Capital Punishment

I do not believe in capital punishment! If ever I had any doubts that capital punishment should be abolished I have put them to rest. The spectacle of Saddam Hussein’s execution, the decapitation during hanging of his henchman Barazan Ibrahim, the recently botched execution by lethal injection in Florida, a father's rejection of the death penalty for the murderer of his daughter, the number of condemned “murderers” declared innocent by virtue of DNA testing have all served to reinforce my feelings that the death penalty does not belong in a civilized society.The execution of the former leaders of Iraq may have satisfied the need for revenge by the Shiites but it now appears that most of the world community had no appetite for their hanging. Hussein was a merciless dictator responsible for the death's of thousands and deserved to be punished. The same can be said about Barazan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al Bandar. A more humane and more suitable punishment would have been to banish them to prison for the rest of their lives. No words can be found to justify the abhorrent act of one individual taking the life of another. Taking another life to atone for the crime is not the answer. We read that the decapitation of al Bandar could have been avoided if he had been weighed to determine how much slack to leave in the rope in order to ensure that the neck is broken , but not severed (ironically the same individual making this observation also called the hangings almost ideal). We further complicate the debate about capital punishment by engaging in rhetoric as to the most humane way to take a life. An answer to the latter question has not been forthcoming and never will be - there is nothing humane about taking a life!