crime, no one cares if he is the right man or not; whoever the FBI landed on in the Oklahoma Bombing case would have been sentenced to die, no matter who. I really do feel for those who lost relatives and/or friends to the bombing. I know how I would feel if it had been my family members who died. But we others must remember to keep our heads in situations like these, and not get caught up in the insanity that follows. (An easy statement to have from my comfortable position; I only hope my beliefs would be strong enough to withstand such a personal tragedy.) How do we look our young impressionable children in the eyes and say, "This man killed, so we now kill him"? We cannot send the mixed message that our justice system is both a reformatory vehicle and a spiteful one. If I were a relative of one of the victims in Oklahoma, I would want to personally introduce McVeigh to the flames of damnation. But we cannot, no matter how great the pain of others, allow our courts to allow revenge rather than justice. Advocates of the death penalty contradict themselves at almost every turn; we ask god in song and prayer to "bless America". Yet American law flings one of god's highest right back into his face. "Thou shalt not kill" That passage apparently does not apply to twelve people on jury duty, but if those same twelve people gathered and arranged to kill a neighborhood drug dealer, they would be charged with conspiracy to commit murder. We have legislated convenient permission to commit murder into our laws, and covered it over with formal court procedures and "humane" lethal injections and the precursor of a trial. It still boils down to the decision to kill one man because he killed others. The death penalty is wrong, not only because it is hypocritical, but because we must learn, slowly but surely, to overcome the brutal traditions which di...
