Controlled Killing: A Governmental Approach

   Perhaps one of the most intriguing topics in our country today is the controversy regarding capital punishment. It is one of the most significant predicaments that allow the far left to be extended from the far right. Of course to the majority of people (more specifically college and high school students) this argument seems to sound repetitive and a bit cliché, but does a subject which involves the killing of human beings truly deserve to be pushed to the side simply because it seems dull? Practicing justice in the United States is an essential principle this nation was founded on. My question is, what kind of justice is shown when we murder an individual? Who are we to say that taking someone’s life is a punishment? Do we truly know what happens to a human when they die? If the government’s answer is yes, then wouldn’t that be violating our general belief on the separation of church and state? In modern day, our most popular method of execution is lethal injection. In this process three anesthetics are pumped through the veins of the accused individual, all combining to result in a slow painless death (considering the first injection is meant to make the victim unconscious). So, knowing that the accused do not feel any pain or distress proves that the oppressor is counting on the after-life to be a dark and morbid hell. To me, two wrongs don’t make a right, and revenge is temporary. Noted author Albert Camus once wrote “For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.”