Is America 'Civilized'? Not as Long as It Sanctions the Death Penalty
History repeats itself: The electric chair in Auburn State Prison, circa
1906. (Picryl)
There is no place in a civilized society for capital punishment. That's why
actual civilized societies around the world do not have, use or endorse
capital punishment. Twenty U.S. states ban capital punishment, the latest
being Washington, whose Supreme Court ruled Oct. 11 that the ultimate
penalty was "invalid because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially
biased manner." A University of Washington study found that black defendants
are about four times more likely to get the death penalty in Washington than
white offenders. Racial disparity in sentencing is common throughout the
criminal justice system nationwide.
People in the federal government and some U.S. states that endorse capital
punishment, along with death penalty advocates, actually believe that they
are civilized, even though they use an uncivilized method of murder. They
have been historically fooled into believing that civilized people do not do
uncivilized things to other people. However, no one should doubt that
capital punishment and all of the mental, emotional, psychological and
physical torture that is done to human beings using this form of killing is
uncivilized.
Many people around the world and in this country are dumbfounded by the
hypocrisy of this line of thinking, including me. In order to learn the true
meaning of the word "civilized," I had to go to my dictionary, because
civilized people do not knowingly first torture and then murder their fellow
man or woman; they just don't. That's uncivilized.
The death penalty by its very nature is meant to torture people, no matter
what its form. This man-made evil, this torturous death, has everyone who is
facing it, especially when they are strapped to a chair or a gurney, asking
the same question that Jesus Christ asked when he was strapped and nailed to
that cross: "My God, why have you forsaken me?"
How do I know? Because I asked God that same question when I was being
mentally, emotionally and psychologically tortured in 2004 by the prison
guard executioner at the prison where I have been detained, when the next
step for me was the last step, the actual physical torture by lethal
injection. When a human being is put through a sick state ritual of legal
murder by the staff of a prison-that is truly uncivilized.
I speak from experience, from suffering years of post-traumatic stress
disorder from that agonizing, near-death experience I went through and
survived. So when I looked up the word "civilized" in my dictionary to find
its true meaning, I was surprised to discover that it means a different
thing than what those death penalty supporters mean when they call
themselves civilized. The hypocrisy that those people live with and get away
with is unbelievable.
"Civilized," according to my dictionary, means: 1) to rise from a primitive
state to an advanced and ordered stage of cultural development; 2) polite
and well mannered; and 3) having or showing a taste for fine arts and
gracious living.
Why am I not surprised to see that nowhere in the description of "civilized"
are the words "capital punishment" or "death penalty"? "Torture" is not part
of the definition either, yet those people who love the death penalty so
much that they have done everything humanly possible to keep it in use call
themselves civilized.
The truth, in fact, is that capital punishment, torture and all of these
man-made evils represent the complete opposite of being civilized. I guess
that's why both Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King,
spoke out against the death penalty during their walk on earth.
King said: "I do not think that God approves of the death penalty for any
crime, rape and murder included. Capital punishment is against the better
judgment of modern criminology, and, above all, against the highest
expression of love in the nature of God."
Coretta Scott King said: "An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of
retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of human life. Morality
is never upheld by a legalized murder."
Morality and being civilized go hand in hand, just as immorality and being
uncivilized go hand in glove.
The United States of America keeps strange company when it comes to the
death penalty. It is in league with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq as
countries that execute the most prisoners. They say that this country is
better or more enlightened or civilized than other countries that execute
people-yet they all still have and use the death penalty.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 56 other countries still
use the death penalty, including North Korea, Uganda, Botswana, Bangladesh,
Somalia, Nigeria and Chad, to name a few (see the full list here).
The civilized countries that do not execute people number 141 and include
Turkey, Croatia, Germany, France, Uzbekistan and Portugal.
This is an important point, because it truly speaks not only to the
hypocrisy concerning the death penalty in this country, but also to how this
hypocrisy is rationalized. I have learned that the three main ingredients
that have made capital punishment a mainstay in this country are racism,
fundamentalist religion and politics.
This is how certain racist, religious fundamentalists and political people,
whether they are leaders or not, have fooled masses of people into believing
in and supporting the death penalty. They use the victim factor-to support
families of victims in seeking revenge against the accused and/or convicted.
They don't encourage the families to seek forgiveness or peace or anything
of that nature. They fool them into believing that the only thing they need
for closure is to torture and murder someone.
This line of argument has been preached to certain congregations and spoken
to certain constituents throughout the history of this country. People have
been fooled into believing and supporting a system that is against
everything that humanity is about, and against everything for which their
God stands.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. America, you have
been fooled so many times that the shame is really on you! You don't see
that the death penalty is primitive, as in belonging to an early stage of
human development.
One cannot call himself or herself civilized while practicing primitive
behavior, and executing people, especially the innocent, is as primitive as
one gets. Support for the death penalty within this country is lower now
than it almost has ever been. I like to believe that's because the truly
civilized people in this country are standing up and speaking out against
this horrific crime against humanity.
History doesn't lie, nor does the truth. I believe that if Jesus Christ came
back to this earth, as most death penalty-supporting Christians believe that
he someday will, he would take those nails all over again after he saw what
was being done to people in his name. He would die again to show people that
in his dying, in his being tortured and murdered, no one else should have
that happen to them.
When will the foolish, uncivilized death penalty advocates who say they
believe in God start believing in what his crucifixion was really all about?
Kevin Cooper
Kevin Cooper is a death row inmate at California's San Quentin Prison. In
1985, he was convicted of a 1983 quadruple murder and sentenced to death in
a trial in which evidence that might have exonerated him.
Kevin Cooper
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