Death to the Death Penalty and Life to Killers

There is a move in the 2009 Connecticut State Legislative session to abolish the death penalty with a weaker, softer version that imposes life without parole. Our culture has taken another shift that could become seismic and could influence other similarly charged debate later as we witness the “slippery slope” phenomena unfold as a consequence.

The first modification that comes to mind could happen in the near future when “life without parole” is considered to be cruel and unusual punishment or too onerous for some dying, repentant, reformed, cured of mental defects killer that motivates the first exception. We need to be compassionate, will be the argument, and allow some individual to be released to live out their days among the society that historically would have put them to death. A law is then passed that waters down the life without parole to address the exceptions and rewards the “lifer” with release into society. Appeals of other killers (as the new victims) then have new fodder to debate and cultivate to a new level of cultural norm and process.

Or, better yet, with this passage and anticipating no future adjustments, we will certainly see more appeals and costly procedures to redress the outcomes of justice, much like we see today because of the appeal process weaknesses that allow this to occur now. After all, isn’t that one of the reasons we see this shift and we see now how the legislature offers a so called solution. It is within the power of the legislators to fix the existing appeal process with a time limit and put these guilty persons to death as was the original sentence and intent. Why not fix this in lieu of a quantum leap to life without parole?

This example of slippery slope shows that you only need common sense to understand how we seem to consistently forgo a thoughtful process when considering ramifications of our public acts as we substitute new morality and new values as a foundation. Has anything really changed about murderers to justify this insensitive (to victims) shift in our values? Our country has a history of using the death penalty sentence for those events that are considered most despicable and heinous to our society. Do we now tolerate such behavior?

When legislators vote with their hearts in place of society’s moral values and reason reflected in our sense of justice this is the outcome you get. As representatives, they are obliged to reflect the fundamental sensitivities of our society at large and hold their personal passions in check. If they cannot do so they should not be reelected. Moral code is the basis of our justice accompanied by reason and your feelings have nothing to do with it.

Connecticut citizens need a tool (a voter referendum or voter initiative) to thwart these elitist (they know best) invasions and denigrations to our moral compass, democratic sense of fairness, respect for the blindness of the scales of justice, and proven reason to justify sustaining the death penalty. Their deafness to our wishes is becoming louder.

The moral outrage of allowing these proven killers to live when we do NOT penalize the killers of those most vulnerable in our society and innocent by the grace of God in the womb or at partial birth is a black mark on our society at large. Perhaps that is the greatest inconsistency in human logic and reason we will ever witness. Connecting these issues also evidences the hypocrisy under which we do not recognize the differences and sustain a culture of death while allowing life to those judged most undeserving. And the passage of this amendment makes it so.