The 2012 election went mostly the way I had hoped it would go. There is something else I hope we Californians (and people in thirty-one other states) will get around to doing soon. We’re still deliberately killing people. I hope we will sometime soon stop it.

Fifty-three percent of California voters cast votes against Proposition 34 which would have ended the practice of killing people in California who have been sentenced to death for capital murder. Texas has executed 13 people since January 1st of this year. Eighteen of our United States have voted to abolish the death penalty. Connecticut citizens voted to abolish the death penalty in April of this year.  The repeal in that state, however, was not retroactive, leaving 11 people on death row... but at least it’s a start. 

Since 1992, fifteen prisoners on death row have been set free when newly discovered evidence has exonerated them, leaving any reasonable person to wonder how many people have been executed who were actually not guilty of the crime for which they were convicted and sentenced. In 1950, a man named Timothy Evans was executed after being convicted of murdering his daughter.  Three years after his execution, authorities discovered that another man, who had rented a room from Evans, was a serial killer and had killed the daughter.  Timothy Evans was innocent.  As recently as 1991 a man names Cameron Willlingham was sentenced to die for the deaths of his three daughter who died in a fire that Willingham was accused of setting.  Evidence that was originally said to prove his guilt has since been shown to be inconclusive.  Although his innocence cannot be proven, if he had not been put to death, the case might have been reopened and there is the strong possibility that he would have been found innocent on appeal.  Jesse Tafero is perhaps the best known case of an innocent man having been executed and later found to be innocent.  He was accused of murdering two police officers.  There were two accomplices involved in the incident.  One of them testified against the other two in exchange for a light prison sentence.  He later admitted that he was the one who killed the two officers, but even with the new testimony Tafero was put to death. It is believed that Tafero would have been set free were he still alive for an appeal 

The possibility of killing an innocent person is not my primary reason for voting against the death penalty.  An execution is carried out by the State of California.  I am a citizen of the State of California, and although I object to such a barbaric act as deliberate execution of a human being, as a citizen I am complicit in the execution.  I object.  Vengeance should never be the overriding reason for an act of violence, and the only logical explanation for an individual’s assent to an execution is vengeance... an eye for an eye... evening the score.  That argument is an attempt to make a case for immoral action in response to someone else’s immoral behavior, and it just doesn’t make sense.  The deterrent argument makes even less sense.  There is absolutely no evidence that the possibility of being put to death for murder has ever stopped anyone from committing the crime.  

Let’s try again to do away with death penalty.