Murder is a terrible, ugly thing that should not happen.
When murder, sometimes preceded by torturous acts, occurs to someone you love, you want the person(s) responsible for that act to suffer. You want them to die the same slow, heinous death your loved one experienced.
It doesn’t happen that way.
Instead, people who do unthinkable things are given a lethal cocktail of drugs that puts them to sleep and then stops whatever is left of their hearts.
It doesn’t feel like justice for the people suffering the loss of a loved one.
David Dow, a law professor and death row lawyer in Texas, gives a candid portrayal of his life representing people who, if he fails them, will die.
Although the Autobiography of an Execution is poorly written, the story offers an honest look at problems with the death penalty system, specifically the problematic courts that keep all sides from receiving any type of justice.
Dow has represented 100 clients, having won only seven times. Perhaps the most compelling part of the book for me reads as follows:
“Jurors and judges who send someone to the fallows should be required to witness their deed and observe the execution. Every court of appeals judge who upholds a death sentence should have to visit death row and deliver the news personally. Supreme Court justices who refuse to grant a death-row inmate a stay of execution should have to deliver the news face-to-face to the inmate as he waits in the holding cell eight steps down the dank hall from the execution chamber, instead of having one of their law clerks call the inmate’s lawyer. If we are going to execute people in our society because we believe that it is an appropriate punishment for people who callously and irresponsibly take another’s life, then the people with the power not to execute ought to take responsibility themselves for imposing the punishment, or at least not negating it. It’s easier to kill somebody if it’s someone else’s decision, and if somebody else does the killing. Our death-penalty regime depends for its functionality on moral cowardice.”
This certainly is something to consider.
I’m not claiming capital punishment is right or wrong, but reading Dow’s book gave me some insight into our broken system.
Note: This post contains affiliate links.
