OFF WITH YOUR HEAD

One of the things we learned in class that I found interesting was that though it is the most painless way to kill somebody, the United States stopped using gas chambers for the death penalty after WWII.  Did you know the United States currently has more than 3,500 men and women who sit on death row?  A majority of these "victims" who are on death row are poor, and cannot and/or could not afford proper representation!  Many of them suffer from mental illness, or mental retardation.  Some did not commit the crime, but were sentenced to die under the Law of Parties and will die for murders the judge and the juries know they did not commit.  The Death penalty costs 4 times as much as housing an inmate for life!  The average death penalty cost (per offender) costs $1 million to $3 million dollars (and many go as high as $7 million dollars), while housing an inmate for life costs only about $500,000.  You do the math.

Going deeper into my quest to learn more about the death penalty and I found that a man running as a Republican for State Representative in Arkansas published a book in which he endorses the death penalty for rebellious children. Now, the connotation for children in my mind is innocence, naivety, and dependent.  Rebellion does have a negative connotation, but when I think of rebellious children all I can picture is a little boy eating a cookie before dinner.  However, this man decided to bring the bible into this and said, “…a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellioius children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21.”(Raw Story (http://s.tt/1pvmt) The true definition of rebellion is “An act or a show of defiance toward authority or an established convention.”  Of course when we talk about children we are talking about minors meaning under the age of 18.  Rebellion is depicted through aspects such as fashion, hair styles, drugs, sex, art and politics- a lot of things actually.  But what of it? Isn’t rebellion the reason why times have changed?  Why, when we look at the 90’s decades, we see changes in attitudes and style and music and everything that made them significant? For those of you reading, what exactly qualifies an action that can be made by a minor as rebellious enough to earn the death penalty?  Disrespecting your parents, though bad in my book, is by means cause to chop off a kid’s head. The Republican goes on to say, “…if it were the law of land, it would give parents authority. Children would know that their parents had authority and it would be a tremendous incentive for children to give proper respect to their parents.”  I mean, respect for parents is something children should be taught and want to give -it is not something they should be scared into- and it is up to the parents to make that happen.  Of course, maybe kids in their older teens can commit crimes, and maybe even murder, but they’re still kids.  Though some minors are delinquents and do commit illegal crimes, they still do not deserve the death penalty.  I just cannot wrap my head around that; it’s immoral to me and it’s not just because they’re kids, but because I’ve never been happy about the idea of taking anyone’s life.  What do you think?