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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 178 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 178, September 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
I was very moved by Michael Ross’s article (July/Aug. SR) about the racism in capital punishment in the US. Yet I think that John Rees’s reply missed some very important points. Rees pointed out that every execution the US state gets away with strengthens their hand, and people who are innocent may end up being punished. An important argument, but not the only one.
It is surely not right to take the life of another human being. If a person is a danger to others they should be kept apart from society in some way – although I strongly believe that prison is not the right way.
If someone killed my child, should I have the right to kill them? Neither should the state have the right to kill someone, even if they have killed. But it is not just a question of ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’.
Two hundred thousand Iraqis died so American oil companies could keep their hands on Kuwaiti oil.
It is not the inmates on death row who are responsible for these crimes. The people responsible for the killing are the ones making the decision to send people to the chair.
Capital punishment is not a question of whether the accused actually committed the crime or not. It is a question of pointing the finger at the real criminals. Capital punishment is a crime. It is the bosses, politicians and judges who deserve the chair, not Michael Ross.
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Susie Helme |
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