(WNBK) #8: "Epilogue"
As Stevenson describes it at Walter’s funeral, the real question is not whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit, but whether we deserve to kill. Do we? Is your stance on this question any different now than it was before you read the book? Explain.
Before this book I never really considered thinking about the people behind the executions of prisoners, it's almost as if I thought it just happened. I believe this is why when someone ever brought up that a murderer was put on death row, my mind went to “oh well he or she killed someone so therefore it makes sense for them to die” not “that's awful, another person has to die, and the executioner has to give up their humanity for someone else's mistakes.” My original thought was more of an eye for an eye kind of approach, rather than a take a step back and evaluate the situation one. After this book, I’m happy to say that my position on this topic has changed dramatically. I now believe that no one deserves to kill another human being, not only because it is unlawful, but because it also forces someone to give up a portion of his or her compassion.
ReplyDelete-Brianna Davenport
Brianna,
DeleteI feel you on the matter of assuming the accused deserved what was coming to him/her, how that person must of done something so unforgivable that it is reasonable to place him/her on death row. I always had that instant mindset of vengeance, that that person had committed such a grand and horrible crime that the only fair option was to be executed. After reading "Just Mercy", I have second thoughts too. I believe we absolutely must step back and observe, meditate, and acknowledge the situation and fully understand the decision of taking another person's life. It's one concept to have a person wallow and rot in a prison cell forever, and another to kill unnaturally. (Perhaps having a life sentence is not really living per say, but it is the opposite of actual death).
All and all, killing is never a simple notion, of course. I've found that the Crime System rushes forward too quickly, too harshly. "Deserving" is such a shaky concept, and I believe it all depends on the case. We must first understand the deepness and reality of putting someone on death row...and even then, we must always question before the finality, "if if if".
#8 Epilogue:
DeleteLucy
100% I agree with both of you. If only it was a perfect world and we could weed out the true evils. Then yes, I would still believe that they deserve to be killed but we can’t and we won’t. We won’t be able to tell between two people's stories, we can’t know for sure whether or not someone is telling the truth. So for now, I do not believe that we have the right to kill. Not until we can make sure the truly innocent are free.
I completely agree with you Brianna, especially on the part where you say that we should not kill others because it takes away from our own compassion and humanity. When we kill others not only are we taking another person's life, but we are also taking a toll on our own conscience. It is not in our nature to kill others, and when we are sentencing someone the death penalty, we are doing just that. It takes away a piece of our humanity to kill another living being and that is not fair to us, in away we are in a way being punished, but we are not the criminals.
DeleteI used to believe that whatever someone does wrong should be done to them to some extent. With that being said, I also never fully thought about what went into executions. The fact that someone is in charge of killing someone else sounds absolutely horrifying to me. I think that innocence is a part of humanity and by killing someone a part of humanity is stripped away from that person. I don’t think we deserve the right to kill someone else for the crimes they commit, especially since we don’t know the circumstances for their reason to commit the crime, or their background/childhood.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t personally have an opinion on this situation before I read the book because the thought that there is someone who carries out the execution never came to my mind. I know for a fact that after reading the book, and hearing all of the descriptions of what takes place in an execution room, I don’t think we should be able to kill prisoners. They may be prisoners, and they have made mistakes, but they are still humans, and so are we.