Thou Shalt Not Kill vs. An Eye For An Eye

A couple days ago a story caught my attention.  A Black man was openly distraught and wept in court as two murderers, a man and a woman, were charged with the murder of his 4-year-old daughter.  The murderers were the child’s mother and her boyfriend.  So many thoughts rushed to my mind as I read this article.  How does a person, especially a mother, hurt and kill her child?  What would cause a mother to commit such a heinous crime?  According to the police report in this case, the child suffered unchallenged physical abuse before she was killed. 

If you believe in the Death Penalty, this case would certainly cause you to want these two people to be charged with death. This is one of the reasons the Death Penalty is in place.  The Death Penalty is widely debated throughout the United States, divisive even.  Some people are strongly against it for religious reasons.  The Sixth Commandment in the Bible says, “Thou shalt not kill” and therefore if you believe the words of the Bible, then you should uphold these teachings.  Others believe “An Eye for An Eye” meaning a person who injures another person should be punished to the same degree.

What about the degree of the crime?  Should that be taken into consideration as to whether a person should be ordered to be put to death by the courts?  Yes, there is such a decree. According to Procon.org, capital offenses mostly consist of various forms of murder such as, murder committed during a drug-related drive-by-shooting, murder during a kidnapping, murder for hire and genocide.  Capital offenses also include espionage, treason, and death resulting from aircraft hijacking. 

During jury selection, I listened as the lawyer for the deceased describe how the murder was committed. The defendant sat quietly as the lawyer spoke to the potential jurors.  I listened intently as the lawyer described how someone was killed by the defendant.  It was a very heinous and horrific description of the murder.  This horrific relay of the crime caused me to unintentionally gasp.  The attorney looked at me and continued.  I was suffering from bronchitis at the time, so I then began coughing uncontrollably for what seems like a very long time.  I was not selected to serve on that jury.  When I was dismissed by the attorney for the defendant, the other attorney nod at me as I left the jury pool and I think he mouthed “thank you.”  I believe I would have voted for the death penalty in that case.

For this article, I wanted to find out how others felt about the death penalty.  One person shared a memory of a murder that happened a few miles from his home in Alabama.  The murderer killed a young woman then raped her and left her body to be discovered.  The murderer later confessed that he just “snapped.”  The person I spoke to believes that a person who commits a horrific crime as this, should be charged with the death penalty.  Another person I spoke to believes no matter the crime, no matter how heinous, no one should be put to death.  Is this divine faith in God and the relationship to not killing someone who killed another person, strongly correlated with African Americans?  Perhaps!  A comment on the topic also was that too many innocent people are put to death and most of those people are Black.  False convictions do happen, and it takes years to correct, if ever.  Truthfully, an untold number of innocent people have been executed.  The legal system cannot be trusted to convict the truly guilty and find the innocent free to go home.  The nuances in finding out whether a person is truly guilty or not can be hidden from the courts and the jurors so easily and therefore an innocent person is wrongfully convicted. 

In February 1990, The United States General Accounting Office stated that "In 82% of the studies reviewed, race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks."  That is problematic.

Newsweek published an article which states that, “Since 1973, 144 people on death row have been exonerated.”  That may not seem like a large number considering that there are 2,905 people (men and women combined) currently on death row.  But if you or a family member are one of those 144 people, each number counts as a false conviction. 

Finally, facts do matter.  NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund breaks down the number of death row inmates by race of defendant and gender.  As of July 1, 2016, in this article noting Blacks and Whites, at that time, there were 1,230 White people and 1,214 Black people on death row.  See a portion of the chart below:

Whatever your belief in this jurisprudence, we need to trust our legal system to thoroughly give the person charged with murder or any crime that warrants a death sentence, a fair and accurate trial.

©Radiance Smith (aka Radiance Lite)