Is it right to kill people?

People will answer this no, it is not right to kill people. Killing people is bad, it is drilled into our brains that it is not right to hurt others, that killing is bad.

The death penalty is killing. That’s what it is in simple terms. But in reality, it is so much more than that. It is the act of committing a legal crime against a person that has wronged others. To take someone’s life is to take away from someone else’s. 

We may not have the choice of when we die, or when our friends and family die. We don’t even have the choice to save people on the death row. But the government has the choice to save a life. They have the choice to continue an entire being’s existence, or end it forever. They make this choice, and the people they kill and their families have no choice. They can’t save their own lives, even though these people could be perfectly healthy, and have years left in their existence.

We make choices every day. Some are insignificant, such as what to eat or what to wear. But other choices we can effect others with, like the choice to support the death penalty. It is the intentional murder of someone that has committed a crime. It is murder. There is no denying this fact. Killing someone is murder.

The question of if the death penalty has constantly been a question of right and wrong, and has recently been brought up by yet another of our President’s tweets… “Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system… There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!” (from @realdonaldtrump)

We can not stop terrorists that attack us after the fact. We can’t go back and save the people who have died in the past, but we can decide who gets to live after the fact.

But the fact that our government murders people does not make them stoop as low as the convicted themselves. The government who kills people is the hero. That government is supported because the person they murder is terrible, they are removing someone terrible from the world, so they should be praised.

Right?

Wrong.

The people they kill have families. The people they kill are killed with things made with the intent to do good; overdosing with drugs that can save another person’s life. When they die, a part of their families die too, because they are now gone from the world, and will never have the chance to say goodbye.

Richard Bourke, a death row lawyer from Texas, gave a Ted Talk in Sydney, Australia about his experience with clients put on the death row. There was a client who had a son and a wife. His son, very young, had to say goodbye to his father through a thin sheet of plexi glass, not able to hug him or even kiss him on the cheek. The last time he got to touch his father was when he was laying in his coffin, right before he was buried.

It is wrong to kill people. It is always wrong to stoop as low as the convicted themselves, no matter the circumstances.