Illinois Abolished Capital Punishment! Right On!
Illinois just abolished capital punishment!!! This may be fall-out from when those 150 plus death row prisoners had their sentences commuted some years ago due to corruption and other irregularities in the Illinois justice system. One day I hope no state (or anyone else for that matter) will kill anybody. But as the law is arguably more civilized than the criminals, the law needs to take the first step and stop the killing.
Yes, they’ll likely have to build more prisons as well as reduce sentences for the so-called lesser crimes. These measures would make room for the would-have-been death row inmates; people that will now largely become life-long prison inmates in Illinois.
But giving up the death sentence is but a small price to pay to preserve and increase the sanctity of human life in our culture. Abolishing capital punishment everywhere would get society out of the highly hypocritical practice of execution. I mean, if we followed the golden rule, no one would want another person to be put to death, as they would not wish to be put to death themselves. That’s the hypocrisy. We do death to others that we would not want to have done to ourselves.
Also, by phasing out executions, Illinois will avoid having to answer all those tough questions that routinely surface about how painful an execution may or may not be, whether or not a person was really guilty of a capital crime, and other impossible-to-definitively-answer quandaries. Then too, we’d save a ton in legal fees as well as court and other administrative costs that must be spent to make sure that we’re not killing willy-nilly, and executing people without sufficient due process accorded them.
I’d say that in Illinois at least, the value of a human life just went up significantly. Last I heard, a life in America is worth around a half a million dollars. I wonder what it will be worth once the rest of the nation fully digests Illinois’ bold but humane move of abolishing capital punishment?