Page 9 - June July 2017

Michael’s Murder - Capital Punishment Vs Life Imprisonment

society? Whether one supports the death penalty or not, are its negative effects outweighing the personal
satisfaction which some may get from using it? “

As a society, if we do not condone the taking of a human life, why do we support court-sanctioned murder?
What makes this type of murder any less immoral than the heinous crime of the person who gets executed?

Innocent People Executed
C
A We must also consider the fact that in spite of strong evidence that won a conviction, execution has taken the
P lives of innocent people. In 1999, The Christian Century Magazine exhibits a case where Anthony Porter,
convicted of murder and sentenced to death, got released from prison 16 years later when a Northwestern
I University journalism professor and his students reexamined his case and led police to the real killer who
T confessed to the killings. Had Porter not had the luck of a court-ordered hearing on his mental competency, and

A the help of the professor and his students, he would have been executed for a crime that he did not commit. The
overturn of his conviction took place just two days before he was scheduled for execution.
L

In 2001, The Christian Science Monitor referenced then Illinois governor George Ryan’s act of halting
P executions in Illinois in order to put safeguards in place to prevent the executions of innocent people. He
also noted that wrongful convictions take place when police and prosecutors mishandle evidence, and when
U defendants have pitifully inadequate legal representation during trial.

N
I An innocent person receiving the death penalty is as appalling as the crime of murder itself. When a person
takes another person’s life, it is murder; and when a state executes an innocent person, it is still murder. How
S can there be any difference when both murder victims were innocent?

H
M Lorna Siggins, Western Correspondent for the Irish Times in 2007 described innocent people who get convicted
and sentenced to death for violent crimes. She stated that professor of law Bryan A. Stevenson who represents
E disadvantaged and death-row prisoners in the United States got 125 death penalty cases overturned because the
N prisoners were found innocent, some just days before execution was scheduled to take place.The fact that this
T many innocent people received the death penalty is deeply disturbing. No words could ever express the sorrow
felt by their families and friends if those people had died for crimes that they did not commit.

Supporters of the death penalty might think about how they would feel if one of their friends or relatives got
convicted of murder and was executed, and then five years later the real killer got caught and confessed to the
murder that the friend or relative did not commit but died for. Writer Mark Dow, who has authored many death
penalty articles and commentaries, made a strong case in 2005 against the death penalty when he pointed out
that a court can undo a conviction but it cannot undo an execution.

I know how I would feel if my brother Michael had died for a murder that he didn’t commit instead of the
way that he did die. Either way he is gone, but court-ordered murder does not convince people not to kill. My
example of career enhancement by lawyers who seek the death penalty blatantly lays the groundwork for a
corrupt judicial system to get rich off of the blood of others.

Additional Crimes for Death

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