Aine -
I read your post last night and it reached me. I have been ambivalent about the death penalty. After all, we all die eventually. And I have always been swayed by the argument that in many ways the death penalty is less cruel than life in our penal system. But I have decided to oppose the death penalty because of the barbarism that is at its root. I oppose it not because, as some believe, an innocent man died. An innocent man died nineteen years ago and that shouldn't go unredressed in some way. I oppose it because it is barbaric to kill. And we as a species need to aspire to something better if we wish to have a better world. It has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with evolution, in a sense. I choose not to kill because I believe that that is one thing that I can do to make the world a better place. And it is hypocritical to ask someone to kill in my name, whether they have been sworn in or not.

I realize what a can o'worms this opens up for me. After all, there are all the other related philosphical dominos to consider - abortion, euthenasia, even vegetarianism. But those are not the topic here and I will need to deal with them in their time if I want to be a complete person, rather than a complete fraud. And I will. On the other side of the coin, I also understand that one man saying this doesn't make the world a good place. It will only work if everyone believes that violence towards others - whether physical, mental or emotional - is equally barbaric and has no place in the world that we wish to have someday. If no one murdered anyone, or raped them, or stole their self-respect, or reduced them to a statistical economic necessity (a certain amount of unemployment is, after all, good for the economy)maybe the question of whether a man like Gary Graham deserved to die. Or whether we had the right and the responsibility to kill him.

Understand one thing about my decision that the death penalty has no place in a civilized society - anyone is free to disagree with me and I can't find fault in that decision. We live in a barbarous age, only slightly less barbarous than those that preceded ours. "An eye for an eye" works, but only up to a point. My decision on this is a leap of faith. It is predicated on the belief that mankind can become better than it is. Viscerally, I believe that those guys who dragged that guy behind a truck until he was dead should have the same done to them - publicly, as a warning to anyone who would ever consider such an act. But that would just confirm our worst beliefs about ourselves - that life is cruel and short and it is only the circumstances of our own sad end that are left to be decided.

Thank you, Aine, for dragging me out of my lethargy to face this question one more time. I have a deep and abiding regret that Gary Graham had to die because Mr. Lambert was murdered nineteen years ago and we needed "closure". I fear the ramifications of what I have now seen to be just more killing. But, I can't ignore it anymore or debate it away. We should not kill. Period.