Death Penalty issued to Chinese Official
29 05 07 - 12:57Although I acknowledge that entering that room for the last time, knowing you are about to die has to be incredibly unpleasant, it is still an easy way out. The families of the dead are likely to be suffering in one way or another for the rest of their lives. Families of victims often do not find the consolation they expected in an execution. With this in mind, I believe that a far better route is life imprisonment with no parole.
If the families are to be suffering for a lifetime, then it seems only right that the perpetrator does too.
In this case, it is especially true. Mr Xiaoyu did not deliberately go out and kill these people, his corruption and failures as a human being led to their deaths. Mr Xiaoyu should instead be given a lifetime to think about this fact.
Killing him is not representative of the type or scale of his crime, and I strongly believe that no Human being can justify taking the life of another.
The Death sentence is used in many countries around the world, the most prominent for westerners being the United States. Even in the US, some states have abolished the death sentence. The unfortunate fact is that the legal system has been reworked (helped along by a set of laws called AEDPA)and now prevents a convict from having his sentence overturned purely through proving he is innocent. In an attempt to protect the legal system from being misused by Convicts, AEDPA was brought in. A case can now only be challenged if there was a constitutional issue with the trial, and there are many repetitive stages throughout. Under AEDPA unless there was something constitutionally wrong with the trial, you cannot present new evidence that could prove your innocence. In other words, if your innocence is not proved at the original trial, no matter what turns up afterwards, you are likely to see your sentence carried out.
This is an unbelievable way to have a legal system function, and I cannot believe that many countries have expressed an admiration of the American Justice system. Any system that takes a mans (or womans) life into it's hands will have flaws, people will be able to misuse it to prolong their life. However fixing these flaws will then detract from the effectiveness of the system, and could lead to innocent men being executed. The beaurocracy in the US Justice system is enough to affect the human rights of those sentenced to die.
I am often asked when I present this argument, if something were to happen to someone I loved, would I not want the person responsible to lose their life? It is a difficult one to answer, and (god forbid) were it ever to happen my perspective may change. However I do not believe that it will, I have no doubt that if I was left in a room with that person one of us would suffer a serious hiding, but I would not kill him, and I would not expect the Legal System to either. The simple fact of the matter is, I would prefer he got life (and life should mean life) without parole. The last person to be executed in the UK was later found to be innocent, I would not want to risk having the death of another innocent on my conscience. To lose a loved one would be very hard, but then to find that we had also executed the wrong person? That Would kill me.
The viewpoint on Capital Punishment is a very personal thing, and there will always be disagreements about whether it is right or wrong. I personally believe that it does not deter people from committing crimes, which means that the often used reason for it's existence is null and void for me. Killing another Human Being is fundamentally wrong, whether it is an individual or the state that causes it.
Stop capital punsihment now, we lose enough people in war (something that is unlikely to change) why risk wasting more innocent lives with a legal system that just doesn't work?
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