Death and Stuff

I don’t have much to say about the Supreme Court decision to outlaw the death penalty for juvenile criminals, except that it’s a good thing. I don’t support the death penalty at all, because I believe anyone who commits a crime worthy of death deserves far worse—to sit for the rest of their lives in a tiny cell, hopefully quite miserable and haunted by nightmares of the horror they perpetrated against others.

I know that’s a lot to hope for, but I think death is too kind an end for monsters.

I also believe that our criminal justice system is imperfect, and that putting people to death who might well deserve it by some measure is not worth the risk of executing even one innocent man or woman.

I’ll get more excited if they ever see fit to legalize euthanasia, so people who don’t deserve to suffer and have no hope of recovery can end their anguish should they so choose. There’s something incredibly fucked up about forcing people to linger; prolonging agony when death in inevitable seems the very definition of cruel and unusual to me.