Justice is not vengeance
I am glad that Gov. Mike DeWine has asked for the repeal of capital punishment. Given our current legislature, I am not getting my hopes up. I have been to several of the hearings on bills to repeal the death penalty. Every speaker in favor of capital punishment relied solely on emotional arguments. Their only strategy was to describe heinous crimes in graphic detail. Emotional appeals were all they had.
We must not confuse justice with vengeance. The state was not intended to be an instrument of revenge. We expect our leaders to rely on reason rather than emotion when dealing with matters of criminal justice.
There are many practical reasons why this state-sponsored killing must end. Mistakes are made. Twelve people from Ohio’s death row have been exonerated after their innocence came to light. The death penalty is not a deterrent to crime, it is far more expensive than a life sentence and it will never be administered fairly because of racial bias, income disparity and the differing views of prosecuting attorneys. A sentence of life in prison without parole will protect our communities and also hold murderers accountable.
I believe that the repeal of capital punishment is the litmus test of a civilized society. It is time to acknowledge that we are endorsing a barbaric practice that most of the industrialized world has outlawed as a human rights violation. At present, we are in the company of China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen as the top executioners worldwide.
Carol Rafferty, Columbus
Who’s really eroding our values?
Re “Microlooting, Medicaid fraud and shrugs at assassin. We’re in trouble,” June 21: Philip Derrow’s column in which the author reacts to an editorial in The New York Times that questioned the morality of individuals cheating or stealing small things from big corporations was as misleading as it was disingenuous.
He also misses the bigger picture.
The NYT editorial referred to people who feel justified engaging in minor pilferage against utility companies and major national chain stores and the like because of the overwhelming control those companies have over our lives, our landscape, our elections and legislators, etc.
The editorial’s author describes that as “micro-looting,” yet not a word did Mr. Derrow speak about the wholesale looting of the commons on a macro-scale by the health care industry, major energy producers, insurers, the communications industry and state and federal governments which continually give tax breaks to the obscenely wealthy while cutting social services. That was the point of the NYT editorial, but Mr. Derrow conveniently left that out.
Instead, he implied that welfare fraud is rampant – especially in the Somali community – but he avoided any discussion about why so many Americans, many who are employed, depend on welfare in the first place, or about how that essential lifeline is now being cut.
It is not “liberals” who are eroding our values. It is the owning class that profits from poverty, and apologists like Mr. Derrow who would rather scapegoat the disadvantaged than address the root causes of inequality.
Evan Davis, Galena
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: The case against capital punishment is clear | Letters
Reporting by Letters to the Editor, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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By Letters to the Editor, Columbus Dispatch | USA TODAY Network
