FM> ... to be HIGHLY PUNITIVE in the VENGEFUL sense.
 DB> You assume that execution is punitive; I regard it as a humane way to
 DB> end a life destined for decades of misery in a cell.  If we had the
 DB> resources to administer stupifying drugs to prisoners rather than
 DB> executing them, I would consider that as well.
   I don't think I assume it, Day.  That is the way I hear the principals
speak about it.  I'm well aware that it is not the most pleasant task prison
officials are called on to perform.  My opposition is not, in my view, an
unreasoned one based on an emotional sympathy for criminals who may well be
deserving of it.  
   First of the many problems is that it cannot be administered without
occasionally producing the tragedy of the execution of an person who, while 
e
are none of us truly innocent, is innocent of the crime for which it is
ordered.  There are those who think that calculus is worth it and I concede
they might be right but it is difficult for me to accept without reservation.
   Secondly, in most cases it really does not come close to the "eye for an
eye" rule at which blind justice is SUPPOSED to aim.  Even death by hanging 
r
electrocal execution often is totally inadequate as a match for the manner of
the crime committed.  I understand that in the Code of Hammurabi there were
some provisions requiring that if a builder of a wall used inadequate
materials and it collapsed on someone the perpetrator was supposed to suffer
the same thing.  Of course, I understand that in these ancient codes, just as
with our modern ones there were all kinds of practical sub-codes trying to
hone the law to fit practicalities.  This is true even of the Mosaic Code 
ven
as written in the Old Testament though few people ever bother with those more
boring details of it.  If a man puts a bomb on a plane and kills a hundred
people can he be put to death a hundred times in the same manner?  Of course,
this is often discounted as invalid but it should be factored into any notion
of capital punishment as justice.  Carla Faye Tucker might have been 
entenced
to suffer death administered by a drug-crazed addict soon after she committed
her crime and it might be seen as an attempt to bring about true justice.  
er
death, in fact, was MUCH EASIER than many of us will statistically undergo in
sanitized hospitals.  My source for this latter observation is Sherwin B
Nuland's, _How We Die_.  I'm one who would be happy to leave it to a wise
physician to give me the death given Carla Faye Tucker if in his experience I
were scheduled for the kind of suffering I saw my father-in-law undergo 
efore
death mercifully took him.  I only use this as an example because I'm not
sympathetic with Carla Faye Tucker and have little regard for people, even if
they're young, who dose themselves on drugs KNOWING what it may produce for
them and then commit crimes.  Perhaps keeping her on the hook so many years
prior to her execution was actually a crude sort of justice in her case since
she evidently confessed to the crime.  
   People aren't usually that sympathetic to the effect coldly calculated
State murder has on the citizenry at large whose hands are on the lever or 
he
end of the needle so I don't seek to use that argument a lot.  
   But, I don't dismiss your position lightly nor elevate my concerns to a
position of unchallengable superiority.   Moreover, I am not even as sanguine
as I once was of the ability of education to produce a more civilized 
ociety.
It is, however, the only tool I see us as having (religion, even
fundamentalist religion MAY produce some "habits of deterrence" from violent
crimes committed against others but it obviously is also fraught with 
ailures
and the serial killers appear to have some early ingrained traits - perhaps
even genetics that predispose them to cruelty.  Such people also, quite
obviously are destined for positions of great political power in some State
systems and we know what results from THAT.  If the people during the era of
kingship, had a GOOD king they had him for life and hoped for a LONG life for
him but if they drew a bad one they had HIM for life as well (as with Saddam
Hussein and the like.  
Sincerely, 
                                     Frank
                                                                              
                                                       
--- PPoint 2.05
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