Xanga Archive

Tomorrow I take my last 2 finals, one of which I still have yet to study for. But that is ok, I will do that as soon as I am done posting. 6 and a half hours till I take it 😉 I think I will stay up tonight, just because I want to play Final Fantasy, and type this, and so forth. Then tomorrow I can just sleep most of the day away.

Anyway, in regards to the post yesterday, a couple of people mentioned their thoughts on the death penalty in their comments. So I thought I would write about it to at least cause people to think about it and maybe call into question what they currently think.

I can understand where people who support the death penalty are coming from. Up until pretty recently, I was right there with them. In a way I guess you could say I still think the same way, except I decided that something I had thought maybe was possible then, I have ceased to think is really possible. The condition on which I support the death penalty is if someone is without any doubt whatsoever completely proven guilty of a crime worthy of it. However, given the number of people who have been given the death penalty that were later proven innocent by dna testing, etc, it is obvious that all of these people who were “proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt” were not really. Therefore, it is obvious that we are incapable of determining complete proof of guilt.

You also have this situation with the WM3. Of the 3, Jessie has life + 40 years, Jason has 3 life sentances (both of them without parole), and Damien has been sentenced to death by lethal injection. Yet to me there is not only considerable doubt as to if they did it, I find it extremely unlikely that they did it, as they were convicted on little to no actual evidence. Their situation is in fact what caused me to call my beliefs into question.

In my opinion, the taking of human life is a very serious thing. It is something that is completely irreversible, and you can never take it back. I feel that life without parole is sufficient punishment for the crime. Sure, if people are actually guilty of murder, they DESERVE to be put to death… but as long as there is a chance that maybe they are really innocent, they should be allowed to live, and to attempt to prove their innocence.

I welcome comments and agreements/disagreements. Like I said, I understand both sides…

Godspeed.

[Edit: I just finished reading the book Devil’s Knot, and I just thought that the last page was really kind of touching and like people should read it. So I am going to type it out here. Feel free to read it or not… it’s not too terribly long.

“”It’s crooked,” twenty-five year old Jessie Misskelley said, offering his opinion of Crittendon County. By the spring of 2001, Jessie had spent a third of his life in prison. He had seventeen tattoos, including one with his nickname, Midget Biker. He said he was thinking of getting another one. “I want to get a tattoo on my head,” he said. “I want a brain. I want a brain tattoo on the top of my head. Because I ain’t never seen no one that has one.” He described himself as hopeful– and a bit smarter then when he’d been arrested. Now, he realized, “If you didn’t do it, don’t ever admit that you did.”

Damien’s interest in metaphysics– Which had so colored his trial– continued on death row. He’d read books on Buddhism and come to embrace that philosophy. As a result, many Arkansans were doubly surprised when they read, in December 1999, not only that Damien had married but that the ceremony had been a Buddhist one performed at the prison. The woman marrying him was Lorri Davis, the architect from New Youk with whom he’d been corresponding since the release of the first documentary.

Captain Allen said he was “stunned and dismayed” to learn that Damien had wed. “I thought to myself, ‘What’s this old world coming to?'” he told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “I know it’s federally mandated, but unless [a prisoner] is getting married to a cellmate, they really need to revamp the system.” Brent Davis said he thought it was “strange” that Damien had so many supporters, and that one would even marry him. “We made him what he was,” the prosecutor said. “We elevated Echols from a psychotic-fringe to being admired by thousands.”

As the ninght anniversary of the murders approached, Jason was living a lief as close to a middle-class life as he could manage inside a prison. Because he was quick to learn computers and maintained an impeccableprison record, he’d been assigned to a series of white-collar jobs in various clerical positions. He’d joined the prison Jaycess and begun to study investments. “I don’t want to get out and be that sixteen-year-old kid I once was,” he said. “I want to keep up.”

He’d taken college courses in subjects like anthropology, accounting, and American politics– “because I want to see what our government’s built on.”– and dreamed of attending law school. And he had a sweetheart. The correspondence that he’d begun in 1997 with young Sara Cadwallader had grown into a serious romance. She was in high school when they’d met. Now Sara had graduated from college and had herself been accepted into law school. Jason credited Sara, his faith in God,and the support of friends, many of them “total strangers,” for his emotional stability– for his ongoing belief “that right will prevail.”

“I have grown up in prison,” he wrote at the end of 2001. Even with all that I have suffered, I have not allowed myself to become hateful, spiteful or resentful of either those who put me here unjustly, or of those who allowed it to happen. I know you’ve got to love life, enjoy it, embrace it while you’ve got it. I love this country we have. I love America and her people. And I hope that someday I will be able to live here as a free man again, with my reputation intact.”

Jessie, Damien, and Jason all had different visions of what life would be like if they were freed. Jessie dreamed of a “big party.” Damien said he wanted to “disappear” with his wife. Jason foresaw a life of activism relating somehow to law.

“Being in here has made me stronger,” he said. “It’s made me more reflective on things I should be proud of and enjoy, things like freedom. I don’t take things for granted. And I’m not as naive as I was. The reason I’m here– the real reason– is that someone had to pay the price.” Jason said that the police and prosecutors had been “content just to say we did it” and that had been “enough” for the public. But he added that he understood the public reaction. “I used to think that way too,” he said. “To me, a suspect meant, ‘That’s who done it.’ but I didn’t do it, and that’s the main matter.””

I highly reccomend the book by the way. It is definately worth your time to read.

Later.]