Instead, the one thousandth execution in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976 will take place on Friday, December 2nd. Today, Robin Lovitt was granted clemency by Virginia Governor Mark Warner. The scissors he had used (Lovitt, not the governor) in the murder he was accused of were discarded, casting doubt onto the accusations. The decision is commendable, but the thousandth execution is still imminent and inevitable. With determination and hard work, however, we will hopefully never reach the 2,000th execution in this country. The death penalty is state murder; a brutal form of legitimate revenge that inevitably puts innocents to death, offers no emotional relief for the victim's family, and is grossly racially biased. Capital punishment does not function as deterrence. The United States is in the company of nations such as China and Iran as modern practitioners of capital punishment. I'm inclined to spend the rest of tonight typing out a long post, speaking against the death penalty in a very in-depth fashion. I have other commitments, though, so I'll leave you with these online resources:
1000 Executions
NCADP (National Coalition Against the Death Penalty)
TCADP (Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty)
Amnesty International and the death penalty
Abolish the Death Penalty blog
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