"The most premeditated of murders"
"An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the privation of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It adds to death a rule, a public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization which is itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death. Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."
Albert Camus---"Reflections on the Guillotine, Resistance, Rebellion & Death" (1966).
posted by peacecart @ 1:30 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Wow, I had never thought of this aspect of the death penalty before. The waiting itself is a punishment more tortuous than anyting I can imagine, including the death itself. How cruel and barbarous of us as a society to condone such actions! Cutting of a hand or a finger would probably be more humane.
I recently watched "The Exonerated" - the film, not the play. It is very honest and powerful. What I liked most is that it gives a voice to the victims of an incredibly imperfect and often unjust criminal "justice," system, who have been silence for so long. In my view, just one of these voices is more than reason enough to abolish the death penalty. I would highly recommend it!
Wouldn't the WAITING for the govt-sponsored decapitation be pretty tortuous too, though? Can you imagine?
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