Issues like gun regulations, marriage equality, and a woman’s right to choose have always been simple – at least from my perspective. Common sense rules for firearms, equal rights for all Americans, and allowing a woman to make her own health care decisions are all no-brainers.
What has not been such a no-brainer is the question of whether we, as a civilized society, should allow the practice of putting people to death as punishment for a crime.
As a human being with emotions, I look at a man who has just killed another person – especially a child – and I am inclined to wish awful things on that man. It’s common for people to react that way under such circumstances.
“They should do the same thing to him as punishment – an eye for an eye,” you’ll often hear.
These reactions are especially common after tragedies, like the Boston bombings that took place in 2013. Ever since that tragedy – and leading up to the trial that is taking place now – I have heard family and friends say things like, “Just put [Dzhokhar Tsarnaev] in a room and blow him up!”
The question is not how we humans react to violent acts – we all instinctively want harsh, sometimes deadly, punishments for murderers. But, 
really, it’s whether or not our judicial system and society as a whole should react in the same way.
In “Ides of March”, a political thriller, George Clooney – playing a presidential candidate – was asked in a debate whether he would support the death penalty for a killer if his wife was the victim.
Clooney’s character responded by saying he would still oppose the death penalty, but he would personally seek revenge on his wife’s killer. When the moderator asked why society should not be allowed to do that, he responded by saying, “Because society has to be better than the individual. If I were to do that (kill someone) I would be wrong.”
As humans, we react the way any compassionate human does to such terrible acts: with anger, disgust and, sometimes, an urge to seek revenge. But our society must be better than that. In the case of the Boston bomber, putting the perpetrator in a room and blowing him up, or simply killing him, would make us no better than he is.
At the end of the day, killing a person to show that killing is wrong doesn’t make much sense. We should not punish evil acts by committing the same act in response. We should instead recognize that, as Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.”
“But I don’t want my tax money to pay for a criminal to stay alive in prison and have warm meals everyday,” is another common trope among the pro-death penalty crowd.
This is an easy myth to buy into, but it is absolutely false that it costs more money to sentence a criminal to life without parole than it does to sentence him/her to death.
A recent study in Colorado showed that death penalty cases take six times longer to resolve than life-without-parole cases. That drawn-out process adds up to millions of extra dollars.
In California, another study showed that the cost of the death penalty over the last three decades is over $4.5 billion. If the governor was to commute the sentences of everyone on death row to life without parole, it would save $170 million per year.
And murder rates in states without the death penalty are consistently lower than states who still have it.
It’s morally questionable, fiscally irresponsible, and it doesn’t reduce crime rates.
Most of the world’s top democracies no longer use the death penalty. Eighteen of our own states have officially abolished it. It’s time for the remaining states to follow suit and join the rest of the civilized world in eliminating this practice.
Yes, Texas, even you.
Sean A. Colarossi 