my latest issue of National Geographic, and I came across some statistics that were interesting in a similar vein.

Apparently, in all the world, there are only 56 countries that still have the death penalty. The United States is one of those. In Europe, only one nation has the death penalty, Belarus. Of the major industrial powers that sport Western style democracies, only the U.S. and Japan have the death penalty. In Japan they still hang people for capital offenses.

It is interesting that most of the Islamic countries of the world still have the death penalty. Two emerging economic powers, China and India still have the death penalty. Most of Western and Southern Africa does not. Most of Northeastern Africa does.

It has been noted that support for the death penalty is especially strong in culturally conservative areas and in countries with totalitarian regimes. Yet the U.S. still clings to the "eye for an eye" method of punishment for severe crimes, even though study after study shows that it is not a deterrent to serious crime. What does this say about the U.S.?

World wide there were 2390 executions last year. Over 71% of those occurred in China. The country with the second largest number was Iran and they were followed by Saudi Arabia. Let's see, one totalitarian regime with the world's largest national population and two small Islamic nations. People won't do what you tell them to do? Execute them. There's an equation for stability (Until the people eventually get fed up and execute their leaders).

The trouble is that, knowing what one does about China and conservative Islamic regimes, one almost expects this sort of behavior. The really troubling thing is that the two largest economies in the world, countries with democratic institutions, a high standard of living, and a great deal of freedom, the United States of America and Japan, continue to condemn prisoners to death. Most of the nations of the world have decided that using death as punishment for crime is barbaric. Yet these two nations persist in using execution as a punishment for certain crimes.

I cannot speak for the people of Japan, but I find the practice unsettling and a little bit wrong in a nation that supposedly bases its life on guaranteed freedoms and equal opportunity for all men. The fact is that roughly half of all inmates on death row are located in 4 states, California, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Texas is known as a state that follows through on these executions at a rate unrivaled by other states. There is a strip of states across the North and East that have outlawed capital punishment and New Mexico has recently joined them. Other states like Illinois have placed a moratorium on executions, although the death penalty is still on the books as the law. Still, though, the Southeastern U.S. and rural Northwest still clings to execution, as necessary. (Remember that thing about culturally conservative?)

The bottom line here is that death by lethal injection, as commonly practiced in this country, or death by hanging as in Japan, or death by stoning for adulterers, as practiced by extreme practitioners of Shariah, all result in someone being just as dead. They all result in a state sponsored murder. They all harken back to the earliest days of civilized humanity, to Old Testament Law, to Hammurabi's Code. They are all based in trying to make someone feel better because they "got back" at someone who aggrieved them. Or in the case of dictatorial regimes they represent keeping the people under the thumb of the government by threatening those people with death for failure to obey.

This is all very crude, very barbaric, very uncivilized in the year 2009. Have we not moved beyond this? Apparently not. The U.S. is full of a lot of mean-spirited individuals who do not wish to provide health care to anyone but the wealthy, and who wish to kill off any who will threaten their good life. Welcome to the Land of Opportunity, the Land of Tall Fences and Armed Guards. One last thing. It's racist. By far, the largest number of individuals on Death Row in the U.S. are minorities, poor people. White people and people of any color or ethnicity with money are not in danger of being executed for crimes against the state or against other individuals. Think about that.