Interesting comments from a fellow abolisher
Date: 10. februar 1998 12:47

Some very interesting comments made by another abolisher.
What recurrently disturbs me about capital punishment is there is an underlying presumption that a person who murdered was:
1. In his/her right mind, i.e., lucid, in some sense;
2. Able, at the moment of killing, to control him/herself;
3. Just like anyone else, except that s/he wantonly chose to kill;
4. That the person's past or heavy problems should not have been any factor.

That's the inescapable conclusion one draws after knowing that so many juries, judges, et al, reject any mitigating circumstances pleaded in behalf of the convicted.
Mental illness? Too bad. Low IQ? He should have known better. Terrible childhood? Hah! That's no excuse, plenty of people have bad childhood's.
Everything went wrong in the person's life? So what? And on and on....
I am not saying that these factors should dissuade a jury from finding guilt.
It's even strange to me that there's a phrase, "Not guilty by reason of insanity." Insanity does not remove the guilt for the crime, but only the accountability for that guilt -- or so it seems to me.
How can anyone say that people who killed are normal in any sense of the word?
This, I submit, is at the root of our wrong-headed dealings with criminals.
Again, I say, this is not an argument to not deal with offenders by removing
them from society, but it is an argument for not measuring them by the standard of the "ordinary man."
This, I think, is also called the "reasonable man standard." A strange standard in itself, since I've never met anyone I considered "reasonable" in *all* things according to *my* standards (and you're probably not too much different from me).
In one of Rick's reports on Kaczynski, I read, "Psychologist Barbara Kirwin, who testifies as an expert in trials, says death should punish those who kill because they want to, not because they are sick: the death penalty should be reserved for criminals who have the total possession of their faculties."
I beg her pardon? A person killing someone is in total possession of his faculties? The obvious faculty lacking here is *SENSE*! I appreciate the fact that this psychologist draws the line somewhere, but where is her understanding of "normal" human behavior for "anyone"?
Long ago, a (clinical) psychologist friend of mine who counseled with inmates (before I even considered that term more than a word), said that a prisoner told him, "People in trouble give trouble."
If anyone thinks that prisons are full of rational people who deliberately set out to make a mess of everyone's life, and in possession of all their faculties, they need to visit a few inmates. The few in prison who are rational on every score are often there because they made very bad choices previously, or were innocents put there by our flawed legal system.
Otherwise, the people we are imprisoning, and condemning to death, are people who deserve our pity and help at the least. (Again, for those of you who think
I'm being "soft," I'm *not* saying we should release them.)
The prisons are full of the insane, those with low IQs, the downtrodden, the mistreated, the poor, the abused, the despised, and the disenfranchised.
Where is America's sense of fairness?
Many of you will agree with me, I think, though some may not, but I think this is as strong an overall argument against the death penalty as any.

Clara