So, if you've been out of the news cycle for a few days, you'd probably not be aware that the D.C. sniper, John Allen Muhammad, was put to death last night after his final appeal for a stay of execution was denied. Can I please interject and point out that this is ridiculous? We're trying to establish a precedent that killing people is the worst thing you can do and deserves the highest possible punishment, but at the same time, we're doing the same thing.

If the punishment fit the crime, we'd take the things that belonged to people who stole, we'd force rapists to have sex against their will and we'd disfigure people who mauled animals for fun. We don't do that because the punishment is cruel, unusual, and irreversible. Life in jail is no different from death - in fact, it could easily be worse, because even if you were the most hardened person on earth before you went in, you have a lot of time to think. I'm sure that some people realize what they did is terrible and have the rest of their lives stuck in squalor to live with that realization. Even if they don't, killing them accomplishes nothing. It doesn't bring back the people they killed, it doesn't undo the hurt the family of their victims feels, it does nothing.

I'm not going to cover my opposition to the death penalty point by point like I want to, but rather just address one of the most important justifications that people face and how last night, once again (like dozens of times before) it's been proven false.

People claim that putting murderers to death brings closure to their families. I've never really seen this. How does killing someone else fix the hurt of the death of a loved one? The body count of the crime's just ticked up. You don't ever hear people saying "I'm so glad that guy shot himself" after a murder-suicide. There's just one quote I'd like to point out from today's news that caught my eye.


Another man was killed to make this guy feel better, and he feels nothing. He just wants to see more people killed. And even then he realizes that putting someone to death does not fix his problem. Justice is not served, and all we have to show for it is another person killed by other people.

This has been a disjointed post but really, this whole thing just tears me up. The death penalty is an awful punishment that nobody deserves which starts oftentimes enough with a terrible, horrible mistake or mental illness, leads to years of stress and mental torment while forces beyond your control debate whether or not you deserve to live, and ends with the victim of this already awful punishment being laid out on an operating table in a sterile room with nobody nearby to comfort them, just the eyes of dozens of angry people staring him down as he's murdered in front of them.

It's fucking terrible. Nobody deserves to be killed. Not the victims of murders, not the murders themselves. We have to put an end to this shit.