Question for December 17, 2005
IN THEORY
Q: Before he was executed this week, many argued that Stanley Tookie Williams had been rehabilitated. Others argued that his lack of contrition and the nature of his crimes justifiably doomed him to execution. Do you agree? Is the death penalty a morally acceptable form of punishment?
A: By the time this article is printed, talk of Tookie will be at a minimum, if there is a murmur about him at all. The greatest tragedy associated with the death penalty is that it desensitizes us to death and therefore life. We begin to think that justice can be delivered as a commodity - an eye-for-an-eye - rather than a response which warrants sensitivity, especially for the victims!
Today a great injustice is happening in Darfur. Tens of thousands of people are being murdered just as they were being killed in Rwanda a decade ago. It's not that we don't care; it's just that we've become so immune to killings and violence that we understand life as numbers rather than flesh, blood and souls. And when the State executes someone, we receive a booster shot to our immune system. So four days later we've forgotten about Tookie, subsequently, we close our eyes to mass murder such as Genocide.
Stan Tookie Williams died. Four others died because he shot them. Hundreds of others have been and are being killed by gang violence. Over a 2000 of our troops have died in Iraq. And on the "other" side, 30,000 Iraqis have died since the start of the war. Add to that the 29,000 kids who die each day because of hunger and the statistics and numerical values of life and death become overwhelming to the point of desensitization. So when we hear that 1.5 million Armenian were murdered in the Genocide of 1915, we accept it as a statistic to history, rather than a call to action against injustice in the world.
It all begins when we tune-out the value of the life of one man, even if he be a criminal. John Donne described it so eloquently, "No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main... Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
The Death Penalty does not bring about justice. It only punishes us, those who remain to see another injustice.
FR. VAZKEN MOVSESIAN
Armenian Church
Youth Ministries
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