by Duane Kuehn

Created on: March 19, 2010

Connecticut should abolish the death penalty for numerous reasons. It is surprising that such an educated State even has the death penalty.

Should Connecticut abolish the death penalty, Connecticut should also move forward to lead the country in the restructuring of its prisons and prison programs.

Some argue the death penalty on moral grounds, some as to the cost to taxpayers and some simply for the sake of argument. These things have their place, of course, but it is the fact of effectiveness that should surely sway the proponent of this legal restitution by killing the perpetrator.

The most intelligent reason for any State in these United States of America to do away with the death penalty is simple. The death penalty has shown itself to not be effective in curtailing any crime, most importantly murder.

Statistically, states that have the death penalty accomplish only higher rates of violent crime and murder. Thusly, the death penalty fails in deterring violent crime. More important than the lack of effectiveness as a deterrent, the death penalty appears somehow to promote violent crime and murder.

One might wonder at the reason for this upsurge of murders and such in a State of the Union that chooses to kill a perpetrator of certain crimes.  Some States have death penalties for other things than “murder 1”.

It is, most likely, a psychological phenomenon. Few persons commit heinous crimes without having personal feeling of guilt and self-reprisal. The death penalty becomes not so much a deterrent as a death wish. It is much easier to die than to live one's life coping with feelings of unworthiness and remorse.  The death penalty becomes its own justification for the original crime.

For those who rationalize their own crime and/or appear to have no conscience, what is the death penalty to them? Something to avoid on the legal battlefield as if it were a game played on a chessboard. Such people put little value on life in the first place, their own life included. What is this death penalty to them?

The death penalty is nothing more, nor less, than a vindictive 'closure' and outlet for vengeance. It does nothing to deter, much less stop, heinous crimes. It, in fact, seems to cultivate the same such crimes.

On the other hand is the moral ground, which has merit. The United States of America is a nation founded with the knowledge that a government by religion is always a government

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