Perhaps We Are Not As Enlightened As We Like To Think We Are

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The state of Arkansas murdered a man yesterday.

It’s 2017 and the US is one of just a handful of industrialized nations that still has the death penalty.

No matter what your views on the death penalty, you cannot deny that mistakes are made. Time and again, death row inmates are exonerated through DNA evidence, which is indisputable.

Taking just one innocent life doesn’t justify our bloodlust for murderous retribution.

The barbarity of the death penalty combined with overwhelming evidence that innocent men sit on death row and coupled with the fact that the death penalty is arbitrarily meted, is definitive argument that we must, as a nation of rational citizens, follow this argument to it natural conclusion.

It’s time for all states and our federal government to say enough is enough and opt for life in prison without the possibility of parole, saving states millions of dollars, sparing grieving families the heartache of appeal after appeal, and quelling our nation of the guilt of taking a possibly innocent life.

There’s no place for state sanctioned murder in our modern, enlightened society. You cannot consider yourself an upright citizen, if you’re willing to allow even one innocent person to be put to death. I, for one, will not rest until the death penalty is deemed obsolete. In my lifetime, I hope to see it so.‬