Tag Archives: Death penalty

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On the death penalty

On this blog, we have expressed our opposition to punishment. We have consistently said we are aware society needs to protect itself. At the same time, we have advocated for healthier societies where everyone is treated with dignity, has access to education and a means to take care of their needs and has an opportunity to participate in the body politic. We feel that a society reeked in inequality is disaster waiting to happen and no matter how severely we punish others for wrongdoing, we will not be any closer to making societies safer and better.

I find capital punishment to serve no end towards reform, limiting occurrence of violent crime and any other perceived utilities. I will readily say I have not been on the side of victims of crime to tell how I would react in a similar station. We can call all this my theory towards crime.

In Kenya, there has been no execution by the state in the last 27 years. In 2009, the then head clown commuted the sentence of about 4000 on death row to life in prison. In his speech he

directed government bodies to study whether the death penalty had any impact on the fight against crime

something he could as well have asked me for an answer.

While this was a good move forward, some of the people locked up are in prison for selling a stone of bhang, selling or drinking local brews; things which to any rational person do not make them a danger to society. Such people leave the prison system worse of and become a major problem for us all.I digress.

While still researching for this post, I found this comment

A Nakuru court sentenced to death a man accused of killing a couple that owned a private school in Nakuru in 2012. Relatives of the late Alfred Gatienya Githinji and his wife Mary sobbed as Principal Magistrate James Mwaniki read how John Wanyoike Watuleke murdered them. “We have been waiting bitterly for justice for the last three years and God has done his work finally,” said a relative of the Maryanne Tee Academy owners. Prosecution evidence revealed Wanyoike was found with items of the deceased in Kitale, several kilometres from the crime scene

and am not sure how I feel about a god whose maxim is an eye for an eye. I do think somewhere in the good book they say forgive 70×7 0r 70×70- am never sure which but I know it is a hell lot many times.

Having told you about my neck of the woods, there are a number of executions in line in some states of the US of A that are facing some challenges and one asks who benefits from these executions.

What are your thoughts/ opinions on the death penalty? Do you think it serves to reduce crime?

Or do you as Nietzsche in Human all too Human feel

Execution.—How comes it that every execution causes us more pain than a murder? It is the coolness of the executioner, the painful preparation, the perception that here a man is being used as an instrument for the intimidation of others. For the guilt is not punished even if there be any: this is ascribable to the teachers, the parents, the environment, in ourselves, not in the murderer—I mean the predisposing circumstances.

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