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It is in no person's ability to guarantee a promise that they would never demand death of a person who caused the death of a loved one, no matter how adamantly they are against the death penalty. Such crimes and such responses are a true test of the most forgiving and spiritually and morally strong person.

But apparently, the death penalty is not a deterrent to any type or form of crime.

Between 1996 and 2008, murder rates in some states with the death penalty have gone down, while murder rates in others have gone up. Between 1996 and 2008, murder rates in some states that have abolished or shut down executions, murder rates in some have gone down while others have gone up. When data behaves that way, it can be said that some other causative factor than the expected one is involved in the changes in murder rates, or that there is not a pure or strong correlation between having the death penalty and lower (or higher) murder rates.

A woman who knowingly committed premeditated murder on all five of her children is alive today. Her condition is as responsive to treatment as is the conditions of those who are forcibly administered drugs in order to be sane enough for execution. Then California governor, Gray Davis, pushed the execution of a paranoid schizophrenic man in order to boost his standing with the voters. Davis was eventually recalled, anyway.

Mental illness is obviously not a defense that is available to all. Killing the mentally ill will never be a deterrent to the mentally ill being compelled to kill.

The death penalty is no deterrent to violent crimes against children. After the widely and almost constantly publicized case of a woman who behaved as if life were normal, partying, stealing from others, and lying time and time again when her child had been missing for weeks, is now up for the death penalty. Since she and her family have been so successful at obscuring the truth in the matter, she has a good chance of acquittal. Since then, even more children have gone missing, been found murdered, or not been found at all, while the parents or caregivers give conflicting and false information in order to get away with the crime.

The death penalty is no deterrent to the killing of women and children.

But there is something deeply twisted and wrong with anyone who just loves to see people executed, as long as it is not themselves or their loved ones. Even if there is clear proof of their innocence, wrongfully convicted individuals cannot get their lives back, even when they are set free. When even one innocent person is executed, then the state, and by extension, each and every one of us who elects the state is guilty of wrongful death. When our representatives deliberately and willfully commit a wrongful execution, by extension we commit a wrongful execution.

The death penalty these days is more of a national moral, ethical, and spiritual wrong that must be righted than it is a deterrent.

Learn more about this author, Elizabeth M. Young.
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