Downtown Austin
Death Penalty or Human Sacrifice?
RECEIVED Thu., May 20, 2010
Dear Editor,
Re “Point Austin” [News, May 21]: I have come to think of the death penalty as state sanctioned murder – as human sacrifice to the gods of vengeance. It implicates all of us who are citizens as an official act of state government. If the victim had not been a police officer, I'd bet that David Powell might have gotten off with 10 years – a typical sentence for murder in cases that don't attract as much attention.
Our justice system is flawed, racist, and quixotic. It certainly should not have the force of the Nazi's final solution which the death penalty represents – the finality of the ending a human life.
Whether the convict is guilty or innocent the effect is the same. In ending a life the state assumes the sacrosanct power of God. That is wrong. God is all knowing; the state is not.
Re “Point Austin” [News, May 21]: I have come to think of the death penalty as state sanctioned murder – as human sacrifice to the gods of vengeance. It implicates all of us who are citizens as an official act of state government. If the victim had not been a police officer, I'd bet that David Powell might have gotten off with 10 years – a typical sentence for murder in cases that don't attract as much attention.
Our justice system is flawed, racist, and quixotic. It certainly should not have the force of the Nazi's final solution which the death penalty represents – the finality of the ending a human life.
Whether the convict is guilty or innocent the effect is the same. In ending a life the state assumes the sacrosanct power of God. That is wrong. God is all knowing; the state is not.
Frances Morey